Whoops! Forgot the picture...

Is it really curling up? ie was it formerly flat and has since curled up? Or is it just the normal UNcurling of a new leaf. Look at the newest bud. It has to progress from that tight conical tube to the huge flat surface of a mature leaf. So it's bound to look curled as it does so. The new leaf looks perfectly fine to me. Be patient.

Thanks Floral! That's reassuring! It was flat before though, it started this downward curling about a week ago. I sadly enough don't have pictures of the leaf before it started curling. It also lost its shine quite suddenly, so I figured something was going wrong.

It's curling in the wrong direction for it to be related to the leaf's unfurling.

Where do you live and how are you fertilizing?

Al

Young leaves are more flexible and being too dry they can curl like that. The older leaves tend to be too rigid to curl. You may be leaving it too long between waterings. Also, by 'bottom watering it' do you mean dipping the bottom of the pot in water?

@tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a) i haven't fertilised it yet and I live in the Netherlands. Maybe I could try a light fertiliser, or do ficus hate northern Europe? :p

@tropicbreezent maybe I've been so afraid to overwater that I've been drying the poor thing out, lol. I water when the pot feels light and the probe gives a general reading of 3. I do dip the bottom of the pot in and keep it there until the soil feels moist on the top.

I've had quite a few plants, but ficus are very new to me. I am sure, I could learn a thing or 2, lol. I should add though that since I've moved it closer to the window, the leaf seems to curl less! But it could be wishful thinking..

With the vernal equinox behind you, your Ficus should be losing its tendency toward winter lethargy and starting to 'think' about growing in earnest. That urge will continue to grow as the summer solstice approaches, then start to diminish again as days shorten and temps grow cooler in autumn, until they slow so much in winter one might think they have enter a situational dormancy, but they won't have. Ficus are capable of growing as robustly in winter as in summer. The reason they don't is, indoor conditions (low humidity, often cool temps, low light) aren't in the plant's sweet spot. As a result, the less than ideal cultural conditions are temporarily limiting. IOW, they don't allow the plant to realize as much of its genetic potential when compared to the summer months.

Your plant does need regular nutrient supplementation. Nutrients are the building blocks that allow the plant to grow and keep its systems orderly, so I would suggest you start fertilizing with a product the plant will like. In the US, there is a product called Foliage-Pro 9-3-6. It works extremely well for Ficus for a number of reasons. I use it for everything I grow, with only a modification here/there for a very few plants.

"I read that variegated plants often need more light then no variegated ones." That is sort of true. Because there is less chlorophyll in the lighter part of the variegated leaf surface, the plant is unable to produce as much food (plants make their own food in the form of sugar) as their all-green counterparts. The problem is, chlorophyll is natures sunscreen for plants - it protects them against the same harmful rays that cause sunburn in humans; so, while the plant would need more light to keep up with other all green plants, it can't tolerate as heavy a photo load as green plants. I have a F benjamina 'Variegata' forest planting I've been working on for a few years.

In summer, it's outdoors in full sun with mid-afternoon protection. Yours should be ok and very happy outdoors as long as temps are above 15-16*c. Your plant should actually tolerate full sun indoors (through a window, but you would need to have a fan moving air during the middle of summer days to protect against over-heating - different than sunburn, but still a potential problem. The planting in the image is growing in my basement currently. The cuttings I stared around the perimeter will be tall enough this year so they look natural as a part of the composition, so I expect the next shots I take of it to look much better.

Maybe try using a wooden dowel rod sharpened in a pencil sharpener as a 'tell', to 'tell' you when it's time to water - much more effective than a water meter, which doesn't really measure moisture levels. It measures electrical conductivity, so the level of dissolved solids (salts) from tapwater and fertilizer solutions has a big influence on how it reads. I'll leave more about using a tell below.

This is about growing Ficus in pots.

Using a 'tell'

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

Rather than just dipping the pot you need to put a lot of water through the soil from the top and then let it drain. That flushes out any build up of mineral salts which happens when water dries in the pot. Make sure your soil is fast draining.

Wow that is so much information! I love it! I'll get my fertilisers out, get me some bamboo and flush that pot before I fertilise, but only when my bamboo says it's dry :D (ain't in a rush). I made the soil myself with coco, perlite, orchid bark and wormpoo, it can handle a flushing. And then I'm gonna sit down with tea and read Al's "how not to kill ficus 101" and save this pretty ficus. Thanks guys! I'll update on the progress!

The soil is still very moist. It's probably better if I wait to flush and fertilise until the plant needs a watering right? I thought my mix was chunky, but I see now that I could lift my chunkyness game to the next level!

"The soil is still very moist. It's probably better if I wait to flush and fertilize until the plant needs a watering right?" Yes, that would be best. I thought my mix was chunky, but I see now that I could lift my chunkiness game to the next level! When considering the physical properties of a container medium, there is something called the threshold ratio. In your mind's eye, imagine you have a quart jar half full of marbles, and you can 'see' all those nice/large air spaces between the marbles. Now mix a pint of sand to the marbles which is more than enough to fill all the air spaces between the marbles. So, what will the roots be growing in? Sand. Even with the large particles mixed in. Now start removing sand. When there is exactly enough sand to fill all the spaces between the marbles, you're at the threshold ratio between marbles and sand. So, aeration doesn't occur until there is not enough sand to fill all the spaces between the marbles.

If you start with a jar of sand and start mixing marbles into it - nothing happens in terms of aeration until you add a large enough marbles that the volume of sand in the jar is insufficient to fill the air spaces between the marbles.

You really can't start with a poor medium and amend it with chunky material. Well, you can, but the fraction of chunky material needs to be somewhere in the 75-90% range to get the most from the increase in aeration. We don't say we added coffee to our sugar or cookie dough to our chocolate chips, so we really didn't amend the poor medium by adding 5 parts of pine bark and 1 part perlite to it, since the pine bark + perlite would = about 86% of the mix.

Not sure if you're interested, but this link leads to all you need to know about How Water Behaves in Container Media.

Al

Aw chips, the link won't work :( Am I doing something wrong? I really wanted to read this!

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/2842847/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xxii#n=1041

When you get to the end of what appears to be the original post, there's more. You'll see the following between the original post and the first reply.

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Click the live link once and wait a sec for the next 500 posts to load, then click it again. The second time the link appears, it will say 'see 41 more comments'. I'm going to work on fixing it because people are not seeing the second half of the post.

Al

Thnx for all this amazing information Al!! My plants will be so much happier now 😂😂 also after some more light and a light fertiliser (searched for one with the proportions you mentioned) my ficus is doing so much better!! Just the new leaf, but the entire plant seems to be more radiant!! Look how pretty she is!

Strong work!

Al