Here's the deal. Tully, my variegated ficus, is loosing her leaves again. Basically they are turning yellow (the whole leaf) and then falling, even before they dry up. So here's the rest of the story. Tully is almost 10 years old, I got her when she was no more than 5 inches tall and now she's nearly 6 ft. Granted she's in a huge pot (somewhere between 24-30inches i think) she's got regular potting soil and smoothed over, small, riverbed rocks on the top so that the dog will stop eating her soil. Now that that's taken care of. She's been in shock before and lost all but 4 of her leaves when she was about 2 ft tall. (cold room, WAY too much shade) Then when I moved down to southern california from Washington state (2years ago) she again went into shock. Since then she seems to have been doing fine, until just recently with this yellow leaves/shedding leaves thing. I do not think it is the watering... I've been doing the same for almost ten years. I don't think it's the lighting (direct/filtered afternoon sun). I also don't think it's the temperature in the house... unless it's her positioning, which is across the room from a heater vent in the ceiling. These are the only things I can think of. Does anyone have any suggestions? Could it be that she needs yet another larger pot. This one is already huge for indoors. Should I be trimming her down? (I did move into this new place only 6 months ago but it seems to have started maybe 3-4 months ago) oh, and she is still putting on new leaves, but she is starting to look a little sickly with loosing so many leaves. :(
Ficus do not like moves at all .. they kinda throw a temper tantrum when they get moved by dropping leaves... keep it near a window and it will grow it leaves back soon .. it just hasnt fisnished throwing a fit ... :) Marion
how long ago did you refresh the soil? you don't necessarily need to go with a bigger pot (unless it's root bound) - you do need to put new/fresh soil in occassionally. is the dog a male?? could be he's peeing in the pot?
Two responses/two answers: Marn, I do know about the temper tantrums as I have actually moved a number of times and had to deal with Tully then as well. This just seems different than the others, if that makes sense. Joclyn, No my dog is not spraying in the pot (thank goodness!) He's a very well trained animal and it's been a few years since he's tried to eat anything from the pot (he was a brand new puppy at the time) I just keep the river rocks in there as a precaution/for looks. I have not refreshed the soil in over a year. How would one go about doing that without disturbing the root system? The pot is shaped like a wine glass w/out the stem so the top is acutally slightly narrower than the mid section (making it impossible to "slide" the root ball out). What did I do to myself when I bought that pot!??!?! Thanks for your responses and advice so far. :)
It's always a good idea to check for pest if the watering and light is ok. Check for critters like spidermites, or scale.
well, just checking about the dog...ya never know, lol! plus, he's also in an adjustment with the move - he may be having a bit of a hissyfit as well... checking for infestations is a good idea - especially if you got any new plants before you noticed problems with tully. if there is some buggy there, it may have been on the new plant and not been harmful to it...then it met tully and is now 'going to town' so to speak. to re-do the soil, you just take the plant/soil out of the pot, shake off the old soil off the root ball and put new soil into the pot and repot it. sounds like the planter you have isn't going to allow you to do that without damaging the rootball or breaking the planter. you could loosen whatever soil you can get to, tip over the planter to dump it and then top off with fresh. still, that's only going to be a stop-gap measure. at some point, you're going to need to get tully out of that planter!! maybe loosen the soil around the rootball and remove it and then gently work the ball up and out? that would only work if the ball isn't tightly bound.
