Happy belated birthday and welcome to GW! :D Had one of those before and I seem to remember it being underwatered more than the others while I had it and it didn't seem to mind. As for water,if you can collect rainwater and use that whenever you can,you'll be doing alot better than city water. Reverse osmosis would be the next option(I've never used it though I've read it to be so). There are lots of threads around this forum about the care,upkeep,problems etc of this plant and I would encourage you to delve into them a bit because some seriously brilliant minds have been kind enough to put in their two cents there. This place is awesome like that! Oh and don't worry about the sideways pic...happens around here all the time! LOL Here is a link that might be useful: Threads with valuable info!

Thanks, Lee. It's always nice to find out that someone finds value in the things we write. One would assume a nursery wouldn't over water their plants. In most cases, plants in nuresries WON'T be over-watered for a couple of reasons. One of those is that they are good at noticing signs that illustrate a group of plants need fopr water, or for just establishing an appropriate schedule on which to water. The second reason has to do with the fact that the plants often rest on the ground. When the pot is in direct contact with the ground, or if roots grow from the pot into the ground or through a ground cover cloth under the pots, the earth acts as a giant wick to pull excess water from the soil. If you use a soil that is capable of supporting 3-4" of perched water and you set it directly on dry ground, the perched water will disappear within minutes due to the wicking action of the earth. .... to clarify. Water when the skewer/dowel comes out free of dirt/dry looking? Yes, that's right. If you were checking daily or twice daily to get a 'feel' for how often to water, the ideal time to water would be the first time the tell comes out dry. IOW, you want to wait until just before the plant might experience drought stress before you water. With some species of ficus (like benjamina), you can clearly see or feel when the youngest leaves are just starting to lose turgidity. If you wait until then and pay attention to the interval since last watering, you can often establish an appropriate rhythm that should keep you out of trouble re over-watering. Do you have to use a new dowel every time? If you're actually using a dowel, you can cut a 4' piece in half & sharpen all 4 ends. If you're using a skewer, they're cheap, so why not use a fresh one after each moist pot you discover. Or, if you wipe the end off with a rag and wave it in the air between tests, it usually dries down enough that you can test a lot of plants with just the 4 ends from the single rod you cut in half. How much water do I flush it with? I usually suggest at least 10x the volume of the pot the plant is in; and if you err, it's better to err on the generous side and use more than 10x. How often do you do it? I use a soil that I can flush at will, and I DO flush every time I water. If you're limited to supplying small amounts of water to prevent soils from staying soggy for long periods, a thorough flush every 4-6 weeks is good. What do I use as the wick? Anything cotton? Cotton rots quickly. I prefer strands of rayon. You can buy a rayon mop head and pull it apart, or buy a man made rayon chamois and cut it in strips. Too, the nylon string ties used to tie onion or citrus bags closed very often work very well for drainage wicks (but not watering wicks). I have some of those that are 12-15 years old & still working great. Not all are created equal though, so discard those that don't work well. And do you tape it on the side of the planter out of the effluent. I meant to talk to you about the effluent. Your pot should be raised so it's above the effluent that collects in the saucer, or via other means, the effluent should have no pathway back into the soil. Reason: It doesn't make sense to flush salts from the soil only to leave a pathway right back to where they came from because the pot is sitting in the effluent. Here's how I do wicks: That covers how I do it before the planting is established. If the pot supports an established planting, I simply fold the wick over the end of a straight slot screwdriver and push it into the soil far enough that the short end is all the way into the soil. That holds it pretty securely initially and as roots grow around and into the wick, even more so. Is foliage pro 9-3-6 still your go to fertilizer? Yes. I might add a little extra K for some plants (tomato and hibiscus), but I basically use it for everything. I completely avoid any high-P fertilizers in containers. I consider a fertilizer to be high in P if the middle number (P) is equal to or larger than the first number (N). ..... it seems I will loose a bunch of leaves off the bottom. Is it ever possible to get that growth back? Yes. Once a leaf is shed, no new leaf will form in its place, but above the scar where a shed leaf was attached, there are dormant buds that can be stimulated to grow. The methods of activating these latent buds could easily fill a chapter in a book, so I won't elaborate. Back-budding will naturally occur if you can get the plant outdoors in full sun and plenty of air movement, fertilize it in what's called the luxury range, and make sure the root system is healthy and has plenty of room to run. You can artificially stimulate back-budding low on the trunk by notching or pruning the plant back hard. The hard pruning is especially effective when working with healthy plants at the peak of their food-making/photosynthesizing ability, which, where you live would be in June. Father's Day or the summer solstice are the easiest markers to remember. You mentioned the kids and learning. When I was a youngster, I went to a 1-room little red brick schoolhouse that had K-8 in the one room. Obviously, it was hard for the teacher to spend as much time with each student as they needed, so most of the time I read World Book Encyclopedia and anything I could get my hands on about animals or science. I only wish that the world of plant science would have got its hooks into me at a very young age. I hope your kids find something they love to do, no matter what it is, and have the opportunity to follow that calling. Al

Darn, I thought the pot was just the right size. My plan today was to do a full repot with the new mix. I'm very nervous but at this rate, don't want to risk waiting until next season to do anything and watch all these beautiful leaves turn black and fall off. I've never done anything like this before, so please let me know based on my plan if I should change anything- my plan was to go get materials today. Use black gold potting soil I showed you yesterday Use this perlite soil to add in Use this reptibark for the bark portion. Buy this sieve to separate any fine dust or particles that could get into the mix and cause it to be too compacted. My plan was to get ingredients today and then this evening work on combining them. Once I know my mixture is good, do the repot tomorrow morning/afternoon as I don't want to do anything late into the day since I figure that could cause more stress. I planned on having my husband help me take him out of the pot and to flush out all the current soil outside with a garden hose (my one reserve to this is the water could be too cold?) once everythjng is cleared, bring him inside and place him into a bathtub with lukewarm water (id prep it first to avoid dry roots) and then inspect to see if I need to snip any rotting roots away meanwhile I will have my husband wash out his plot completely so the root rot is not in there anymore. (But if you think I need a new pot will just do that) fill pot up with some of the mixture, place root ball in, fill remaining with mixture. Perhaps give the pot a little toss/shake to ensure that roots are not crushed and that the mixture makes its way evenly through the system. move him to a more sunny area, at least for the time being... There really aren't more places in our house that get more light than this one, it does get a lot brighter after about 12 o clock in here and in the evening the sun comes in a lot stronger (but not directly on his leaves which is nice) so I might move him back here to see if it works okay with a better soil/root system. Thoughts? Are the ingredients for my mix okay? Anything I should know when repotting? I don't want to hurt him further

W/o an understanding of what the medium you chose to grow in is like, no one can divine what size pot might be appropriate, but how the appropriate size pot is determined might surprise you. I wrote the following simply because this question comes up with a fair amount or regularity. Choosing an Appropriate Size Container How large a container ‘can’ or ‘should’ be, depends on the relationship between the mass of the plant material you are working with and your choice of soil. We often concern ourselves with "over-potting" (using a container that is too large), but "over-potting" is a term that arises from a lack of a basic understanding about the relationship we will look at, which logically determines appropriate container size. It's often parroted that you should only move up one container size when "potting-up". The reasoning is, that when potting up to a container more than one size larger, the soil will remain wet too long and cause root rot issues, but it is the size/mass of the plant material you are working with, and the physical properties of the soil you choose that determines both the upper & lower limits of appropriate container size - not a formulaic upward progression of container sizes. In many cases, after root pruning a plant, it may even be appropriate to step down a container size or two, but as you will see, that also depends on the physical properties of the soil you choose. It's not uncommon for me, after a repot/root-pruning to pot in containers as small as 1/5 the size as that which the plant had been growing in prior to the work. Plants grown in ‘slow’ (slow-draining/water-retentive) soils need to be grown in containers with smaller soil volumes so that the plant can use water quickly, allowing air to return to the soil before root issues beyond impaired root function/metabolism become a limiting factor. We know that the anaerobic (airless) conditions that accompany soggy soils quickly kill fine roots and impair root function/metabolism. We also know smaller soil volumes and the root constriction that accompany them cause plants to both extend branches and gain o/a mass much more slowly - a bane if rapid growth is the goal - a boon if growth restriction and a compact plant are what you have your sights set on. Conversely, rampant growth can be had by growing in very large containers and in very fast soils where frequent watering and fertilizing is required - so it's not that plants rebel at being potted into very large containers per se, but rather, they rebel at being potted into very large containers with a soil that is too slow and water-retentive. This is a key point. We know that there is an inverse relationship between soil particle size and the height of the perched water table (PWT) in containers. As particle size increases, the height of the PWT decreases, until at about a particle size of just under 1/8 inch, soils will no longer hold perched water. If there is no perched water, the soil is ALWAYS well aerated, even when the soil is at container capacity (fully saturated). So, if you aim for a soil (like the gritty mix) composed primarily of particles larger than 1/16", there is no upper limit to container size, other than what you can practically manage. The lower size limit will be determined by the soil volume's ability to allow room for roots to ’run’ and to furnish water enough to sustain the plant between irrigations. Bearing heavily on this ability is the ratio of fine roots to coarse roots. It takes a minimum amount of fine rootage to support the canopy under high water demand. If the container is full of large roots, there may not be room for a sufficient volume of the fine roots that do all the water/nutrient delivery work and the coarse roots, too. You can grow a very large plant in a very small container if the roots have been well managed and the lion's share of the rootage is fine. You can also grow very small plants, even seedlings, in very large containers if the soil is fast (free-draining and well-aerated) enough that the soil holds no, or very little perched water. I have just offered clear illustration why the oft repeated advice to ‘resist potting up more than one pot size at a time’, only applies when using heavy, water-retentive soils. Those using well-aerated soils are not bound by the same restrictions. As the ht and volume of the perched water table are reduced, the potential for negative effects associated with over-potting are diminished in a direct relationship with the reduction - up to the point at which the soil holds no (or an insignificant amount) of perched water and over-potting pretty much becomes a non-issue.