I cant be to positive Because I can't see the roots, But his may be a root rot issue. If you suspect this, I have one of the best sites for treating FLF Root rot.

Best Regards,

Aidan.

https://fiddleleaffigplant.com/root-rot-in-fiddle-leaf-fig/

Oh, someone else posting Clair’s site. Please don’t tey to send people there. It’s full of misinformation.

She did the same thing a few months back. Or maybe you are Clair just using a different name.

Can I ask why you’d link people to the site if you’d not read it and were not sure what info was on there?

I looked at the FLF root rot part of the site linked and aside from the part about using a moisture meter, its fairly decent advice, in a vacuum. If someone just landed there on accident and only read that single page, they might just save their plant. The worst that could happen is that they would get a pop-up ad for a raffle of some sort and ended up on a mailing list, and I'm sure the rest of the website is messed up if the author has such a bad rep, though. Is that the case?

Hey, Matt.

I have Been Growing indoor plants for a while now. I have Not had any issues with Clair's site. I have never heard about the bad rep. I am not a "Fan" Or anything, I just use the site. The reason I gave the link is because I have had good experience with the site and assumed it would be the same for this article. I apologize for any confusion, Or anger this may have caused.

Best Regards,

Aidan.

That particular page had fairly accurate info to combat root rot, but obviously the person who owns the site ruffled some feathers here. I was not around to know what caused the falling out, but people here for the most part seem to be reasonable and not prone to creating something from nothing, so it had to have been significant.

Part of the issue was her wont to hawk her fertilizer, which happens to be the same RATIO as Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 (according to her), but at a concentration several x weaker than the FP 9-3-6 for several times more. Plus, she didn't bother to mention what nutrients were even in it, aside from a very low concentration of N, P, and K.

I can see she's done some reading here by the terminology she uses and her reference to using ballast as a way to combat water retention. Unfortunately, she leaves out the important stuff and offers hope for ballast where none can exist w/o a fair amount of qualification/explaining re how it's used to best advantage.

BTW - I'm not saying anything here I haven't already communicated to her directly.

Al

This is interesting. I wasn’t aware there was a history here and she has a growing facebook group with new FLF owners joining every day. I’ve seen frequent cycles over the past few months of information passed from one member to the next, while the posts I was reading here challenged or contradicted what they were saying. I’ve quoted posts from Al and others in my replies there many times. The group members always appreciate the advice and are very eager to help each other learn.

This is one particular article that threw me for a loop trying to figure out if the claim was accurate or not. (I’d been keeping FLFs in growers pots for years.) The crazy looks I received when I asked at more than one nursery have prompted me to check and double check much of the advice on her site.

https://fiddleleaffigplant.com/repot-a-fiddle-leaf-fig-tree/

“If you’ve purchased your plant from Home Depot or another wholesaler, it probably came in a plastic growing pot. These containers have drainage holes on the side, designed to keep the roots dry as a bone. That’s because the growers water their plants daily to soak the roots and the growing pots are designed to drain immediately. This reduces (or eliminates) the risk of root rot, but it’s dangerous for your plant once you get it home.

Fiddle leaf figs can dry out and suffer permanent damage within just a few days in these pots, so don’t wait to repot your plant. If you must wait a few days or weeks, water your plant every single day while it’s in the grower’s pot and make sure you pour the water on the plant slowly so it has a chance to sink in and doesn’t just run out the side drainage holes.”

is that the reason you overwatered your plant?

how can we know who is telling the truth?

my local supermarket came out with new house plants!!! they have palms this time! i am hoarding again. they are cheap

Al, yeah there it is. Nothing gets people more worked up than commercialism, especially if it is promoting a product that is sketchy. In this case, she was trying to sell something which she either didnt know what it contained, wasnt transparent aboutwhat it contained, or both.

Then she tried to sell it for more than the more established, documented through trial and error favorite. That wont earn one many friends.

She argued and argued on here trying to push her product. I don’t think she fully understood Al. Maybe she did toward the end.

Shes actually messaged me a couple times seeking advice and was much more open to learning and she realized some things on her site might not be the best info.

She offered to pay me $20 an hour to fix her site. No joke.

I just don’t have time to do that.

She is a very nice person, she was just a little misinformed.

All true. I suppose there are a couple ways of looking at this.

It is clear you know much more about the science of growing plants in containers, and that is an area in which I am interested in continuing to improve my knowledge, which is why I solicit and value your advice over others.

People like us are not satisfied until we know the reasons why one approach works better than another, down to the minutia that would bore a siburban housewife to tears.

The advice given on the offending page was given in a... "Farmer's Almanac" kind of way. It would result in a mostly positive experience for the masses, who currently pot their plants in sand and over-the-counter organic buzz-word potting soil and overwater it to soggy mush, killing every plant they buy. but it is wildly dissatisfying to the people who want to know WHY.

For the lowest common denominator however, that wildly dissatisfying advice could, for the most part, only improve their experience. Call it "barely adequate" or "fair to middling" or "meh" or "an enthusiastic but ultimately flawed attempt", but for someone who has no time for soil sifting and is in a rush to get Timmy to softball practice, it could help.

Now let me provide you all a link where you can buy my custom balanced organic scientifically formulated micro macro nutrient rich sustainable PH buffering optimal ratio enriched vigorous growth top quality water soluble fertilizer for the low, low price of way more than what you pay for what your'e currently using.

I can't agree. Do me a favor, and read the bold statements above, just as they were written; then ask yourself if your growing experience, or anyone's growing experience would be better or worse for having followed the advice. You'll find there isn't even a case to be made that it wouldn't guarantee limitations. The first statement is so wrong there is nothing redeemable about it, nor is there anything of value in it. The second statement in bold says a fig can dry out or suffer permanent damage within just a few days has to be tempered with the idea it can and likely will take much longer for it to dry out, as is my experience. I cut down the ht of 3 and 5 gallon nursery cans (with many large holes in the sides at the bottom) and use them by the dozens for trees I'm growing on in the gritty mix with no problems at all. So the advice is like saying it might rain tomorrow, or it might not. It sounds more like a tactic used to scare someone into buying whatever soil she's selling than to shed light on a consistent problem that doesn't exist. "Repot right away, as soon as you get the plant", is actually seldom necessary. I mean, who buys a plant that's circling the drain because it needs immediate repotting? If the plant is humming along, it's better for the plant if you wait until around the actual first day of summer (the solstice), even if it's 6-8 months away, than unnecessarily repot a plant out of season. Finally - "Water every day after you get your plant" sort of speaks for itself, and is incredibly careless to just lay out there, bare of any qualification/explanation. Practically speaking, consistently operating at beyond the limits of one's knowledge base virtually guarantees a person's offerings are going to create far more harm than if the person had self-limited him/herself to topics that offer solid footing. I wouldn't ask my doctor for advice regarding the roof I'm shopping for, for my home, for that reason.

These aren't minor oversights or misstatements, they're glaring errors with a lot of potential to cause problems.

Al

Couldn’t agree more, Al. Those are some of the main reasons I questioned her and have said a lot of advice on her page will do more harm than good.

Yeah, i can see your point there. The excerpts that you quoted are irredeemable, but the rest of the information on the page is mostly helpful. It gives information on the diagnosis of root rot, and an opinion on what to do to correct it.

The lack of understanding of the physics involved is misguided, but forgivable. The when and how to repot was incorrect on the timing and excecution because she didnt mention the best time to repot, and there was no mention of what a well-draining soil is. Maybe she doesnt know much on the soil science, but if she was not exposed to that kind of information, it wouldnt come easy or intuitively. When i first read about the gritty mix, my first instinct qas "how in the heck can a plant grow in sharp pieces of gravel and splinters?" Then i started my quest for the WHY, and then i understood.

Before i started using that soil, i wasnt a BAD custodian of plants. I have had many of my plants going on 18 years. Now that i understand the science behind how water and plants and soil interact, i know why i had a lot of hiccups and near-misses along the way, and im better for the information.

The whole page isnt irredeemable, and does give SOME useful information, and doesnt reroute you to a shopping cart full of whatever she is selling, so i can forgive an instance of stepping outside her scientific knowledge. Now if she does that early and often, thats an issue, and she would need to be captured and reprogrammed before being released into society to operate a website again. Lol.

From above: "How can we know who is telling the truth?" I think it's not so much who's telling the truth as it is who understands what they're talking about. Anyone can still be telling the truth, even if all they're doing is mimicking someone else who's informed. IOW, they needn't necessarily have a clue about what they're saying in order to be telling the truth. Simply repeating what we've heard or read somewhere probably occurs more commonly than you might realize. I've seen people asking very basic questions one day, then giving advice the next on the very same topic. People who make broad, sweeping statements are seldom willing to explain why they hold a particular opinion or POV. If they were knowledgeable, they wouldn't make broad statements w/o qualifying them to make sure what was said could not be misunderstood, and as a result, misapplied to the detriment of someone else's fun. Many posters are reluctant to post details, because the more details a poster provides in a comment, the more (s)he is exposed to being questioned/disagreed with - which brings us back to why there is a strong tendency toward statements that lack detail and qualification, and can be interpreted in more than one way. Who wants to be questioned closely when they know they won't have an answer?

Maybe the word you're looking for is credibility. Credibility is there for the earning, but it's easily destroyed. We gain it by explaining something in a manner that's undeniably true. When we do that, there is no reason to argue against our position. When people do disagree, we can gain additional credibility by defending our position, again, in a manner that's undeniably true. If the other person can't find a chink in our armor and fails in supporting their position, a measure of credibility is lost. Your mind will very often subconsciously understand who is winning a debate, even if you don't fully understand what the fuss is about. After being around a forum for a while, you'll find yourself gravitation toward particular individuals because you've recognize them as a source of reliable information. Really, this is not unlike an animal's gravitation toward the person who feeds it and doesn't abuse it, difference being you're deciding whose information you'd rather be fed.

Al

So what I’m reading is general agreement that our society *could* be doomed, and Dave could’ve saved it for $20?

No, $30.

"After being around a forum for a while, you'll find yourself gravitation toward particular individuals because you've recognize them as a source of reliable information. Really, this is not unlike an animal's gravitation toward the person who feeds it"

Now Al, remember what they say about pride... Lets see if we can't get the animals to sit, stay, roll over, and stop posting about things they know nothing about.

You however, can keep dishing out information so the rest of us can keep perfecting our own knowledge. Particularly about my ficus dilemma. Lol

i dont know. i still think that knowing who tells the truth is more important. credibility is very based on people’s opinion

Credibility is based on facts. Not people’s opinions.

so what are we saying about clair’s webpage? is it true or credible?

Our job isn't to make up your mind for you. Our job is to provide enough information that the decision making process is intensified to the degree you can only escape by thinking.

Al