About a month ago I bought a Tienke rubber plant.. I am worried I am going to kill it. I have been careful about watering and plant was potted in a well drained pot with rocks in the bottom here in the last week a few if the bottom leaves are getting brown spots and 2 have gotten rather hard. help please!

Actually the rocks in the bottom interfere with drainage making over watering likely.

Hi jhenrie,

The pot you have your Rubber Tree (Ficus elastica 'Tineke') planted in appears a bit large for the size of the plant and from what I can see, the soil looks quite wet; Ficus elastica are fairly drought tolerant so the issue may be due to the soil retaining too much moisture.

I'm sure others who grow Ficus elastica as a container plant will be along soon to offer advice and suggestions.

I missed the part about rocks in the bottom of the pot ... and porkpal is correct, that could be an issue.

Thanjs


Thanks for the info. I planted in a smaller pot and removed rocks ... Soil was moist but not soaked. Should I cut the damaged leaves away?

Good that you moved it into a smaller pot and removed the drainage material. I assume the new pot has drain holes. The pot is still holding more soil than is necessary. The potential danger is that the soil around the roots will not dry out soon enough to prevent root rot. In part, that will depend on how porous the potting soil used is.

I suggest that you remove all soil on the surface that is not in immediate contact with the roots. That excess soil is preventing the soil around the roots from drying out soon enough. Allow the top half-inch of soil in the root zone to dry before adding just enough water so that it reaches that same level of dryness again in about a week. Constantly damp soil will cause the roots to rot.

For future reference, plants kept tightly potted in small pots are much less likely to be inadvertently over watered.

Thank you! I am new to this whole plant thing so I am still learning.. I had read that a bigger pot would encourage growth haha guess that was wrong .

That is a common misunderstanding that larger pots make for better growth. That would only be true for a plant that is very potbound. Light is the primary determinant of plant growth.