This plant suffered a short shock while I was away for a few weeks. I left it as is, hoping that it would live, but thinking it will die. It was a stick for about 2 months, and then suddenly it started releasing new buds. Here is the old post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/houseplants/s/6yj43ghcIO
by ko-pies
5 Comments
I’m so glad that you let it be and that it rewarded you with several points of new growth! Plants are more resilient than we give them credit for.
The boooyyy who liveedd
What I did to help it live:
First, some previous conditions
1. The plant was relatively old, we just trim it often. It had a very nice and heathy root system, which I bet helped with its recovery
2. This is not the only reason for survival, because if you pay attention to the second stick, in the photo, you will notice its still alive. I cut one baby off to root it next to the main plant. That was last summer. The shock happened sometime in march this year. The little rooted stick actualy also survived, and is sending out a new shoot itself 😗 and it has a small root system, so other things I did probably also helped significantly.
3. I let the plant be, I didnt do any radical pruning or repotting. I left it on the porch where it has gentle indirect light most of the day and some gentle late afternoon direct sun. Its been slowly shriveled its branches. I left them be. My reasoning was that its drawing nutrients out of the branches and its better if I dont prune it because I would be creating open wounds on the plant for no reason. I just let the plant do its thing for several weeks.
4. The soil is mostly organic, with about 20% perlite. The pot has so so many drainage holes because I figured dracaenas like good watering, to drain out quickly, but also not to dry out completely in 3/4 days. Weekly watering is what I most often do for a healthy plant. Significant % of organic soil helps this.
5. I removed the wilted leaves as soon as they turned yellow. I didnt remove healthy leaves before they wilted.
What I learned: I used to immediately repot, check the roots, prune and try to shelter plants when they suffer any shock. Since I knew this plant had good roots, I decided to have faith in it and support it direct the energy it still has however it chooses. It chose to very gradually shrink the branches it couldnt feed and then use that energy to shoot up shots. I believe that had I pruned the branches off as soon as they started shriveling, the plant perhaps would have not enough evergy to shoot up new branches. Good luck recovering your plants if you find yourself in a similar position.
“Nature finds a way…”
Let’s goooo