whats your height limit for this thing??

sooner or later.. it will be on the ceiling ..

so one option.. would be to cut it off just above the new low growth .. and propagate the high pieces ... rejuvenating an older plant ...

the alternative.. is to let the low growth grow until it is large enough to cut off and propagate ...

if you are concerned about a possible root issue.. then tip it out of the pot.. and look at the roots.. how do we know??? .. and take a few pix.. and slide it back in the pot... and we can opine ..

is there fert salt buildup on the soil??.. i cant tell form the pix ...

i presume there isnt any water build up in the wicker pot... and that the inner pot does drain .. if not.. advise...

it looks very far from a light source .. that would be a reason for drooping after a year or two in a dark corner ... there is light to see by.. and there is light sufficient to grow by.. and maybe it isnt getting what it needs ...

if the pot drains.. and your water so infrequently.. i might tend toward a long term light intensity issue ...

ken

Hey Ken, thanks for your response. I live in AZ, but my parents live in the Irish Hills. I love Adrian.

To answer your questions...

I bought a tall plant because I want a tall plant. This one is about 7 feet tall. My ceiling is 13 feet tall.

I'll pull it out of the pot later to take and post a pic of the root ball, but yes, the pot inside the basket has good drainage. I recently added this time release fertilizer (away from the trunk) to the soil as advised by the nursery. It wasn't a 3-1-2 as I've recently discovered is usually recommended for fiddles. I water all my houseplants with reverse osmosis water only. 

The fiddle is not right next to a window, but it is in a brightly lit room. I've considered a grow light, but it would need to be on a stand as I don't have anything to hang a light from. Does a grow light have to shine down on the fiddle or can I position one with multiple lights to shine at the fiddle at various angles?

The lower leaves are droopy and a few of them have brown spots along the edges. Both F lyrata and F elastica are well known for leaves which remain in a drooping or pendulous attitude after having wilted. The weight of the larger leaves compresses the cells on the underside of the leaf petiole's curve and stretches the cells on the outside/upperside if the petiole's curvature. If the cause of the wilting does not soon self-correct, the leaves remain pendulous.

I let the top 2 inches of soil dry out between watering so I don't think it's root rot, but not sure. Actually, unless a pot is 5" deep or less, the advice to "water when the top inch or two of the soil feels dry to touch", is pretty much a recipe for over-watering, unless the grower is using a VERY porous, fast-draining medium, which seldom comes in a bag. The average grow medium supports a perched water table, which is an area of 100% saturated soil at the bottom of the pot, commonly 3-6" deep. This means when watering a planting with a 10" deep soil column, the top 2" can feel dry to the touch while the bottom 6" of the soil column is still 100% saturated with perched water. I'll leave you with some information (below) explaining how you can take control of ensuring the intervals between water applications are appropriate.

BTW - necrotic areas at leaf tips and/or margins are consistent with too much water and too little air in the medium. There are ways to passively resolve that issue, to a degree, but I'll leave it to you insofar as whether we have that conversation or not.

Also, it just started sprouting new leaves toward the bottom of the trunk a couple/few weeks ago. Should I let those grow out for now and trim later (since I want to maintain the tree look)? There are several advantages in leaving the lower branch to grow. 1) it represents more food production so the plant will develop faster. 2) It will help thicken the trunk, but primarily below the branch. 3) You really don't have much of a framework yet, and unless you find a way to provide the tree with more light, it will never be self supporting unless you are willing to chop the trunk back, which has the effect of stiffening it, or at least limiting the amount of deflection that occurs due to the tree's top-heaviness. That little branch would give you a place to chop back to at a later date in need be.Should I nip off the other leaves with brown spots? I don't want to leave the plant with too few leaves.

The tree in the middle (big white scar) was chopped back to a lower branch to induce taper into the trunk. Follow its progress:

3 years from date of chop ^^^.

The wound ^^^, almost completely healed

Should I nip off the other leaves with brown spots? I don't want to leave the plant with too few leaves? I can't make that decision for you, but I can give you the information you need to make it. Each leaf is its own 'food factory', in which the plant's true food (simple sugar/glucose) is created using CO2 and the sun's energy. The weak state of the tree is the direct result of the plant being unable to make an amount of food large enough to ensure a high level of vitality. Too, chemical messengers within the plant are constantly signalling plant central whether or not everyone (leaves, roots, branches) is pulling its weight. When everyone isn't, and since plants are shedding organisms, offending organs will be shed; but the first step of the shedding process is resorption, during which the plant gleans mobile/reusable nutrients and biocompounds for use elsewhere. Prematurely removing the unsightly foliage comes at the price of less food production and the resorptive process.

I recently added this time release fertilizer (away from the trunk) to the soil as advised by the nursery. It wasn't a 3-1-2 as I've recently discovered is usually recommended for fiddles. I water all my houseplants with reverse osmosis water only. I don't often use controlled release fertilizers, but when I do, I use exactly what you're using. In fact, I just received 50 lbs of it yesterday. It's a good choice, a 3:1.8:2.4 ratio, so quite close to 3:1:2.

Please don't allow yourself to be misled by the gimmick fertilizers that are still 3:1:2 ratios marketed as being "for fiddleleaf figs" but contain such a small volume of nutrients that it borders on fraud. if you decide you want more control over your nutritional supplementation program, I suggest Foliage-Pro 9-3-6, a 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer that penny for penny supplies roughly 192X more nutrition than these very misleading products. An excerpt from a conversation with one of the 'packagers' of snake oil "fertilizer":

You're confused. 3:1:2 is a RATIO, and your fertilizer contains NPK somewhere near the shamefully low %s of 0.28 : 0.09 : 0.06, which is nowhere near 9-3-6. 9-3-6, 12-4-8, and 24-8-16 are all commonly used examples of 3:1:2 ratios. It's absurd to try to convince people that your product somehow makes it easier to fertilize. Both products need to be mixed in water. 8 oz of your product makes 384 oz of maintenance dose solution. The same volume of FP 9-3-6 costs less than 1/3 the amount of your "fertilizer", and makes 24,576 ounces of solution with the same NPK %s. So it makes 64X as much at 1/3 the cost, which means you're asking people to pay 192X as much for their fertilizer; this, w/o knowing what's in it or the source from which it derives it's nitrogen.

BTW, I fertilize every time I irrigate during the winter (but not summer), and I use FP 9-3-6. I can't speak for others, but I would NEVER purchase a product that claims to be "fertilizer" but doesn't list the NPK %s OR inform the customer what, aside from NPK, is in it. Caveat emptor!

Using a 'tell'

Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant.

Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor.

In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water.

Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'.

One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue.

Al