Hi all!
I'm in Oakland, California, and have a five-foot, single trunk ficus lyrata indoors that's losing healthy-looking, glossy-green leaves. One moment the leaves are growing beautifully, looking fabulous, then suddenly they detach and fall with a thud, no brown spots, no drooping. A few leaves do have some brown spots, but nothing terrible, and they do fall off too, but mostly everything looks healthy.
It's growing in a room with east, north, and west facing windows, though the west-facing doesn't get a ton of light. The room is quite bright, but it does tend to stay damp in there. I got the fig in September, and it was fine for the first six or eight weeks, didn't have any new growth but didn't seem to suffer any shock from the new environment either. It lost a leaf or two after that, a couple-few leaves developed brown spots, but I figured it was just adjusting. I check the soil moisture and continued to water when the top layer of soil was dry.
We were away for a week around Thanksgiving and turned the heater off, so it got down into the 50s in the house. When we got back, the fig started dropping green leaves more frequently, so I figured it must be grouchy about the cold. We were running the heater more after that, and though it isn't too close to the vent, when the leaf-drop increased. I figured it must not like the dry air, so I put a deflector on the vent. Leaf-drop continued to increase - still healthy-looking green leaves here - so I dug around in the soil a bit and discovered it was staying rather soggy an inch or so down, and there was some dampness - though not standing water - in the saucer. That explained the brown spots at least. I stopped watering to get the soil back to a better moisture level - this was just about a week ago, so it's still pretty damp - but still so much leaf-drop! I'm at wit's end with this thing! I can find plenty of information about browning leaves falling, but nothing about losing green, healthy-looking leaves.
The soil was flushed when I bought the plant in September, and since there hasn't been any new growth - plus many greenhouses tend to over-fertilize - I haven't feed it at all yet. I'm about to move it to a brighter room. Giving it more light is the only thing I haven't tried yet, though the room it's in has the bright indirect light so many houseplants adore. The leaves are free of bugs, fungus, mites, as is the soil. I used to even say encouraging words to the fig, but now I yell, "you're not even trying!" and leave the room.
Can anyone help here? Please tell me my fig isn't doomed.
