Direct sunlight would be outside in direct sun. The sun coming through your windows is already going to be filtered light. It would be very good for your tree to repot into a container with drainage, use something like the 5:1:1 mix and place it right up in front of a southern facing window where it recieves as much light as possible. I grow quite a few ficus benjaminas. They have the same general needs as your tree. Naturally, these trees want as much light as possible. Anything that says they don't like direct light is false. It's just that indoor grown leaves can't handle full outdoor sun unless acclimated. In the winter months, I keep the tree in front of a southern facing window with the addition of grow lights. I have five 55w (250w equivalent) 5500k grow lights above the tree. In the summer, I acclimate the tree over a span on a couple weeks and then place it in full direct sun all summer. That is when it puts out the most growth. Literally grows a couple feet every summer. the tree is 7 feet all and was under 4 feet tall when I got it a year and a half ago. Currently in an 18" terra cotta pot in Al's 5:1:1 mix.

If you clean the tip of your moisture meter and dip it in a cup of distilled water, the meter will tell you the water is dry; this because the meter actually measures electrical conductivity. So if you have a given volume of water in a given soil, the higher the TDS (total dissolved solids or roughly - salts) the wetter the moisture meter will tell you the soil is. A wooden dowel, used as a 'tell' is more reliable. If I do heavy root work on tropicals, I habitually reduce the canopy by a very large fraction to keep the plant from A) collapsing, or B) from shedding branches that might be an important part of the composition I'm building. Example: From this root mass to this:You can see the huge roots I severed, and that was only the first rootwork session. Since then, I've pruned the root mass back to just about even with the soil level in the image below. We actually have a tool designed specifically for this chore, called (what else?) a root cutter. The tree is F benjamina. The foliage mass, on the same day, went from this: To this: I'm not sure what this means: There is no other location that's suitable for this big tree. Given this condition, should I supplement the lack of light with the Dyna-Gro in a month or so? You can't counter or remedy a lack of light by supplying fertilizer. In fact, you need to be careful about not over-fertilizing in low light conditions. Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is a good choice for low light conditions though, because it's nitrogen sources tend to reduce likelihood of the coarse growth that occurs when using fertilizers that get their N from urea. More about using a 'tell' please forgive the weird formatting, which happens on all the word documents I write and save to share): Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

after pruning the first several leaves that come out usually are small and then the next set is bigger, provided there is enough light. I grow and propagate F.Lyratas for years and my leaves on newer 'cuttings' that are are now 3-5 years old are much larger then on the original plant that i haven't been able to fully repot for a very long time (it's quite big). they all get similar light: western and north-eastern exposure in floor to ceiling wall of windows. so i would say yours doesn't get enough light just sitting in 1 eastern window - it needs supplemental artificial lighting if you want it to grow well. you did not mention if you repotted it after rescue. it probably can take a root pruning AND trunk pruning too: i like the tall narrow vase shape you have now, but some of the trunks can take shortening as it is almost to the top of the window. there's plenty of info on the subject if you do a search. it's good time to do it soon and root the tip cuttings too.

I’ve been having some unusual dark brown spots on my fiddle. It gets some good indirect sunlight every day, and I make sure it's properly watered and drained. Your plant definitely wants more than indirect sunlight. F lyrata is a plant that spends its early years fighting its way through the understory for its place in the canopy where it gets full sun. Your plant can be acclimated to tolerate full sun indoors, but a full sun position requires air movement. Surrounding leaves is a still layer of air (boundary layer) that acts as an insulator, trapping the heat generated when bright light strikes the foliage (passive solar gain). A fan will disrupt the boundary layer and allow the leaves to cool. If you decide to give the plant more light, gradually expose it to a heavier light load over the course of 10 days to 2 weeks. Your plant would LOVE being outdoors for the summer, and would enthusiastically show its pleasure should you decide to move it there. Morning and evening sun with shade at midday would be ideal. Again, the increased light exposure should be done gradually. And despite living in a clean apartment where there are never bugs, I’ve noticed some small flea like bugs hovering around it a lot recently. The insect appears to be a fungus gnat. They love wet grow media and rotting, vegetation, and organic fertilizers or soil amendments that break down quickly. I repotted it a few months back with new soil, so I wonder if there was some weird larvae inside of that. My guess is yes, or the wet medium is what attracted them. One gnat can turn into hundreds within a very short period. Now, about that grow medium ..... I see some chipped wood and bark on the surface, but the underlying medium looks severely compacted. It looks like the medium you chose when you repotted is excessively water-retentive, which would account for the gnats and the spoiled foliage. You can try using a "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water, but proper watering won't fix compaction. What did it say on the bag of medium you recently used? Do you fertilize? With what? How often? I've noticed some white spots on top of the soil developing, perhaps some kind of mold? It probably IS dissolved solids left behind as water evaporated from the surface. Well-drained media generally don't get these deposits because they require water being wicked all the way to the surface from a larger reservoir held below in the medium. In fast-draining media, the water flowing over the soil surface dissolves deposits and flushes them out the drain hole. The surface of the soil dries very quickly because better media lack the ability to wick water all the way to the surface. What salts are deposited there from applications of fertilizer solutions are soon dissolved by the next application of water only, as already mentioned. The deposits might or might not be an indication of a salt build up in the medium; this because the deposit appear in very water-retentive media whether there is an abnormally high level of dissolved solids in the soil solution or not. If you habitually water such that a lot of water exits the drain hole when you water, it's doubtful there is any build-up of dissolved solids IN the medium; OTOH, if you water in sips because you already know the medium is too water-retentive, it's almost a certainty there IS a build-up of salts in the soil solution, especially if you fertilize regularly. Al