Fiddle Leaf Fig Care Guide! 🌿 // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going today's video is a fiddly fig care guide the last time we talked about this it's been about three or four years ago in fact it was when i brought this one home and it has grown a ton since we brought it home and this one and a couple more of my need maintenance today so i thought it'd be a good time to run through some tips i do want to keep this as concise as possible so we have broke this up into 10 categories so we're going to talk about light exposure watering temperature soil type repotting fertilizing propagating diseases pests and toxicity we will go ahead and put all of those things up on the screen on one of these sides with time stamps if you want to skip forward to one of those sections in particular number one is light exposure this is probably one of the most important things that you can provide for your plant is the right amount of light and fiddly figs prefer bright indirect light for six to eight hours a day that's where you'll get the happiest plant right here is where this one has lived for the last probably two to three years it is a east facing window but it's got an overhang outside so it gets a little slice of morning sun like very early and then it's in bright indirect light for the rest of the day if you have it in a south facing window that gets direct light you might see some leaf scorch and so you may need to move that plant away from that window over here this isn't where these plants typically live but this is a north facing window but you can see how bright it is right around it so these would be perfectly happy in this position as long as i get that bright light for that six to eight hours per day number two is watering and this is one you want to get dialed in as quickly as possible and your plants will give you signs whether or not you're giving them too much or too little water that typically we don't want to wait until we see those signs because it's a little bit harder to rebound and then there are also lots of factors you know pot size what size your plant is what kind of window you have them in if they're next to an air register in your house all of those things will kind of gauge how much water you're having to give them and how often i have found that fiddle leafs want a little bit more water than i previously thought they want to dry out a tiny bit like the top inch or so of soil and then after that i give them a nice watering until i see just a tiny bit of water coming out of the bottom of the pot good drainage with these plants is incredibly important so you want to make sure your pot has a drainage hole that your soil isn't holding on to too much water typically if your plant is not getting enough water you'll see leaf burn like on this one right here the tips are all scorched looking and dry i wasn't watering this one quite enough when i first had it repotted and i brought it into the house when we were still burning wood fire so it was a lot drier in here and i didn't take that into consideration so that's what you can look for if your plant is getting too much water oftentimes you'll see this one was suffering from that you'll see leaf drop at starting at the bottom of the plant it'll just drop these big gorgeous leaves and it'll start moving up the stalks of the plant or you'll see the leaves start to yellow and then start to drop off you might also smell you know that kind of wet soil smell in which case you may need to take your plant out remove the soil and put fresh soil in there this one i did not do that with because i feel like i caught it in a the right amount of time and so i just kind of stopped watering it as much and it has put on new growth and it's starting to look healthier but i was starting to see little mushrooms grow from the soil that's when you know you're giving it too much water number three is temperature so these plants are a zone 9 through 11 meaning they will not survive the winters here in our zone 6 high desert not for very long anyway so you want to make sure if you're keeping them outside for the summer which is totally fine to do a lot of house plants love to go outside in summer there i would put it in a spot that's filtered very filtered morning light protection from afternoon sun you want to make sure to bring them in before it gets too cold in the fall they like a normal household temperature i'm guessing we normally keep our homes between 68 and 72 but anywhere between like the 55 and 80 degree temperature range they'll be pretty happy number four is soil type you can use a regular potting mix when working with these plants when i brought this one home and repotted it out of its nursery container i used the osmo organic potting mix it's been in the same pot the same soil ever since then and it's clearly a very happy plant so i would start with the regular potting mix if you notice your plant showing you signs that it's unhappy so if you see it dropping leaves or turning yellow pop that plant up out of its container if you can like this would be a little bit hard to do that with because this is so big now but if you've got like a regular size it's easy to you know pop them up and see what's going on underneath that soil surface if it looks like your soil is holding onto too much moisture and you know you haven't been watering it that much i find that different brands of soil do different things some are a little bit more dense than others and you may need to adjust the type of soil you're using so that brings me to number five which is repotting i actually just don't find that it's necessary to do all that often i mean like i said this one has been in the same pot for a long time for at least three years i should have looked up when we actually brought this one home it's been three or four years i typically only i check my plants once a year so i will pop them out of their pots if i can once a year take a look at their roots that's just a good habit to get into but i typically don't repot until i notice that something is going on if the plant seems stressed if it's put on an enormous amount of growth then you might you know think well it probably needs more room for root growth at this point but i don't do it all that often for this type of plant in particular number six is fertilizing these plants are actively growing spring through fall which is fairly easy to remember because that's when everything outside is actively growing so when i'm fertilizing more outside it's just naturally easier for me to remember to fertilize things inside that are putting on growth so i try to fertilize these every two weeks to at least once a month spring through fall i use a liquid grow fertilizer it's just a water-soluble fertilizer it's easy to use it's a well-balanced fertilizer i think it's 2-2-2 you can use a higher nitrogen fertilizer though in this case if you would like to because they do have a lot of foliar growth to support and so that would be a great thing to use as well number seven is propagating and training your plant to make them look the way you want them to look it's a very easy to do i know it seems like it's intimidating but it's as simple as taking a cutting from the plant putting the cutting in water waiting for it to form roots and then potting it up in potting soil and it's really simple but you do need to know where to make your cut on the branch so i'm going to show you this as an example because i can reach it but then we're actually going to be making our cuttings from this larger plant and rooting these so right here you can see the tippy top of the plant you want to follow that down and you can see where the soft new growth is see how it's green in between each one of these nodes here if you keep going down the stock you can see right here where it changes from new growth to older woody growth we're going to be making our cut into the woody growth rather than that soft green growth so like on this big one you can see the soft green growth right here and that's how it looks all the way to the top of the plant and then right below it you can see the woody growth start so i'm actually going to be making two cuts from this plant one somewhere in here and another one somewhere down in here but i need to do a little bit of training first because as this branch has put on more leaves it's starting to weigh down a little bit and i want this to be a little bit more compact so i'm going to tie this branch off to that branch so that they're supporting each other and i'm just using a little bit of tree rope i like this stuff because it's soft it's what we use down at the garden center to tie trees up because it doesn't hurt their bark at all and you can't really see it because it's black it kind of just like disappears inside the plant so let's do that first because that will determine based on how tall this one gets where i make my first cut so i think from your angle you can see how much space there is in here and i kind of want to correct that issue and i think by drawing this branch up a little bit it will help so i'm going to run my tree rope right through like between these two leaves right here and then we will put it between a couple leaves up here and tie the string off and i think it will look so much better yeah i think it looks okay i am going to rotate it though so that this side of the plant is facing more light so that it can fill in so i'm going to trim the excess rope and rotate my plant yeah so i think it is important to do that training sort of step first because the height of this branch really does determine where i want to make my cut on this one because you want to do it too low or too high and waste any of the branch and these branches like this one right here will eventually harden this way i won't have to keep the tree rope on there forever i would say like one or two seasons and just make sure to check the area every once in a while make sure it's not rubbing weird but you know there's no wind or anything in here to create that resistance so everything should be fine so i think following this branch down i want to make my cut right about here right above where this leaf attaches to the branch oh my goodness look at this so definitely this is a really long cutting and i'm going to want to get two out of this this looks better though not to have such a huge long branch when the other two are not competing with it so and as you know when you make a trim or a cut like this it will encourage more outward growth so we should experience more bushy growth and it should the plant should correct and start looking a little bit more full so here we are with our nice big cutting let me see if i can show you here so we've got the green growth all the way to this section here and since i want to get two cuttings out of this i'm really not going to cut it very far down into that woody growth i'm going to cut right above this leaf junction right here these do produce a white sap that can be mildly irritating to your skin so you want to make sure not to either wear gloves or be careful not to get it on your skin okay so we've got our first cutting right here we do need to strip the lower leaves off the ones that would potentially touch water we just want stem down in the container and i've got a champlain champagne bucket here because i do want this process to look pretty it's going to be in my kitchen and you know may as well so i'm going to go ahead and pop these leaves off they come off very easily and it's kind of almost sad to do this when you've got such nice big leaves and this one as well and then this is the part you just stick it down in water like this the champagne bucket may not work i may have to get a taller vase but let's try with our second cutting here that might help hold things up here so this is our second piece right here so right here where we made our cut this is on the top part here it'll produce more bushy growth so while it doesn't look as pretty like it doesn't have that upward top piece growth like this one does it will eventually fill in and be full and beautiful so i'm just pulling these leaves off and we will pop this down in the water okay champagne champagne bucket is not doing it i need to go get something taller okay i think that this face will work a little bit better at holding these branches up i didn't anticipate how tall they would be take two there we go darn it this is so much prettier number eight is pests what kind of insects normally plague this type of plant i have thankfully and i don't know i feel like i need to knock on wood i have never dealt with pests on my fiddly figs up to this point but i know based on what i've dealt with down at the garden center they can be plagued by spider mites uh scale and mealy bugs which are three hard things to get rid of so you want to make it a regular habit to clean your plants like look at the leaves look on the underside the top side dust them off i'm going to be dusting you can use a damp cloth a dry cloth you can use leaf shine if you want to but just make it a habit to clean the leaves because then you can see if there's any kind of insect pressure happening because if you can head off an infestation before it occurs you will be so thankful because it is hard to take care of things like spider mites in particular mealy bugs as well in which case you could use neem or captain jack something like that which we have done videos on before but this is a clearly a neglected situation right here look at how dusty this leaf looks so i am just going to take i've got this kind of lightly damp i'm going to spray some leaf shine on and get these cleaned up real quick so i like to use leaf shine and have never had an adverse reaction from using it i know some people really don't like to use it but you know just do what you're comfortable with and make sure you're cradling the leaf i've got my hand right behind it cradle the leaf because they are kind of fragile and they will pop off the plant if you don't do that and just give them a good once over and this just gives you a really good chance to look at the whole entire leaf and make sure that you're not dealing with anything bad look at how much better that looks oh my word always look at the undersides of the leaves as well you can see this leaf like you don't need to wipe the undersides of the leaves just look at them really closely make sure you don't have any kind of insect issue at all and these are and span number nine are diseases or issues that you might see and i've only kind of dealt with a couple so i'm not super well versed in this category um but if you have a bacterial issue with your plant you will notice and i don't actually have an example which is crazy to me usually i have a fairly good example of this because it's usually caused by a little bit of over watering but you might see like little brown dry spots happening on the interior part of your leaves they might kind of be like reddish brown or black and then they just kind of like you could poke through them and make holes in your leaves that's a bacterial issue that's typically caused like i said from over watering so just check the soil in your plant you may need to change the soil out remove those leaves that are showing those issues so that your plants not supporting that leaf still and it can put more energy into forming new leaves the other thing i've dealt with which is no big deal at all let me grab this is a little bit of edema i just picked this one up recently this is a totally aesthetic thing typically the plant will recover from it but it's when the roots draw in too much water they they pick up too much water the plant doesn't know what to do with it so it basically goes up into the leaves and it bursts some of the vessels in the leaves so you can see kind of that network the design of reddish brown right there on the back of the leaf that is where the vessels have burst and plants typically recover from that just make sure again you're not over watering your plant you're letting it dry out slightly between and the leaves should rebound you don't need to remove the leaves or anything i mean if you have one that's severely it looks really really bad go ahead and remove it just to make your plant look better but it's not going to it's not like to the detriment of your plant number 10 is toxicity like i mentioned earlier when you make a cut on this plant it does produce a little white sap that can be irritating to your skin typically it's fairly mild unless you really get yourself into it which i mean you'd have to really be intentional i think it can cause gastrointestinal issues in dogs and cats and people if you were to get some of it like ingest some of it i think it would take quite a bit of it to be really harmful but it can cause some vomiting and diarrhea so if you have some very rambunctious pets that like to get into your plants definitely you know keep that in mind and keep them up out of reach of pets and kids so that's it you guys that is my care guide for fiddly figs i've had some pretty good luck with them over the years they're a beautiful beautiful plant that provide a nice bold texture in any area that you've got them and i find that they're fairly versatile in the fact that they can survive a little bit of lower light they don't need to be in direct sunshine like some plants need so they are a fairly easy keeper so i hope that this guide was helpful to you guys thank you so much for watching and we will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 447,754

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: aiOdeGnTI50

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021