Will.

We've been in the upper 70's/low 80's the last few days but are cooling down to highs in the mid-60's the next couple of days. By the week-end, we'll be back into the upper 70's. The sun's gone down and it's downright chilly already. No snow in the forecast though......

Ken - Are you trying to entice me into retiring to FL?! I am certainly old enough, but I still enjoy the seasonal changes up north. It is our chronic complaints about winter that make spring so special!

Ha, ha, Will. Spring is special here too. The snowbirds all go home!

Hi, Its plants my love again.
normally I post about squash and garden stuff.

but....
I recently brought a fiddle leaf fig from my job at your enchanted florast.


never kept this type of fig before, kept rubber trees and weeping figs with varying success, most died due to lack of light now I have lights so my room can support plants.

its only a youngster but very healthy. I plan on taking it outside after late may- mammoral day. and taking it back in labor day. I live in zone 4 MN st paul.



I have a 5000 lumens light over it so it should be good.
its turned off in the photo so you can see the plant

That's a real "baby" fiddle for sure, Alex. And the light (forgive me for saying it), is miniscule. These plants need far more light than what that single little spotlight provides. Getting the fiddle outside in the spring and summer months is great.

I spent over $100 on that bulb so I think it puts more out than most single watt use bulbs. i got it at orchid unlimited for use by professional growers..


yes i will for sure bring it outdoors. after mammoral day. i also have a stool to put it on after the plant outgrows that little table. from there it will be a floor plant. i'm thinking of replacing the regular light bulb in my room ceiling.with one for plants. then when i turn on the light switch it gets bathed in more additional light.



any subjestions for single use bulbs i can fit into a regular ceiling light fixture for a bedroom. keep in mind i don't want to shock the system or cause a fire/ power outage.

Alex, again, unless you are going to put a really high wattage bulb in the ceiling, LED and/or incandescent bulbs just won't do much. Remember, lumen-output is based on the bulbs surface, not a foot and certainly not 6 feet or more away. The lumens drop substantially the further from the bulb you are. Multi-tube, fluorescent fixtures produce far more lumens, but the T-12 fixtures would need full-spectrum or daylight tubes, something like Duro-lite tubes (if you can find this) or T-8 Vita-lite tubes. T-5HO tubes produce the most lumens.

In my opinion, you will need to rotate your little fiddle plant every few days so that all those huge leaves get some of the light from that LED bulb. I am not sure which LED bulb you have, but about the most lumens from one of the more expensive ones is around 1500 lumens. Just to give you a comparison, one of my 8-tube, T-5HO fixtures produced around 20,000 lumens.

Ok i will rotate it.

what are signs its not getting enough light?.


Right now the new growth is strong light green. and the plant has all its leaves.

New growth is a great sign of health, Alex.

Always keep in mind that fiddle leaf ficus plants are trees and not your "typical" houseplant. In the subtropics and tropics they grow outside in full sun. After having my fiddle for 25+ yr., constantly trimming her to keep her no more than 7' tall (so that I could get her through doors in the fall and in the spring), mine has now been acclimated to full sun (this took 4 mo.) and she's now in the ground. She's grown a foot in the last 3 mo. after she was "planted". My fiddle has 11 vertical stems, aka trunks.

Alex, if your plant is healthy and the growing conditions are favorable, she'll grow a foot each year. My plant grew a minimum of two feet each year. That growth is going to really challenge your ability to grow her under lights.

The photo is the same plant, just different lighting. The photo was taken in November and she was a little over 7' tall then. She was trimmed back to 6' in March, so that I could box her up for the move to Vero Beach.

Ok, i'm up for the challege.


I mixed in a little green jungle fert and some water to distill overnight, figgy is getting dry so i'll water it tommrow.


my baby antherium is dry so i watered that and checked my other plants. the jabotica needs a trim its getting big too.

the corpse flower is getting huge too. about 4 foot or so. no blooms but just a leaf this year.

drdawg

I loooove your FLF!!! So how did you start to acclimatize your tree? I want to do it with mine too but I'm not sure where to start.

Hey there, so my fiddle is finally getting some new growth and I have been wanting to fertilize it since I never have before. What product(s) do you guys recommend? I've read reviews on superthrive, but it's a mixed bag. Half hate it, half love it. What do I do?

Eveth, you simply have to be able to slowly allow more and more sun on the fiddle. I did "sun-increase" for a week at a time. I started off allowing morning sun until about 10:00 AM. After a week, I positioned the plant so that it got sun until almost 11:00 AM. Then I added another hr. of sun, and continued this until the plant got sun all day. This took 6-8 wk. before the fiddle was in full-day sun. I did not start this process until fall though, so the sun was not as intense as it would be during the spring/summer months. Hopefully, after full sun for 3-4 mo., the fiddle will well-tolerate the more intense sun when spring rolls around. All during this process, I watched for tail-tail signs of sun distress on the leaves, aka sunburn. If I saw stress, I would have slowed the process. If I had started this in the spring, I probably would have allowed a couple of weeks per interval rather than the single week. You gotta have patience doing this.

@texasbamma. I am no fan of Superthrive. It was so overhyped for years that I trusted nothing that the company said about it. Besides that, Superthrive is not a fertilizer. You can simply use a common, water-soluble fertilizer with a balanced formula. I use 20-20-20. The brand doesn't really matter in my opinion. I never use it full strength though, but dilute it by half. If the directions say 1 tsp./gal., I use 1/2 tsp. I also never fertilize my plants until late Feb.-early Mar. That's when the normal growth cycle begins. Also, I use Osmacote routinely in all my soil mixes, so if there is Osmacote in the soil, fertilization takes place at every watering. Fiddle's are fast growers and need frequent fertilization and watering when they are actively growing. When I planted my old fiddle leaf in the yard, Osmacote and my custom-made potting soil was mixed in with the garden soil.

drdawg

Good to know!! I just had mine for less than a month and I'm planning to repot it cos it looks like it's big for its pot. What do you think? I have Osmocote as well so I plan to incorporate that to its soil too.

We are currently on the peak of summer here in Australia which reaches up to 44C in these times..so I might cut down on the time..probably until 9am? Right before I go to work

Eveth, I can assure you that your fiddle is terribly root-bound. Re-pot into a pot (with plenty of drainage holes) that is 2-3X as large. Yes, because your seasons are the reverse of ours, you can begin sun-exposure at a lower hr., such as what you say, 9:00 AM to start. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being extra cautious when it comes to sun-acclimation.

now that your fiddle is a landscape plant how big is it going to get.



should be intrestung to see it.develop.