Hey Rich, If I were in your shoes(i was not too long ago), I'd buy a 2 year old tree in a pot and start there. growing in containers is not hard at all. I'd not advise you to start from a cutting, because it'll take a couple of seasons to bear fruit, and also no guarantee that you'll be successful rooting them. there are many trees for "pot culture" that yo could go with. Hardy Chicago, Lattarula, Black Jack, and countless others. I'm sure the fine folks here will chime in as well. There are some very reputable online nurseries as well as many folks here sell trees. good luck, let us kinow what you decide.

The spoiled foliage is likely attributable to a combination of a poor soil and over-watering. The leaf loss might also be attributed to a drought response from over-watering, or a decrease in light levels. Your plant prefers a soil you can water to beyond saturation w/o concern that an extended period of soggy soil will damage roots or impair their function. Peat-based soils simplt don't drain well, and hold much more water than your plant appreciates. I'd urge you to think about building your own pine bark based soils, or something based on coarse gritty material. I can help there. PLEASE - no dishsoap on your plants. The detergents dissolve cuticular waxes that serve as protection against water loss, and diseases. It also is very bad for roots because it dissolves root cell membranes. There is a very long thread that goes into a LOT of detail about FLF care: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1458685/pruning-ficus-lyrata-fiddle-leaf-fig?n=247 Al

I'm getting great growth on around three-fourths of my fig trees by watering them every second time with a diluted Miracle Grow solution, 1 tsp to one gallon of water. An evening leaf spray above and below the leaves with the same solution once a week helps also. Rapidly growing figs in pots seem to need daily water on hot days. I've also tried Floralicious Plus and Grow Big plant foods as directed. Some varieties are just slow growers. Some seem to stop growing for 6-8 weeks once you move them up to a new pot, then they take off. For the one and two year old trees, leaving only one or two figs on them so they can focus on growth helps. But I think it's important to let a new tree produce at least one fig or two to make sure it's not mis-labeled. If your eBay bargain black gourmet fig starts producing yellow figs..... Southern California Zone 9b

OK, I had a tree company come by and did some trimming. There were three places the two trees are growing together and they did the separation. Like I mentioned this is NOT where one branch is resting or leaning on another tree branch. This is one tree branch swallowing or enveloping another tree branch like how a snake would coil around it's prey. They took down three big chunk of branches and the volume of the haul away pile was about 20 cubic yards after the branches were cut into manageable sizes. Even though they were able to separate the two trees, the part where the strangler fig coiled and spread around the oak tree branches they could not take out, except to let it eventually die out on it's own. Here is a picture of one branch of the oak tree, and you can see where the cut was made but the smaller roots of the strangler fig remains on the oak. I have attached the same exact picture right underneath except the remainder of the roots of the strangler fig I traced in red color. Kind of reminded me of the movie Invaders of the Body Snatchers.