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My uncle in Fresno said to water my fiddle leaf fig with ice cubes, and the thing dropped 9 leaves in 2 weeks
My uncle has kept plants alive in Fresno for like 30 years, so when he saw my fiddle leaf fig looking sad he said just drop 3 ice cubes on the soil once a week and walk away. Sounded easy so I did it for 2 weeks and the plant dumped 9 leaves on my carpet, all of them soft and yellow. Turns out the ice melts slow and only wets one little spot, so half the roots stayed bone dry while the other half sat in cold muck. I pulled the plant out and the root ball was a mess, dry on one side, dark and soggy on the other. Switched to soaking the whole pot in the sink until water runs out the bottom, then letting it drain, and it's pushing new leaves now. So my uncle's trick was dead wrong for a plant this size in a 10 inch pot. Anyone got a watering method that actually works for these drama queens? I'm scared to touch it again.
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the_taylor29d ago
Wow, I gotta say I don't buy the ice cube thing being the real problem here. Three cubes once a week in a 10 inch pot is barely any water at all, so I'd bet your fig was already hurting from something else and the ice just sped it up. Nine leaves in two weeks sounds more like shock from a move, cold drafts, or the soil staying wet too long from whatever you were doing before. The soak and drain method you landed on is solid, so just keep doing that whenever the top two inches of soil feel dry and leave it alone. These plants drop leaves if you look at them wrong, so the less you mess with it the better.
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