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The resurrection of my dead fiddle leaf fig

This time last year I had this amazingly tall fiddle leaf fig… Look at how glorious he was!

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I treated him like a baby, but then suddenly he started getting very very sick. Until this is what was left of him almost 12 months later… Ha!

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I can’t even laugh. I know I should, but WOW look at him!

I know I killed him. I got silly with it, and I potted him in a bigger pot to try to encourage more growth and I moved him to a spot where he clearly wasn’t happy… I over-watered I am sure.

He was so sick and I was so over the ugly looking thing that I decided to chop him off. I hacked in to him and threw all the leaves in the bin. I cut him back with about 30cm of the stem sticking out of the bottom, then I put him outside around the side of my house under the eaves and forgot he even existed for about 6 weeks…

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Then something crazy happened… I went to look at something else around the side of my house and noticed this!

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Little buds poking out the side. There were about 5!
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A few weeks later this is how he looks! All that new growth and he’s coming back to life. The second stem has a tiny bud on it so I hope that one comes back too. So now I am not over watering him and he clearly likes that spot. It’s protected, warm and doesn’t get full sun. I keep laughing to myself that I’ll end up with this amazing fiddle leaf fig again and won’t be able to move him from this spot because he’ll die again – he’ll permanently live around the side of house??! 😉

Below is a different fiddle leaf fig I have in my house which I have NOT killed. It’s beaming with new growth. I am not over-watering and he is near a window. I am not going to repot him or keep moving him around.

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How’s your fiddle leaf fig looking??

27 comments

  • K. Martin

    So glad that I found this! This gives me hope!
    I have 2 Fiddle Leaf Figs, the first was a cheap find I found at Walmart on clearance, so I brought her home and gave her a prune, some TLC, a view and she thrived. The second was a smaller FLF that was gifted to me. I went away with my husband for a weekend, my brother was supposed to be plant sitting. While we were away, the AC in our apartment went out, and the apartment itself was in the high 90s when we got back. I was able to save most of my plants, but my small FLF continued to look sickly. The leaves died and I was planning to take her out of her pot today. I was amazed to find that he root ball was still intact and rather healthy compared to the rest of the plant. So I put her into a clean pot with clean soil, trimmed the top and placed her near the window that my other FLF loves so much. I’m hoping she will make a comeback!

  • Ramesh Kannan

    Good article helpful thank you

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