What it looks like is that your knife wasn't sharp enough. Also I'd never use a knife to prune. It is hard to get a clean cut (if it's not a clean cut it can take longer for the plant to heal) and can easily introduce disease and infection if the tools are not sterilized beforehand. For such thick stems use a pruner, you can buy them at home depot or lowes. To sterilize your tools, get a blow torch and heat up the blade until it gets red and then let it cool off. It goes without saying that you should choose a pruner with a blade that is pure metal, not the kind of hybrid plastic ones they have nowadays. I wouldn't necessarily prune any more off. The problem is that your ficus began branching too late and now whatever you do the tree is still going to look top heavy indoors since it can't get any taller than that.

The internet is full of misinformation. These plants grow and will do best under the most intense full sun. Sun through a window is filtered and not anywhere near as intense as it would be outside. The only issue you could ever have is the leaf getting too hot if you’re air is stangnent. If there’s a fan, or even a heat/ac vent in the same room, that’ll keep the air moving enough. It’s a bummer to see everyone coming here with the same “bright indirect” light thing. People misunderstand what that means so they stick it in a dark corner and the plant suffers. Bright, meaning right up in front of a window. Indirect means not outdoors in direct sunlight. Glass filters the sun, hence not direct. That’s only because the plants have been grown under a shade cloth. They can easily handle direct sun if acclimated. All Ficus should be in front of the brightest window in your house. whatmay seem bright or plenty of light to a human is nothing for a plant. Dont water in small amounts. Fully drench the soil till is coming out the drain holes so you’re flushing fertilizer and tap water salts from the soil. Don’t water on a a set schedule. Water only as the plant needs it. This is be different in the summer and winter.

Hi Heather, don’t worry your fiddle leaf fig looks fine. Many people would prune their FLF in just this manner to encourage it to branch from the top. Sometimes it takes awhile for new branches to start to grow from the top and plenty of bright light will help it do so quicker. (More often then not you should probably get 2 new branches from the top). Pruning would usually be done in Spring/Summer while the plant is showing active growth. If you’re growing season is coming to an end you may not see new growth/branching from this area until next Spring. Sometimes fiddle leaf figs are stubborn....just like children. Lol Don’t worry too much as your FLF looks nice and healthy. I actually love the way yours looks right now. Happy growing :)

Let's see how you're notching ............ an image? On small trees up to 3/4" diameter, the notch should be centered above the node where you want the branch, and the width of the notch should take up 1/3-1/2 of the circumference. You should remove all the bark to make a slit 1/8-3/16 in ht, and you should remove all tissue at the deepest part of the notch - all the way down to bare sapwood. So, after you carve this 1/8-3/16 high groove, use the sharp edge of the knife to remove all cambial tissues from the surface of the sapwood. Auxin acts to keep lateral/axillary buds inactive. If you leave part the cambium, the wound closes very quickly, restoring the pathway for auxin's polar flow past axillary buds to roots, when what you want is the flow of auxin to be stopped or diverted around the latent bud you're trying to awaken from quiescence (rest). Al