Problems with Ficus Ginseng from WalMart

hickens

Hello,

I am absolutely knew to all of this, I've been doing a lot of reading, and as it turns out I shouldn't have got my tree at WalMart haha It had the glued rocks on top. Before I repotted, I did notice one of the leaves looked like a caterpillar had been on it. Oh! It looks like someone sat there with a magnifying glass and burnt lil spots/holes into the leaf. That's the best I can explain it, but it was only one leaf and the rest looked healthy. So....after doing a lot of reading, I took the glued rocks off, and got as much of the old soil off as I could, then repotted in 100% sphagnum moss because A) I live in a mall town and my hardware store actually had it, and B) They don't have much of anything else, no orchid mix. In fact....other than sphagnum moss, they only have Cactus mix, Miracle Grow soil, and Shultz Potting Soil. They have lava rock, but it's in bigger chunks, though if ya'll think I should add it, my boyfriend said he would crush some up for me. Anyway...I wore gloves when I repotted and made sure the sphagnum was wet for 10 minutes before I bothered with it. I read about the guy who died from something caused by it

Anyway, since I've repotted, I've noticed a few things:

1) About 4 more leaves have the magnifying glass thing going on, some with holes, other just with black spots. Also, leaves on the ends of most of the branches have started to kinda shrivle at the edges. anddd, a couple of the smaller baby leaves are starting to look yellow

and

2) I repotted 2 nights ago, and the sphagnum is STILL pretty wet. There are plenty of holes at the bottom of my pot, in fact when I repotted, I thought I had good drainage cuz water immidiately started coming out of the bottom when I first watered it. The top almost felt like it was soaking. So since I know it's bad to overwater, I took it out of the pot and took parts of the sphagnum off and squezed as much water out as I could, being careful not to harm the roots. (I wore gloves btw)

So....are my leaves having problems BECAUSE the soil is too wet? And why is my soil staying so wet, when I read so many people using sphagnum moss, and they were fine? And in most cases they said they had to water once a day? Its been sunny here the last two days, it hasn't been very warm though (like 50 degrees) and I've been setting my tree on a window sil facing south.

Please help me cuz I am so determined to save this plant! I will take pictures right now and post them as a reply (though I snipped off most of the problem leaves)

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hickens

Here's the pics. The leaves that are shrivled/wavy looking are hard on the edges, but the center of the leaves feel healthy. In the third pic, u can see some that look burned or whatever. I already snipped the other 4 off, so thats all that's left right now.

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subnet_rx

There are more experienced experts here than me, but I decided to chime in since I have went through the exact same thing as you. Yeah, it looks like your soil is holding too much water. The cactus mix would probably be better, I've tried it and it seems ok, but the particles in it are really small and it contains more peat. But check the aquarium section in Wal-Mart for Schultz Aquatic Plant Soil. It seems perfect to me, and I've read about people getting good results with it, and all new plants I have gotten, I've put in it. Personally, I've got mine in 100% orchid mix (all I knew at the time), and so far, it's doing fine. I've never read anything that suggested 100% sphagnum moss for ficus (or any bonsai for that matter). At most I've read 60%, with optimal being 50% or less.

Second, the leaves. This could be due to over-watering, but the black spots could also be a fungus from what I've read. It spreads when you water or mist the leaves. I simply cut all of the leaves off on mine that had black spots. Haven't had any more show up.

Again, this is not from personal experience, it's from pure boredom and reading everything I could get my hands on over the past few weeks. Like you, I had bought it and was determined to not let it die.

hickens

Thanks for the reply!

I actually watched this on youtube about the sphagnum moss (http://youtube.com/watch?v=kPVaAXgRoKk), and since it was readily available here, I just went with that. In my first post I made a typo, and said that I live in a mall town hah I meant small.....like 2,000 population, so we don't have a WalMart There is one 45 minutes away, but I don't have the transportation to get there right now. Anyway, any suggestions on what to mix with sphagnum moss? Like, perlite? or what? Like I said I'm really confused about the soil stuff. I know you can use grit, lava rock, perlite, gravel, turface, pine bark, sand, etc etc. But I don't know what works well with what. Like, what retains water and what doesnt? I really wish they had orchid mix here! That would make my life so easy

I went ahead and cut off all the remaining leaves that had black spots on them, the couple of yellow baby leaves I had just fell off when I touched them. Heres a pic of the whole plant....

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subnet_rx

You should be able to get the Schultz Aquatic mix, Turface, or chicken grit (granite) locally.

SlapSlapSlappy

I would go with the Cactus mix, that's what I put all my plants in.