Winter / early spring wouldn't be the best time for ficus (including your ficus lyrata). June, around Father's Day would be the best possible time for a repot. Repotting is best done when the tree is at its highest energy reserves and that happens right around the end of spring / beginning of summer. Youd be doing a full repot, correct? That would be where you remove all of the old soil and place in fresh soil. You can acclimate the tree to full sun gradually. Put it outside all day on a cloudy day and then slowly get it used to full sun. Some leaves might turn white and drop but a new flush of growth will emerge that'll handle full sun just fine. I do this with my large ficus benjamina every summer. Read these two threads. Great info. Your ficus lyrata is close enough in growing requirements to ficus benjamina. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1493078/ficus-trees-in-containers http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/2842847/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xxii?n=410

Hi, Kim. I think you're being a little too hard on yourself. Your plant looks healthy, so you get gold stars for that. Where most of the plants seen here would be designated as 'of the species', your is actually a cultivar - 'Bambino', probably, and was selected for it's growth habit. It varies from the species plant in that it exhibits a very compact growth habit - very short internodes relative to the species plant, with smaller/thicker uniformly green leaves with lighter veins, the leaves oriented more nearly upright on very short petioles (leaf stems). I'm sure the cultural wants of your plant are the same as those of the species plant. Should I cut it way down to encourage branches lower? Sometimes a grower gets a message a plant is sending with only a casual glance. Your plant looks reluctant to back-bud, which is the first step in forming new branches. You can wait to see what the plant does on its own; put the plant outdoors in brighter light (when temps are above 55*), where the light and air movement bight stimulate back-budding; or you can cut the plant back to about 2/3 of the ht you want to maintain it at, which will force back-budding, but to what degree is still a question. I'd do it around the 4th of July if I lived in SF. I've read posts about better soil so I will try that also. I just want a fuller plant. Also I live in San Francisco if that matters in terms of light. Not the sunniest spot in CA, it it? ;-) Is the pot big enough? Is that a trick question? It's more than big enough, but that comment needs to be qualified if it's to have any meaningful value. If the roots have reached a degree of congestion where the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact, it needs repotting. Repotting doesn't mean 'moved to a larger pot', that's potting up. In fact, it may well turn out that a much smaller pot would be a more realistic choice after a repot, which includes root pruning, but that decision would be made based on your choice of soils. The better your soil drains and the less excess water your soil holds, the less important pot size becomes in terms of the plant being over-potted. The reverse is true as well. The more water retentive your soil is, the more critical pot size is and the more important it becomes to avoid an over-potted plant. Al

The best place is to use the House Plants forum on this site as yours is a house plant. This forum is for edible figs. They are very good folks over there and I am sure they can help. Good luck.

My fiddle leaf fig is too tall for our space. It grew a TON this past spring and when I got back from vacation last week, it has officially hitting the ceiling. It's growing out of every possible place it can, both larger trunks, the smaller one down below, even a tiny stem that's hasn't grown anything in 3 years. It breaks my heart a bit to trim back all these beautiful leaves but the branches are definitely too heavy. The branch on the right has been losing a lot of leaves as well, hence the big bald spot in leaves (Probably due to lack of water due to us being out of town a lot this summer). My question is can I cut it back now? In September? It grows year round really, it never seems to really go dormant. And how far back should I cut it back? Any tips would be much appreciated!