Ficus Tineke first time plant owner
Hi! I’m looking for help diagnosing brown spots on my Ficus Tineke.
I’ve had it for about 4 weeks. It was watered every 2 days at first (as recommended by the store), but I later realized the soil was still wet between waterings. Since then I switched to watering only when the soil dries much more. It has now been over 1.5 weeks since the last watering, and the soil is still not completely dry (although we’ve had an unusually cold week).
The plant is in a nursery pot with drainage holes inside a decorative pot. It gets bright indirect light near a window.
Some leaves had some damage when I bought it. Since then, the damaged leaves have continued to drop, roughly one every 2–3 days (2 more fell today), but I no healthy leaves are dropping. I can’t tell if all the dropped leaves were originally damaged, or if damage is progressing to new leaves. One new leaf unfurled about 2 weeks ago, but there hasn’t been any new growth since.
I checked the root ball: no foul smell, roots look firm (not mushy), and I only found a tiny dense white patch on the outside of the soil, which looked more like mold than roots.
I’ve been reading about anthracnose, and some photos look similar to my leaf spots. Do these symptoms look more consistent with:
- overwatering/root stress,
- a fungal disease like anthracnose,
- cold stress,
- or something else?
Any help would be appreciated!