My kiddo bought this in December and took it to college. said it was doing fine. Brought it home a few weeks later and it has slowly started dying. Kiddo is really upset. If there is anyway to save this plant, any advice would be absolutely appreciated. Thank you. 💚
– Moved it to a slightly larger pot because some of the leaves were browning.
– Had it under a plant light, for a few weeks, but moved it to a darker, more humid area when the leaves started browning.
– Removed from pot to allow the roots to dry about a few days ago.
* never lived outside, just brought it out for better pictures.
by NormaNomad
9 Comments
Why did you try to dry out the roots? That one I really don’t understand the purpose and it may be what does your plant in
In general you did too much instead of waiting patiently for the plant to recover from the stress of moving it back home.The change in environment may have been 100% of the reason the leaves were browning and it could have even out just by keeping conditions stable. Also December is winter where I live, bringing lower humidity, all my calatheas have a bit of browning.
But changing pots is a stressor, as is introducing and removing lights and switching environments once again, so it’s been through a lot and that is tough to tell what conditions are beneficial bc they’ve changed a lot. Not trying to make you feel bad or anything, I get you really just wanted to help the plant, just saying for the future you might wanna pump the brakes a little bit on all the changes. And I’m not aware of a situation where drying out a calatheas roots would help.
I see a bit of green so maybe there is hope but it needs water ASAP
This seems like plant torture!
Do/Did you use tap or distilled water?
I suspect moving to a larger pot, led you to over water
This one lives on the forest ground of the Amazon- days 28degrees centigrade, nights approx 18degrees. Humidity between 80-100% most days. Nutrients- very little, light- very little. Soil- always moist, might flood in wet season. With these requirements it starts to become clear what they need. Mine are in a dark corner of the bathroom in a self watering pot. Fertilizer very seldom, water distilled. That way it works alright for me. Sometimes they do get pests- particularly prone to catch spider mites. I don’t believe grow lights are good for calathea- maranta is a little different, they can tolerate sunlight well (my opinion, not science- just from what I saw in the tropics in people’s gardens). This plant has potential to grow back from 1-2 nodes at this stage, the question is if that’s worth the effort. There is an option to reroot in water and grow in water for a while- works surprisingly well
Check the roots and trim any dead ones, and cut off any dead stems and leaves. If there are still some good roots, re-pot it in healthy soil with some fertilizers and give it some water and time.
Smell it to make sure it’s not rotten or swishy. Feed it with distilled water and also I would add liquid calathea plant food I found on Amazon. Distilled water and the plant food worked wonder for my plant.
From what I see here, it’s still green and you still got time. If it’s still green or the stem, let it be.
I wait until it turns almost yellow, I cut it off.
Sometimes I like to think of it how the plant sees it.
I’m all dried up.
I’m parched , I must find water.
Hopefully, the wind comes soon, and I can’t catch a ride on the breeze and land in a nice place with dirt.
I probably have my rhizomes. I store water in these.
Put in a nursery a pot with chunky soil.
Water from the bottom. Moist the soil on the top and lightly each day, and lightly move the soil around at end of day.
Dont give up! I have a similar calathea and brought it back from the brink of death when all that remained was nearly a stump. What helped was repotting it with new soil, cutting off the totally dried, dead stems, and give it distilled water with indirect light.
If the roots are still salvageable? Don’t overwater now, but also don’t let the soil go bone dry. It’s better to repot in a small pot that lets the wet-dry cicle pass faster. Repotting into a big pot that stays wet for longer is usually a bad idea that promotes root rot. Growlight should be good as long as it’s less than 1500FC and doesn’t shine longer than 16h (most growlights are much weaker than that). Calatheas should get at least 8h of night rest time.
Never dry out the roots of plants. Letting the soil dry out “completely” for maybe a day is “ok” – but every extra day in completely dry soil is too much for most normal to higher moisture loving plants. The moment it hits “very dry”, you need to water immediately, or you can easily get lasting leaf/root damage.
While there are “low light” plants, most indoor space is actually “no light”. You can easily download a photometer app – if you are more than 3m from a window, or the place only receives housebulb light, you at most give it 5-20FC, instead of the minimum 200FC it needs to survive (400+FC to grow well).
You changed too much, and too fast:
Even humans need time to adapt. If we fly to another country, we might get jet-lagged and the temperature difference makes us exhausted and tired until we adapt.
Plants are slower than us. If you adapt a citrus tree to sunlight after a winter indoors unter a weaker growlight, you need to give ut 2-3 weeks to adapt (you start with only 1-2h of direct sunlight per day and increase it slowly). Calatheas HATE change. They like to stay cozy in their stable environment. Even changing rooms in your house can make them abandon healthy foliage. Taking them from one place, bringing them outside on a temperature, light and humidity rollercoaster, and then depositing them in another place, is torture for them. It’s normal that they go dormant for a while, focusing on new roots or new shoots underground, as they might feel their old foliage is not well adapted to a new place. Smaller calatheas can even get rid of all their foliage if they experience too much stress, even if your watering was fine.
Try to never change too much at once. If you only change one thing, you can check if something improved after maybe 3 weeks to 1-2 months. If you change everything, or too frequently, you don’t know what helped and what made it worse.