Fiddle Leaf Fig Success in 8 Steps! | The Basics of Ficus Lyrata Care

[Music] how are you guys doing welcome back i am going to talk about fiddly figs today because i feel like it and because i've been noticing a couple of issues with mine so i really wanted to talk to you guys about how to successfully raise a fiddly fig i mean you're not raising it you're growing it you're encouraging it to be healthy and strong and big so there's a few things that you should think about if you're going to get a fiddly fig and i just want to discuss them along with some of the problems and troubleshooting some of the problems i have done a video before about it but i'm just going to make this a little bit shorter and more concise so let me just begin i know i'm wearing this this this jacket that i think i wore when i was two and i found a bigger version of it it's just a little i don't know why i'm wearing this jacket i thought it looked good on the model oh anyway so let's talk about uh let's talk about water the watering water ring of a little leaf little leaf fig fiddly fig hello what's happening up there so they do actually need more water than you think they like to dry out they absolutely do and when they dry out um you know prevents root rot a little bit because i think most people have a tendency to over water their plants and fiddly figs need a fair amount of water but they don't want to be sitting in water and i think a big problem sometimes with it is the soil your soil might be really dense and if it's dense and the water is retaining in the pot for too long then it has bad effects bad things happen which i'll get to in a little bit but when you're watering it water water thoroughly until about like 15 of the water comes out of the bottom of the pot and while you're doing that just you're also flushing out salts and minerals that affect the foliage of fiddly figs so you're doing it good some good by watering it thoroughly and then wait until the water has really evaporated and been used up by the plant and you can feel it like this one's pretty dry and this is a ripe for watering for sure because i get my finger down deep in there you can feel it it's pretty dry so you're going to get watered after this video just letting you know and you know the other thing is when you are keeping your plant in an area that gets a lot of bright indirect light which you should for these guys they really like it and there's a fungus knot there it goes when you're doing that they're going to require more water and they're going to require more water in the growing season like when it's warm out so you'll be finding depending on the size of the plant you have if it's a smaller plant i don't really have a small one but if you have a small one you're going to be watering it more often and the more soil you have in your pot it's going to be a little bit less because that's just the way it works and also if you have it in a lower light spot which maybe you shouldn't but you can they will not grow as fast and you'll probably have some lower leaf drop if you have it in an area that has low light but definitely water it less in that case because it's not going to absorb the water as quickly as it would in a brightly lit room okay so there's that about the watering now let's talk about the light since i already talked about the light they love bright indirect light and i would say about six hours a day plus you can you can actually grow them in full sun i know i've seen them but if they're coming from a greenhouse that has a covering like a shade cloth uh that and it probably grew in that environment you will be shocking it if you put it right in the sun okay so most of us have them indoors uh because we have a lot of house plants or we want house plants so you don't have to worry so much about that but if you have a south facing window and it's very hot you might scorch the leaf leaves so be careful of that so bright indirect light six hours a day at least if you can and you also want to rotate them every time you water it because then you'll have a nice full this is a little flat because this was just shipped to me and it got squished in the box but you'll have a nice full fiddly fig if you rotate it okay they really benefit from that so let's talk about humidity the humidity level is kind of important for these guys when i first had my first fiddly fig uh it died it died and i just did everything wrong and a part of it was a lack of humidity so if you increase the humidity in your homes you don't necessarily have to but if you have between like 40 percent and 60 percent that's good for them you can go higher too if you want you can have a a a humidifier you can put water in a pebble tray and let the water evaporate up to the plant that's good too misting doesn't help that much it really doesn't someone just knocked on the door but you can try it if you missed all the time if you become like a permanent mister you could try that but that's that's very time consuming you want you don't want to do that so it's like average household humidity maybe a higher okay i think the most important thing though is really kind of figuring out the watering because if it gets too dry you have issues with the leaves if it gets too wet you have other issues and i'll talk about that at the end of the video so another thing to consider okay we want to fertilize them they're pretty fast growers when they're happy so we want to give them a fertilizer that's a npk ratio of three one two it has more nitrogen because there's so much foliage it's a lot of foliage on this plant and they use the nitrogen so you can wat you can fertilize it twice a month depending on how often you're watering it during the growing season and then back off when it's not growing just because you can cause problems like fertilizer burn on the leaf tips air circulation is really important it helps prevent pests it keeps them healthy and it just keeps the bacteria away it's a good thing and also you know if you just shake them a little bit too just i mean this is a little bit beyond air circulation unless you have like a tornado in your house but shake them a little bit because it'll help strengthen the plant they just it's outside in the wind it helps them it just helps them to have secure roots and it helps them a little to be a little more sturdy it does it's a proven fact you also want to clean their leaves you really really want to clean their leaves because if you don't things happen like dirt gets all over the place on their leaves and then you get bugs i'm gonna just do this because this one has mealy bugs on it and i have it by the window and i i have because i was going to clean it and i still haven't gotten around to it but i'm going to do it now because i'm embarrassed it has mealy bugs and it has little cobwebs on it and um you know and i just wasn't paying attention if i were to have cleaned cleaned the leaves that make sense i would have found it sooner and i wouldn't have had this this pest problem i have a pest problem because i was being lazy but you know it still has its leaves it's doing well there's not a lot of damage from the pests so it is completely salvageable if you find pests on your plants right away you can get rid of them don't throw your plant out just get rid of the pests you can use neem oil you can use horticultural oil and insectalcital soaps and things like that all natural ways of treating pests okay so let's talk about let's talk about like bacteria talk about fungus first fungus happens when uh you water your plants too much and you'll have leaf drop you'll have yellow leaves you'll have indications that you have rot and it's usually you'll start out having lower leaf drop first and then it just keeps going so check your soil pull the plant out if it's not too heavy and look at the soil and if it's a little stinky and in the wet you're not a problem so you need to water it less and probably change the soil the other thing that can happen too is you can get bacterial issues bacterial issues are a problem and it's actually very difficult to rectify those problems and you'll see these kind of brown spots this is more black because i just i think i left it too long on the plant but you'll get these black spots on the leaves and the best thing to do is to remove the leaves and again check the soil because bacteria happens also from poor soil quality okay if it's too wet it's usually too wet and you might want to change the soil just want to get rid of them okay and guess what the leaf isn't going to grow back you'll have to do this whole thing about notching and pruning and stuff but i won't get into that with this video because this is about the basics it's a lot of basics and then this this happened because it got very dry you see this kind of crunchy tip of the leaf here the edges of the leaf get crunchy and that's because i was watering too inconsistently and this this is very very normal when that happens i mean it's not normal this is what happens when you're lazy with a watering your plant yells at you like that and then here's another really dry leaf it's very dry there's something else that happens which is kind of a common thing on your fiddle leaf figs let me see if i can find an example of one it is called edema and it sounds really bad but it's not that bad it's when it usually happens on the newer leaves you'll see these red spots that start forming all over the leaf and you think oh no this leaf's not going to make it and then it does and so what edema is it's it's when the cells absorb too much moisture and they burst and then it leaves this kind of redness all over the leaf but over time it'll go away and the leaf will become green again like this had edema and it's better it's better so just don't toss your plant away if you think there's a little bit of a problem because they'll come back okay sometimes sometimes they won't like i have one in my living room that is not gonna it's not gonna make it it's not gonna make it sad let me just finish with the other pests that they get they get scale scale's gross scale's disgusting i hate scale and then they also get spider mites too you'll see lots of little webbing and you'll just want to start treating it right away okay and you usually get spider mites from like a hot like dry air in your home and poor air circulation so keep those fans on if you can near your plants it helps the other thing you can do too if you're having problems with your fiddly fig you can start propagating them i stuck this in this water like three weeks ago there's still no roots but it's still alive and i have one in florida that is rooting like crazy it was just a leaf and a petiole and i hopefully i have a picture i can show you but you can definitely propagate them very very easily because i don't know why you just can it wants to live when you cut it they really want to live uh what else about these guys that you should that you should know i think that's it that's really there's there's a couple of things you need to do and i think the most important one is bright light don't over water it make sure you clean the leaves and you rotate it and one more thing that you should if your plant is doing well where it is like if you found the right spot resist moving it to a different spot i did that with the one in the living room i had it outside it was doing so great i brought it back inside to a different spot than it was in the year before and i hated it it hated me for it so keep if it's working don't break it okay don't break it it was the expression uh if it ain't broke don't fix it that makes sense so that's it they can be easy once you know how to take care of them and they're worth it because they just look so beautiful when they get older and they get big and they become trees or their shrub forms there is a smaller version called bambino which doesn't get that big maybe three feet or so and then the standard ficus lorata can get really big depending on how much space and how much light you have i am rambling on about fiddly figs but they're just kind of they're this good conversation when was the last time you had a conversation about a fiddly fig probably not that long ago i think i covered most of it let me think as anything else um there is one more thing there is one more thing when do you repot them when do you take them out of the pot and bump them up to a bigger pot i tend to do it when the roots are coming out of the drainage holes and they just start feeling a little tight and you can tell i mean you can tell this one definitely is not ready for it but in about a year probably i'll consider repotting it and then at a certain point in time when you get to that big size pot and you can't find any pots that are bigger than the one you have the best thing to do is leave it in the pot top dress which means put soil in the top of the plant and you can remove my dogs are going crazy out there you can remove any roots that are coming out from the bottom you can root prune it because if you can't find a pot big enough you just that's you have to do that there's no alternative unless you want i just spit at the camera sorry unless you want to dig a hole in your floor and and make a giant garden bed in your house that's another option but i don't think you want to do that and that's that's it that is absolutely it i'm finished i finished talking about fiddly figs i think i'm gonna go get my dogs and and scold them because i think they're harassing somebody walking by and i really hate that leave them alone you're just taking a walk have a great weekend i hope you guys just just have a good one okay stay cool that's like obsessed stay cool all right i'm done i'm done talking see ya next week i'm thinking about this movie but i can't i just can't go there bye

Channel: PLANTERINA

Views: 511,720

Rating: 4.9108624 out of 5

Keywords: Fiddle Leaf Fig, Houseplants, Large houseplants, Sun loving plants, indoor trees, plants, best indoor plants, plants for large spaces, interior plants, foliage plants, plant styling, plant care, indoor plant care

Id: _lFvBFQ4X1g

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020