Hey Florauk, I've been in contact with a Portuguese guy who knows a lot about our fig trees. He says my tree is probably a variety of the Pingo de Mel, but not the Pingo de Mel. He says it isn't fertilized by the wasp, even though the wasp can visit it. I can put the tree in my varanda, but all plants I had there, with the exception of my cactii, have been plagued with pests, and I am too afraid to let her out there, into the wilderness of my city varanda. I've had aphids, red spiders, caterpillars, conchinillas, some fluffy white thingy I forgot the name, you name it, I've had something die with it.

Sofia Do not leave it in the sun; it would be better to put it in shade or indoors while drying up. As Christopher said, remove soft & mushy leaves - in first photo there is lots of yellow at the base of leaves - I would say that they are soft/mushy, that should be all cleaned off. But even without looking - if you smell anything bad as you said, there must be lots of rotting there. Rot spreads fast into remaining parts.

It has always had this 'sickly' look about it, is there anything I can do, or is it supposed to look this way? ===>>> i am thinking.. that you are thinking... or have some preconceived notion of what a conifer should look like .... and since this one is outside your notion. you are thinking it looks bad .... not good ... the Id peeps are probably going to need some closer pics .... of the buds ... and the needles ... a cone if you can find one ... it is my position.. that trees... once established.. NEVER need anything from you ... i am sure you drive the byways.. and see millions of free range trees ... nobody is doing anything for them.. and they are just fine ... if anything. your plants are stressed ... they are.. and never will be.. hungry ... just forget about fert ... forever ... anyway ... back to the first... look to this years growth.. compare to last years growth ... look for a bark color change ... and if they are consistent.. then there probably isnt anything wrong with it ... if you look at the pine..study it.. you will see it grows in whorls.... look at the top set of buds... one center one.... which will be the leader... and a bunch of side ones.. that will be the branches ... then look down the trunk ... and you will see the whorls for each year.. and you can pretty much.. guess how old it is .... since the grafting .... you can also tell.. how much the trunk grew each year.... expect the year or two after transplant.. to be reduced due to the transplant ... good luck on expecting an answer from monrovia.... they arent in the biz of talking to retail customers.... as they are a wholesaler ... they may answer.. but dont count on it ... finally.. i would get rid of the shipping stakes.. especially on the pine ... simply useless.. especially if it doesnt go past the potting media and actually into the soil ... read this link about proper planting.. and lets discuss that which you may not have done to specs ... https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub thats all i can jam in one rather short post... get those better pix ...do keep in mind.. sundays arent high traffic.. so be patient .... ken

Okay before you add any soil, did the contractor grade your lot so that it drains away from the house toward a ditch or to a paved road? It is standard practice for builders to "take out all the good soil leaving poor subsoil." Everyone thinks that happens, but almost always the remaining soil is not that bad. Both the chemistry and biology can be corrected very easily. If you bring in new topsoil, then that new topsoil is going to have its own chemistry and biology issues. Usually the problem with poor soil is an imbalance of salts like calcium, potassium, sodium, and magnesium. You can't fix that with more soil, but you can with a soil test and some corrective chemicals. If you're going to end up fixing it anyway (with normal good gardening practices), then why not just start with what you have? So before you do anything do this: Send a soil sample to Logan Labs in Ohio (not to your local university or county extension service). For $25 Logan Labs will test the soil and email you a report that is incomprehensibly complicated. Post the results here and morpheuspa will read it and tell you what you need to add, when, why, how often, and where to get the stuff you need. That alone is worth $250 from professional soil analysts. While you're waiting for the results to come in (less than a week), you can go ahead and work on the soil biology. That's done with organic fertilizer. The modern organic contain ground up nuts, grains, beans, and seeds. It turns out you can buy those ingredients at any feed store. Morpheuspa likes soybean meal and Milorganite. He likes them because they are good materials and he can get them locally. I can't. I like corn meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow), and corn gluten meal...because they are pretty good and I can get them locally. The application rate is 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can apply any day of the year, or every day of the year, without fear of damaging anything. The idea is to improve the soil biology. In 3 weeks you'll see a difference in the plants and grasses growing where you applied. In fact, here's a picture...This pic shows the effect of alfalfa pellets. You can see the improved color, density, and growth after a month. If your soil seems to be hard even when it's moist, then you can spray it with a surfactant like any clear shampoo. App rate is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. I sprayed my soil in San Antonio back in 2012 and it still gets so soft after a rain that it's a little hard to walk on. These three things will cost you roughly $30 and change. They are easy to do, will tell you a lot about your situation, and will get you started in the right direction. Or you can do it the hard way. You can bring in more soil, ruin your existing drainage, flood your house, and still have soil that needs to be tested and biologically improved. Well, maybe that part about flooding the house is a little over dramatic, but it has happened, so yes, I'm just trying to scare you into doing it my way. I started moderating organic lawn care forums back in 2004, so I've read and absorbed a lot of material since then. You're benefiting, maybe, from problems I've seen and seen resolved. Best wishes to you, and I say that not to blow you off, but because I hope what you end up doing works well. I probably raised a lot of questions, so feel free to keep asking. Oh and I wanted to say +1 to yardtractor. You called it thatch so I picked up on that. You had dead grass and it needed to be raked up. That happened, so I retract my earlier nitpick about thatch.