Normal result from a tip-pinch only, 1 or 2 new tips but no real reduction in upward mobility or increase in girth. Remove the lower leaves to encourage lower branches at the nodes where those leaves were attached. Practicing on Coleus is so fun because they grow so fast.

It seems that folks are ignoring your questions. Most likely that's because this forum is for edible figs. Need to add enough to saturate the entire rootball and to have at least 10% run off. Anyway, I suspect the 1.5 cups of water has the tree on a very stingy diet. Also, the tinted window is a problem in that it allows barely any suitable light through for a live plant. Suggest you go to the Houseplant Forum for more responses. Go to http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/houseplt

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

Great! (The new leaves). If the stick comes out dry, now is a good time to flush the soil. Brief tutorial: Flushing Soils Water-retentive soils that can't be flushed during our regular water applications or soils that have been watered in small "sips" need to be flushed regularly to ensure salts from tap-water and fertilizer solutions aren't accumulating in the soil and limiting the plant's ability to take up water. To flush the soil of a planting: Water with room temperature water until the soil is completely saturated. Allow the planting to rest for 15 minutes to an hour so as much accumulated salt as possible goes into solution. Then, slowly pour a volume of room temp water equal to at least 10X the volume of the pot the plant is in through the soil. This will remove most of any accumulation of salts and resolve any skewing of nutrient ratios. It's a good idea, no matter what time of year, to fertilize any plants that are at least reasonably healthy immediately after flushing the soil. Try to be sure you're using a fertilizer that has a ratio as close as possible to the ratio at which the plant uses nutrients. The NPK % listed on fertilizer packaging is not its ratio. 7-7-7 and 14-14-14 are 1:1:1 ratios. 9-3-6, 12-4-8, and 24-8-16, are all 3:1:2 ratios. Container growers should try very hard to avoid use of fertilizers advertised as 'bloom-boosters', or any number with a middle number (Phosphorous) higher than either the first or third numbers (Nitrogen or Potassium). These fertilizers can badly skew nutrient ratios with even the first application). On average, plants use about 6x as much N as P, so there is NO potential for a positive outcome when supplying many times as much P as the plant requires. I, and a large number of other members, use Dyna-Gro's Foliage Pro 9-3-6. It's designed to closely mimic the uptake ratio of the average plant, and has many other attributes not commonly found in other fertilizers. It also has ALL of the nutrients essential to normal growth. Summarized, it makes fertilizing as easy as it can be, and, from 1 container. How you should fertilize depends on how you water and your soil choice. For instance, I use enough water that I'm flushing the soil every time I water (in summer). I fertilize with FP 9-3-6 every weekend when temperatures are appropriate. I withhold fertilizer when it's too hot or cold. The solution strength I provide it roughly twice the production rated suggested on the container. Unless your soil allows you to fertigate (fertilize + irrigate) like I do, your plants would quickly start to suffer or even die, because I depend on the soil flush with each watering. You might need to fertilize at the suggested rate, adjusted for the season, then wait a month or so and repeat a soil flush + a fertilizer application. In the end, your goal should be to make sure all the nutrients essential to normal growth and good health are in the soil at all times, in a ratio that closely mimics the ratio at which the plant takes up the nutrients, and in a concentration high enough to prevent deficiencies yet low enough to avoid limiting the plant's ability to take up water. If that sounds complicated, right? It is if you can't water correctly w/o the soil remaining soggy so long it limits root function or wrecks root health; but, if your soil DOES allow you to water appropriately, either because the soil is a very good one or because you have taken steps to limit the soil's ability to retain excess water, it's monkey easy. Al