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.

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

Claire, I would suggest you post these questions in the house plant section as the fig forum is for edible figs. They are very good folks over there and I bet they can help you. Good luck.

I don't want to overwhelm you to the point where you decide "this is too much info", and give up; but, the rocks are large enough that they probably were acting as ballast instead of a drainage layer. If a medium supports a 4" column of excess (perched) water, it supports the same 4" of excess no matter what the pot size or shape happens to be. The shaded part below represents perched water: I don't want to overwhelm you to the point where you decide "this is too much info", and give up; but, the rocks are large enough that they probably were acting as ballast instead of a drainage layer. If a medium supports a 4" column of excess (perched) water, it supports the same 4" of excess no matter what the pot size or shape happens to be. The shaded part below represents excess/perched water, and that portion of the medium is 100% saturated. A few rocks in the pot bottom displaces soil that would otherwise be saturated, so it reduces the amount of water the container can hold. The perched water column is still the same ht, but because of the bricks/stones, there is less soil (and therefore, water) within that height. IF the layer at the bottom is such that disallows a continuous soil column from the upper layer of the soil to the pot bottom, the water will perch above the drainage layer. The water must follow a path through the soil to the bottom of the pot, then out the drain. The image on the right works as ballast because there is a continuous soil column from top of soil to pot bottom. Water perches in the middle image because there is no continuous column of soil from top of soil to pot bottom because it's disrupted by the "drainage layer". I'll leave you 2 links to look at when you have time. In the meanwhile, keep using a tell to avoid over-watering. It won't matter if you take a couple of weeks or a month to plan your course. Once you understand how important aeration is to root health and thus to the health of the entire organism, and how to effectively control that air:water relationship in the root zone, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how large was the step forward you took. A basic overview of good growing habits. Using ballast to combat excess water retention. Al