tips

How To Know When Your Plant Is Overwatered: What To Do.

Plant DummyLeave a comment
“Yucca sp. wilting from root rot” by Plant pests and diseases is marked with CC0 1.0

A lot of the time when people experience an issue with their plant, they may choose to water their plant. Whether it’s looking wilted, or turning yellow. Watering too much was at the top of the list for my issues.

Note: All plants are different, but a lot may react similarly. Make sure you double check for your specific plant. This is to help with some ideas of what you may come across.

How Overwatering can happen.

A lot of the time overwatering can happen when you are too into looking at your plant. I made this mistake when I first got into plants. I would think that maybe if I didn’t water enough, my plant would automatically die. However this is not the case, and for many plants underwatering is far safer for your plant than overwatering. At least as far as plant recovery is concerned. Overwatering can also happen when the soil is not able to train fast enough.

What Overwatering Looks Like

Some of the signs of overwatering may seem like it doesn’t really make sense. So knowing the signs of overwatering/watering issues is important to keeping your plant healthy.

  • Over watering can lead to an even more wilted looking leaves sometimes even curled looking.
  • If you notice your plant isn’t having any new growth, but this can also be due to other factors as well, like if your plant gets too cold some can go into a dormant state. That can usually happen below 50 degrees fahrenheit.
  • Where the plant meets the soil may start to rot, which makes it feel soft.
  • Yellowing of leaves.
  • You can even get fungus that starts growing in the soil because of the consistent moisture.

Something you can’t normally see until you take the plant out and inspect it would be root rot.

How to Avoid Overwatering

There can be many reasons that lead to the plant being overwatered. It may not just be the fact that you water too much. There are several ways that you can avoid overwatering. Here’s what you can do.

  • Wait until the appropriate soil dryness. Usually I go with the first or second knuckle deep for the soil to be try. Different plants have different suggestions.
  • Get an appropriate plant pot, which is one that drains properly. A lot of plants will do okay around 60-70 degrees.
  • Have an appropriate temperature for your plant. This leads to the water to be evaporated quicker.
  • Plants require different water depending on what time of the year it is.

Some people will suggest a plant watering spike to make watering easier. I think that they can work for some plants, but if you give watering spikes a shot. Make sure you still pay attention to the soil. You wouldn’t want to come back in two weeks to see your plant basically dying of root rot.

I personally think that a good draining pot would be a good option for most people over a watering spike. If you are curious about testing out a convenient well rated pot you can check this one out. It is also not a bad price either.

Click Here If You Want To Buy Self Watering, Self Aerating High Drainage Deep Reservoir Pot On Amazon.

I may get commissions for purchases made through this link.

If you don’t want to miss out don’t forget to sign up for updates. It’s free, and you can take yourself off whenever.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Thank you,

-Plant Dummy

Identifying Powdery Mildew: Treat in a natural way

Plant DummyLeave a comment

Learn how to Identify, and treat powdery mildew easily.

“DSC05460 powdery mildew cucumber” by Plant pests and diseases is marked with CC0 1.0

So you notice your plants leaves are curling a little bit. Maybe you see think someone sprinkled powdered sugar all over your plants, but I highly doubt that. You should rule out mealybugs which is one of the pests I talk about in another article.

However you still have a problem. Good thing for you, powdery mildew is not really a death sentence for your your plants, just a major annoyance but it shouldn’t be ignored because it can get worse. Getting powdery mildew is important not only for saving the amount of headaches.

Identifying Powdery Mildew

“DSC05427 powdery mildew pepper” by Plant pests and diseases is marked with CC0 1.0

with powdered mildew, you will most likely see some white powder on your leaves or around the stem area. It may look like if there was water spots on your leaves that dried into a fine white powder.

Another symptom can be curling leaves, and discoloration. This can lead people to think that there is a nutrient issue, this is more common further into an infection when it tends to be more severe.

Some leaves may curl up and fall off at a further stage of infection.

How does powdery mildew happen

Considering that powdery mildew is usually various fungal spores, which can lay dormant and start spreading once the conditions are better for it to spread.

A powdery mildew infection can start from bad air flow, bad lighting (to little), bringing in a new plant that is infected, even walking into the room with spores on your clothes from outside could do it.

Another factor is high humidity ranging from around 60-70% and higher. High humidity often can lead to fungus/mold issues if they are presented into the environment mixed with other negative factors. That is why it is important to have some air flow and proper lighting.

Note: make sure whatever you have to do with the plant that you are careful, because the spores can transfer very easily.

Treating Powdery Mildew

Isolate your infected plant from your other plants, carefully cover the plant if you are able to so that the spores don’t get released into the air. Be careful when you move the plant, because the spores are very sensitive and can spread very easily.

Either pinch the affected leaves, or areas such as a vine on an English Ivy that is infected. If you have to use any gloves or tools, make sure you wash them or sanitize them in order to kill the spores afterwards. You don’t want to accidentally re introduce the spores.

Tip for trimming: You can also use cinnamon after you pinch or cut on the areas, because cinnamon has antifungal properties, so it helps prevent infection, and can lead to boosted growth from previously clipped areas to boost the possibility of growth as well.

You can use either a spray or something like neem oil. Just be careful with neem oil and too much light because neem oil can lead to certain plants burning easily from light sensitivity.

If worse comes to worse, and you really have to. You can use a spray that will help with the issue, just make sure you research if what spray you will be using is okay for your plant.

Improving aspects that caused the problem will help you longer term. This can be increasing air flow, giving the room proper lighting, or decreasing the humidity if there is too much.

If you want more tips:

Honestly there are products out there that I could easily pump out. But I think that the best bet to prevent this stuff is making your environment a good environment. If you are curious about what I think are good things that make owning indoor plants easier you can check out my post on Indoor Plant Tools to make your life easier.

Don’t miss out on useful articles in the future by joining my mail list to keep updated.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Thank you again for reading,

-Plant Dummy