Weeping water? - sap? - a sticky substance like thick corn syrup? If the latter and you soo nothing that looks like little cotton balls (mealy bug) then examine closely for scale. You almost have to rule out guttation as a possibility because hydathodes occur only on leaves. Another possibility is slime-flux (or bacterial wetwood). This disease is common in the Moracea family 0 particularly mulberry, but Ficus is a close relative. The most common symptom is oozing sap, which is called (surprise) ;o) "slime flux." CO2 from fermentation pushes sap from bark cracks or other wounds in the trunk or limbs. The sap can run down the trunk or drip from limbs, causing dark streaks that become gray or white when dry. It usually stinks as secondary microorganisms grow and feed on the oozing liquid. These wet regions don't appear rotten because decay fungi do not grow well on water-soaked wood. There is nothing curative of slime flux that I know of. Longevity of infected trees will depend on your ability to maintain good cultural conditions & growing with good vitality. Leaf loss is a normal physiological reaction to the marked decrease in light intensity indoor conditions usually bring when you bring your tree indoors. Al

@JMJ 4Life Really sorry to learn about your tree. I assume some part of the root mass is fused, so the soil/root mass remains intact like so: If the answer is yes, unpot the plant and set the root/soil mass on a stack of newspapers, rags, old towels, dry sponges - something that will PULL excess water from the soil. Allow it to rest on the wicking material for an hour or two before returning it to the pot it fits. Use a wooden "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water, because with no water loss from foliage, the plant will require very little water. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips in order to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions - which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma and creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

When the plants are warm and in good light (when they're in the part of their growth cycle where they should be growing strongly - for you, from Mem Day through mid-Sep - you can push your Ficus at about 2 tsp of 9-3-6 per gallon of water. I usually mix in a 2.5 gallon watering can and I use a tablespoon that overflows to about what would be 3/4 of another tbsp., which is somewhere between 4-5 tsp per 2.5 gallons. If we make the math easy by calling it 5 tsp, that's 2 tsp/gallon/week. Try your next fertigation at 1.5 tsp and if there's no adverse reaction, you can try 2 tsp. applied weekly. That's just for open soils like you're using. That dose would be a problem in soils that aren't being flushed regularly. Ask yourself if you think the root and soil mass can be lifted from the pot essentially intact. If 'yes', you should repot - or better to say your plant would show its appreciation for the effort of repotting. If 'no', wait until around next Father's Day to repot, or pot up into a slightly larger pot. Potting up doesn't become limiting unless the plant is allowed to get root bound before potting up. You can pot up several times (if you do it before the root/soil mass gets to the point it can be lifted from the pot intact) with no ill effects if you pay attention to doing it before the roots get too tight. You can pot up anytime - especially when using very fast (draining) soils. but it's better to pot up plants in heavy soils when the plants are growing their fastest. Be patient about growth. If you do your part by keeping the plant in good health, the plant will do its part and reward your efforts with good growth. Give it all the light it will take, fertilize often, and don't let soggy soil conditions mess up the root system. Plants often grow roots first, then top growth, then more root growth followed by top growth. Top growth is always preceded by root growth, good reason to work at keeping roots healthy. When roots die, it takes energy from the plant as they regenerate. This IS the energy that would have been spent to increase the plant's mass - which is the true measure of growth. Leave the lower leaves on the plant unless you don't like how they look. Think of the branches as streams that join a river (the trunk). The more branches of the river there are contributing to the flow, the larger the river will be. How fast the plant puts on additive growth (thickens) can actually be determined by a mathematical formula that takes into account the number of parent axes multiplied by the branching rate per axis. Obviously the more parent axes there are the greater the potential for additive growth. Good job! Al

What great timing! I was having the same question about my water-started ficus as well! I had read this guy's blog (http://i-grow-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-propagate-ficus-benjamina-in.html) So I took a cutting from my ficus alii... maybe two weeks ago? three weeks? four? (I wish I had written it down!). I followed his directions to cut it where it was not yet woody, but not completely green either. I removed one leaf and left two, and following instructions from another website, I cut through the leaf node to encourage rooting (I don't think this did anything, because no roots are coming from the cut area, just the other intact side). The cutting is inside a jar with filtered water that I change now and then, and that jar is inside a container I filled with water in hopes to "insulate" the cutting jar and also perhaps add some humidity as the water slowly evaporates? The cutting is next to my other plants and the mother tree, and gets some direct light (oops!) and mostly indirect SE window winter light. It's winter here in Minnesota, and the mother tree (actually 4 trees braided together) faces a SE window... in other words, not a ton of light but not bad either. It's not putting out a ton of new leaves like it does in summertime outside, but it looks like she is doing well. I made a cutting from the end of a middle branch that was getting too long. I have since read a lot of posts on here that say putting cuttings in water is a bad idea, since they grow water roots, not soil roots, and will just have to grow new roots once they get put in soil--oops! So I'm hoping my cutting will make the transition. Eukofios, what are root initials? Can those turn into soil roots? I'll include a picture of the cutting so you can see the size (1-2mm?). I've never intentionally grown anything from a cutting before, only tomatoes and mint and basil cuttings that I threw in water since I didn't want to watch them wither and die. Today I am going out to buy some perlite perhaps, and maybe some other things to make a rooting medium--exciting! Thanks to everyone on this forum for sharing all their experience and knowledge of ficus and other plants--invaluable to a beginner like me! OK, I can't figure out how to move images in the post, or attach more than one image to the post, so below is a picture of the cutting "roots." This post was edited by wndy on Fri, Mar 8, 13 at 17:00