Ok I was given a Peters Honey fig tree for my birthday wich was 3 weeks ago I still have not watered the plant and with the moisture meter its reading past 10 wich is the highest it goes on the wet side. I just pulled the plant out of the pot and the soil mix seems to be compost & mulch and is holding way too much water. The plant has about 10 small figs right now can I try and take off as much of that soil as I can right now? Im worried the roots will rot if I dont do something soon a few of the leaves turned yellow and fell off already.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Here is a pic of the plant

I would generally defer to my more experienced colleagues, but given that this appears to be a fig emergency and I'm the first responder:

Is there adequate drainage in the pot? If possible repot it in a bigger pot, and get it out in the sun a.s.a.p.

The soil looks like mud. If it were me, I would wash off the soil with low pressure water being very gentile and repot with better soil. Is it kept outside? 

Jose I have this plant at work its outdoors for about 12hrs a day and yes the soil does look muddy and very packed there is no room for the water to drain. I will wash it gently and put it in a better draining mix.

I am in the same boat, kind of.  My mom moved (from PA) in with me and brought her fig tree with her that I sent her for christmas.  She had potted it in, seems like, pure peat.  With our daily rains coming back (florida), im going to have to replant into a more gravel, well drained soil.  As of now, even in the sun, it only needs to be watered weekly or less. 
I have used two parts sand, a part bark and some peat or wood chips as soil in the past that seems to drain very well.  I even add in some napa floor dry up (fired clay).  It holds moisture but is not wet.
Another thing you can do so you dont have to replant now is plug 1 inch holes in the soil and fill them with gravel or sand.  Then in a month or two do that again.  This will dry the soil pretty fast.  I may take that approach so the figs are not lost on the tree.

1) It looks like it has managed to survive this long, so I would not be inclined to get real panicky. I pot my 5g plants in straight compost, and it gets pretty wet and gooey at the bottom of the pot, and they are fine.

2) If you remove soil, you will need to water well, and put it in the shade for a few days till the roots get re-integrated in the new potting medium- You will be bare-rooting it to whatever extent you remove potting soil - 10%, 30% or whatever, so treat it accordingly. Except that bareroot trees don't have to support leaves, but this one will.

Thanks Jon I noticed that there was allot of wood in the mix and I mean allot looks like the majority was wood not pine nuggets but chucks of wood. I washed the root ball carefully and was able to get atleast 70% off. Oh man I hope these tiny figs actually mature oh well time will tell.

Thanks again

Well im late to the table here in your thread.
Either way

HAPPY belated BIRTHDAY !

LOL thanks Martin, here are some pics I just took showing the tiny figs and new mix. I used Pro-Mix BX with Perlite & Pine Bark. What are the odds of these little figs surviving this?

I just this week repotted 7 figs in 15 gal pots because the medium was to wet and I was losing the trees... They were in straight compost with lime and osmocote the composte had a wood shavings from local farm and I thought it would work...Well I removed composte and added perlite and pine bark nuggets. Almost 30 % perlite 10% pine bark and 60% composte. repotted them and put them in the shade..They are thankin

I just this week repotted 7 figs in 15 gal pots because the medium was to wet and I was losing the trees... They were in straight compost with lime and osmocote the composte had a wood shavings from local farm and I thought it would work...Well I removed composte and added perlite and pine bark nuggets. Almost 30 % perlite 10% pine bark and 60% composte. repotted them and put them in the shade..They are thanking me today when i checked on them they are looking alot better.  Even your larger pots need adequite soil. The original soil would spike the moisture meter today I was getting a reading from 4-6 after watering yesterday...

Nelson, that looks much better. I would rather be safe with good soil than keep it in the mud and have it rot. When it rots, that is pretty much it and you find out to late what that slushy bark. The baby figs should be fine if the root ball was not disturbed to much. 

Northeastnewbie after changing the mix I checked with the moisture meter after watering it well and it stays at 8-9 considering I just watered it, its just where I wanted it to be.

Jose humidity wont be a problem at all temps in my office have been in the high 80s and humidy is around 60% right now but If the leaves start to wilt I will do just that. I use these big clear garbage bags since I have a box of them and do as you described almost like a mini greenhouse this method has saved a few plants in the past.

Nelson the clear bags work, but the sun will bake them under it. Yes, your soil looks good! (ahhh sigh of relief).

Oh Sorry Jose I meant I would do it while the plants are indoors inside my office. Thanks even though I just watered it well its weighs half as much, I have never seen so much wood used in a potting mix ever. Looked like someone tossed a couple 2x4's through a mulcher and then used it in the mix.

those Monrovia pots always seem to be heavily rootbound.  I've bought two over the years and both of them required repotting upon purchase (though I didn't do one, figuring I'd get to it in the fall and I ended up losing it (over the winter as I was ill and didn't move all the plants myself and forgot about it as I wasn't the one to move it).

~Chills

Happy belated Birthday Nelson!
Mine will be in a couple weeks. I want a Ferrari, Cartier watch and a Lobster dinner. Not asking for much.

When I trans plant my Monrovia potted plants I just take them as they are and place them in the larger pot and fill with potting mix.

In fact, My Peters Honey and Kadota are a couple of my Monrovia figs.
The Black Jack and Mission as well but they are in ground. The Mission doesn't look like it survived the Winter but I will give it a little more time. Maybe I can get a sucker out of it.

Good luck Nelson!

Hello Nelson,

I wish you good luck with your repotted fig tree.  You are right to have repotted it.  Even if the figs don't stay on the tree, the tree has a better chance of living now.

I got some fig babies this Spring.  I potted them in the wrong soil and they started looking peaked.  I came here and to GW and realized I used the wrong soil.  It was for inground use.  I then repotted them to some Miracle Gro moisture control potting soil and realized they were still drowining in that stuff.  I also found I had repotted them into pots that were too large for them. 

Tuesday, my husband helped me to repot them (5 of them for the third time and one, the second time.) into smaller pots with Fafard Professional Potting Mix.  This time, the water flowed through the soil well and doesn't seem to be waterlogged like the other two soils.  I hope they will be all right, but I know, if I had left them in the other soils, they would not have been all right.  I removed all but a few little figs from these trees and the rest still look healthy, but if they start to look poorly, I will remove them as well because I am more concerned with the trees than the figs this year.

I started to replace the garden soil in the wooden, open-bottomed frame I had put around the Celeste out front that had planted itself in the ground with one huge root.  As I was digging the soil out, I saw that it had put out some healthy roots all over the soil in the frame, just in the short time it had been set free of the pot, and it had been rained on that day, but was still loose and not very wet, so I left it.  The tree is doing beautifully, I think, because it is open to the ground (no bottom on the frame) and can drain even having been planted with garden soil mix. 

It had been in a five-gallon nursery pot for way too long and was terribly root-bound, but was strong and healthy, even so.  I had to cut the pot away from it and it was a bear getting the bottom of the pot out from under the tree.  I had to slice the roots around the sides because they were coiled round and round the pot.  The tree didn't even know anything had happened and it's quite large and loaded with figs and has grown even more since its liberation.

I hope your Honey fig proves to be as sturdy as this large Celeste is.  I hope the babies that have had way too much disturbance in their short time with me will take hold and thrive.  They seem to be better already, but time will tell.

Vivian

BTW, the miracle grow moisture control is fine. You really have to tweak your soil for your area. Here in the SW it is very HOT and DRY, so this soil is great for us. Other places it would be a curse. That being said, almost any potting soil can be amended for your use.

happy birthday nelson, many more. A little late I think, but hell, i've been busy.  Ciao Ciao.

Your pieter honey looks very very nice. What a nice birthday present.

Thank you Maggie , It sure was a nice gift was not expecting that from my father.