I have had a fig tree for 15 years that spends the summers on my deck. Each fall I trim the top back to keep it from brushing the ceiling. When I bring it in I hold it horizontally and enter tree top first to keep branches from breaking. Learned to cover the top of the pot to keep soil from dropping on the floor.

Spray well for bugs before bringing it inside.

Fig trees drop lots of leaves adjusting to being back inside but will grow new ones. My tree does well with indirect light from our large southwest window. Have never used any other light source.

Occasionally I put a large heavy towel in the bathtub and give the leaves a good shower.

Bayer Systemic takes care of any bug problems during the winter.

I have a bottle of neem oil just in case. I used that for thrips one time and it worked very well.

i also did carry the tree the same way you speak of.

im aware it'll lose leaves, but, to be fair, since the sun has been shifting, it's lost a bunch of leaves already. All older leaves on the inside. At the beginning of summer, it got 10 hours of direct light. Now that the sun has shifted, it's only getting about half that as the house blocks it the rest of the day. It's kind of light it's slowly being acclimated to less direct sun in preparation to return indoors.

the window it'll be in front of again faces the south. It's just grown so bushy that there's no way for the light to penetrate the opposite side. I'm hoping the added lights help. I'll still continue to rotate 1/4 turns weekly though.

Just wondering - why 600W - is that a special grow light?

I have 6 100 lamps above. They're all 6500k. On the Kelvin scale, that's in the blue end of the spectrum, which foliage plants prefer.

Rina,

exactly what I use. They're just the 100w equivalent. However, as we know, wattage means nothing! I use the 6500k versions and they seem to emit a lot of blue.

The tree is in a southern facing window, but it's so bushy that natural light just wouldn't make it to the side opposite the window.

This is the cheap light setup I built above the tree. The photo was from before I added the 6th lamp.

Wow Dave, you really want that ficus to grow huge! Nothing wrong with your lights, definitely will give plant pretty good light on 'the darker side'. What we will do for our plants...Rina

I grew a ficus in my livingroom window for many years (10+?) I had high ceilings. It lived in a large North window. Across from it was a flank of South/West windows. It grew well in the North window but went outdoors in Spring and would grow like a weed over the summer. I always pruned it back before bringing it back in.

This is the only picture I could find before we sold our house. The people who bought our house said they would only buy the house if the ficus was included. We made a deal on it!