you have a lot of expectations for a plant you bought 2 months ago ... presumably dragged from the sellers greenhouse... shipped to the store ... moved to your house .. where you transplanted it ... after changing all cultural variables 3 times or so ....

as noted.. no plant holds its leaves forever.. and it is not surprising for it to lose some of the older ones in relation to all the above stresses ...

frankly ... considering all its been thru ... i think it looks great ... just relax and enjoy it ...

you said: I spotted those beautiful leaves while grabbing a drill bit and couldn't help myself.

===>>> your HDepot is set up differently than mine.. lol ... its a long walk between the 2 ....

ken

Sara, thank you! I am grateful for the slow growth. My fiddle leaf fig and elephant ear plant have the run of the place, I don't need another contender any time soon. I live in zone 8a where it's pretty dry year round; I keep all of my humidity lovers close to each other but this rubber tree could probably use some more love.

Ken, you're right! Plants constantly remind me to be patient. I imagine this one has certainly had a journey. I'll let it do its thing.

My Home Depot is a dangerous place for plant lovers! I avoid the garden center or I'll get in trouble. Smartly though, they have a section up front right in the middle of the check out aisles where they keep some featured plants. I'm usually strong enough, but I have a weakness for variegated leaves.

How do you water?

Hi Grace! I water with distilled or rain water when the plant is dry (my tap water is a bit hard). I test the soil every few days with a wooden dowel. I also mist once in a while around the leaves because I know rubber trees like humidity and I live in a dry area. Letting the soil get dry may be a mistake with these, I'm not sure. I'm new to rubber trees!

Misting is worthless.

Stop using distilled water; it has nothing for plants.Rain water is fine as is tap water. The deal with hard tap water is that you will need to leach the potting mix every so often.

This is exactly what happened to mine as well not long after I got it. Turns out I wasn't watering it deep enough and the roots at the bottom of the plant were drying out causing the lower leaves to dry up and fall off. I bottom water (just sit it in a dish with a couple inches of water and let it soak up as much as it wants for about 10 minutes) mine about every 3rd watering or so now and haven't had any more problems. I let the soil dry in between waterings. Good luck!

Hi Jesse, I’m wondering if you water thoroughly and fully. I would not bother with distilled water with this plant, but they do need a thorough watering when being watered—like gushing out the drainage hole like a heavy rainstorm would bring. I’d also agree—misting is completely unnecessary. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more arid area than Nevada and mine aren’t bothered by the dryness at all, despite their “tropical” origin.

The bigger concern would be that your soil is *probably* not porous enough to properly (and rapidly) dry after a massive drenching. I’m attaching a photo here of one of my Ficus plants that I pulled up just to change out the pot I didn’t like. This is about 30 minutes after watering/draining. You can see that the soil is void of total wetness/sogginess but lightly damp throughout. The soil itself is good, but the additional perlite (pumice) aids in that a lot.