My wife and I are house sitting for family in Hawaii. They have several indoor plants, but two are small air plants. We've never taken care of one before and tried to follow the instructions given about watering once a week by placing the plants upside down in a bowl of water for 5 minutes. One of the air plants looks healthy, but the other looks brownish and like the root is starting to rot. I'm guessing we over watered it at some point. Is there any way to salvage it?
by No_Discussion60
1 Comment
There is no over watered in tillandsia, it’s only how long did it took the plants to dry out completely. Your tillandsia ionanthan looks underwatered to me if you watered it 5 minutes once a week. I have one tillandsia ionanthan about the same size as yours, maybe slightly bigger than yours, mine I deep soaked (whole plant fully submerge in water) it for 30 minutes every 2 days, while soaked in bromeliad fertilizer for 1 hour once a month, and it seems pretty happy and keeps putting out new roots, and it took about 30 minutes to 1 hour to dry up completely after watering.
The brown parts on the plant, is it soft and mushy, or, is it soft but not mushy? I assume it’s under watered because the newer leaves are curly, curly leaves is a sign of thirsty. Correct watering on tillandsia ionanthan should only have curly leaves on the base not on the newer leaves, their leaves from the base will slowly dry up and fall off while they grow new leaves on the top.
As for their roots, their roots will turn brown and become woody when the roots done growing. I’m from southeast Asia, tropical climate here. I don’t like to see my tillandsia ionanthan with dry leaves unless it’s the base, so I soaked mine as frequently as the plants need, I have 5 tillandsia ionanthan.