How We Grow a Dwarf Fiddle Leaf Fig

We’ve talked about our dwarf Fiddle Leaf Fig before, but this popular houseplant demands the spotlight once in a while so we’re going in depth about our particular little Fiddle, the Ficus lyrata bambino. Here’s how we grow it from a tiny tissue culture to the full grown plant you take home. We took a greenhouse tour with one of our growers, Wayne, who filled us in on the growth process of this beautiful plant.

Baby Fiddles

We call our Bambino the “Little Fiddle,” but it starts off very, very little! Tissue cultures arrive to our greenhouse from a Belgian supplier, and we have to stick the plants in a plug to allow them to root and grow. While some of our greenhouse operations include automatic sticking machines, which place cuttings into soil with a mechanical arm, the Fiddle Leaf Fig is manually placed by human hands.

We talked to Cindy, who works in the greenhouse with these tiny plants. She said that the work is very detail oriented because the baby plants are so fragile. This role is very specialized because of the focus it takes to place the tissue culture at the correct depth and make sure it isn’t damaged during the process.

One shipment from our supplier contains ten thousand tissue cultures of the Ficus lyrata bambino and takes our workers like Cindy a total of 1.5 days to stick them all. From the time they arrive to the time they leave, the Fiddle Leaf Fig is only in our greenhouse for twenty-two weeks.

Growing Young Plants

Once the plants are stuck, they go into the greenhouse and are tented to help them stay warmer and encourage root growth. They stay in this tent for two weeks to develop their roots and then another four to five weeks after the tent comes off.

Once they’re fully rooted in their plugs, they are potted into a 5” grower pot, and they’ll stay in this pot for the rest of their time in the greenhouse all the way to your home! They grow until the leaves just cover the width of the pot (about five to six weeks), and then they are taken to a spacing machine that places them strategically on a greenhouse table so they don’t have to compete for light. This allows them to grow straight up with stacked leaves, instead of off to one side or the other due to competition for light and resources.

From Greenhouse to Home

From this point on, we’re just waiting for the Fiddle Leaf Fig plants to grow tall enough to ship out to you as a fully grown plant. Our Bambinos ship out between 13-15” tall and they can grow up to 2-3’ total.

Ask Us Anything

We’re here to answer any and all Fiddle Leaf Fig questions - email us at info@wildinteriors.com or find us on Instagram @wild_interiors!