Troubleshooting Basic Houseplant Problems — Plant One On Me — Ep 020

[Music] hey guys it's summer rain from homestead Brooklyn and today's episode of plant one on me is devoted to one question and one question only and it's from Alex Quinn who says by the way I love this new series thank you Alex can you go over some basic troubleshooting for common problems with houseplants like brown Tripp brown tips or dropping leaves Wow okay that is an excellent question and I think that when we're in the house and we see our plants struggling or getting some branch tips or losing some of its bottom leaves we're just kind of like always wondering what it what it means and there's so many different types of plant problems and I'm probably only going to get a tip of the iceberg here today but I'm going to try to focus on some of the main ones at least that I've seen in my own plants and in other people's plants and I should say that sometimes a plant could give off a sign and it could mean many different things and it's really hard to figure out what it may actually be so I want to say that as a precursor to this whole episode because if you write in and you're like oh my gosh you told me this is this is going to be a magnesium deficiency and it totally was and I was like over watering the plant or whatever it may be sometimes the plant will give the same type of response to a very different problem so I actually have a list of things so I don't forget any of the ones that I want to say but let's just go over some of the number one let's go over I think one that we often see so if a plant gets really droopy and it's no longer turgid and it's very flaccid most of the time you'll probably know that it's because you didn't water its water enough and basically what happens with the plant is if there's not enough water going from the roots all the way to the tips the stomata or the pores of the plants actually closed because it wants to save water so the water doesn't leave through transpiration through the leaves so when the stomata closed so you can imagine stomata are like oh like little lips or little eyelids and they remain open so that there's a good transfer between the carbon dioxide and the oxygen release that's how that happens and when you don't water it enough the stomata close like this which means photosynthesis is not happening so if you don't water your plant and it becomes flaccid then the growth slows and photosynthesis is not actually happening with the plant so the key to that is actually watering the plant now let's kind of take it to the opposite end of the spectrum and you're over watering the plant so what happens when you over water the plant now if you take something like a succulent or a cacti oftentimes or even a tillandsia or bromeliad if you're over watering the plant it'll start to rot sometimes you'll see mold growing on it it'll kind of like rot from the you know the inside out and also if you have plants that likely aren't cacti are succulents and the lower leaves are starting to to fall off a little bit and it just is like a really bare stem with some leaves on top that also may mean that you're actually over watering the plant and all the lower leaves are falling off and the reason for that is because the roots which are kind of like the brain of the plant release an ethylene gas and that's what makes it look like it's ripening and falling off so ethylene gas if you've ever wanted to write avocado or a a banana or whatever you stick it in a paper bag with an apple and the Apple releases the ethylene gas and that's what tastes like just basically quickens up ripening so that's a little side tip if you want to just you want to get that banana or that avocado ripened it a quicker rate it's essentially also what's happening with the plant root and it's telling the leaves to to fall off so those are two of I would say it's probably the most common deficiencies I guess that you could see whether its water deficient or you're over watering the plant now if the old leaves of a plant so generally the ones at the bottom are starting to yellow at a much quicker rate during the growing season compared to the the upper newer leaves so again you're like looking at something I had a moranto that was doing this before where all the little leaves at the bottom all the old leaves were just like they were all getting too yellow too quickly this usually means that it's nitrogen deficient and when we start to think about deficiencies especially in like the home environment you know you're not there's not much happening in those plant containers there's no leaves from the trees falling down there's probably a lack of microorganisms there is likely no mycorrhizal benefits happening within the roots so it's in really in this contained structure so oftentimes the plant will take up its own nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium and sulfur and magnesium and all these other things from the soil but then after your plant grows for four years on em and it continues to grow then that that all of those mobile and in mogul elements will not be available for the plant so you're going to need to replenish that through fertilization or new soil or what have you so again if the basis of the leads which are the older leaves are starting to get yellow at a very rapid rate during the growing season not during the the the winter seasons but during the growing season and the leaves at top are still very green then it's probably a nitrogen deficiency okay so opposite of that if the leaves are the new leaves are turning yellow and the old leaves are still green you probably have a sulfur deficiency I think that's probably a little bit more uncommon I haven't had a sulfur deficiency in my house I don't think but it could be a possibility what else oh yes interval's chlorosis so this is kind of a fancy term but it is as it sounds so this is between the veins are actually yellowing but the veins are still green and the thing is this can mean a lot of different things for that particular plant so let's just say that you're fertilizing at a at a very high rate with that particular plant it could mean that there is phosphorous toxicity happening with that plant the other thing that it could be is a too much or too little like iron or manganese or zinc which may not possibly be that situation but and the other thing is that that if you have it in too alkaline soil and it wants to be more acidic so some plants I'm trying to think of some off the top of my head like blueberries or whatever if you had like a blueberry bush on your patio or whatever or even outdoors if it's starting to get intervene Okla Rosoff sand chances are that it wants a much more acidic environment and you could check your soil pH you can get kits online or an Amazon you could send your soil if you want a way to try to you're out you know what the makeup is and also what the pH is so intervener chlorosis again the tissue part of the leaves are actually turning yellow and the veins are still green oh okay so if leaf edges are browning so this is like browning around the edge of the leaves if the petioles are kind of crispy or curling back that typically means that you're going to have a calcium deficiency and and again I don't know if that's like super common within the household environment but it's all very possible I think I actually had some leaf browning in one of my ferns which is still in my green wall I've been meaning to kind of like maybe plant him a little elsewhere like in the understory because in the green wall he's like kind of right in the face but he did have some browning along the edges if your leaf tips are Brown it again could mean a lot of different things it could mean that you're not properly watering the plant but it also could mean that there's too much chlorine in the water which is actually not uncommon so I have a water filter on my my hose that I spray my plants with but chlorine can be a problem and I think certain water depending on what you're doing and then there's another one that I actually end up my one of my monstrous unfortunately has a little bit of this orange kind of tinge on the leaf and that was from a contaminated Jasmine that I had which had rust so rust is actually a fungus it's very mobile it's very hard to get rid of I know some people use like a baking soda spray which I had used and kind of fell off the kind of sell off the horse on that one because I just yeah rust I mean a lot of times I know people will just probably like compost their plant or get it away from the rest the plants because it can be very mobile I still have my monstre in there and it has a little bit of rust so I do do a little bit of a baking so to spray but not as frequently probably as I need to and it really doesn't cure it from rust and I think that if you had rust growing on your like blackberries or your raspberries or your black caps outside then somebody would an arborist would probably say remove those completely and make sure that all of the stuff around it is removed as well because it is very difficult to get rid of let me try to see what else I'm trying to think of what oh yes if your plants are way up close against a south-facing window let's say and the leaves are starting to bleach this is or you know basically bleaching turning like a little bit yellow or white chances are you're just completely overloading the chloroplasts with Sun you might have a situation where you have a lot of leaves and then you cut those back and then the ones a little bit further away all of a sudden get bleached really quickly because they just couldn't deal with the the amount of Sun so often times you could either move the plant back or you could put like a shade up as well gosh what else okay this is specifically for callate calathea sand moranto and tenancies if they start to curl the leaves start to curl on the ends it basically means that it's trying to protect itself from the Sun so I would also move that back away and again this is just a different kind of response that a plant has from you know from a different family of plants so not all plants could curl up and protect their leaves from transpiration or from Sun so you will kind of see different responses for each succulents and cacti can also get too much Sun so if you see a lot of the color starting to be taken away from them then you're going to want to again move them back slightly from the Sun but not completely same thing with spider plants so you'll notice that if you don't give them enough water and they're in full Sun that makes the water disappear pretty quickly and they and they do like Sun but you would want to give them water back because they start to lose their color and vigor I mean it's pretty uncanny how much color that they actually use lose so quickly so I think that that really covers under watering over watering and a lot of the main plant deficiencies I also went through rust I mean this is going to be a long episode but I might as well go through bugs because people do have insect problems and I will do a deeper dive into insects it might take me a while but I will do a deeper dive into insects on Homestead Brooklyn calm wait for it wait for it but okay so bugs so mealy bugs I I think I talked a little bit about these before but these are like white cottony insects that are in part of their scales they're called even though it doesn't look like a scale so there's a brown scale and there's mealy bugs and these plants these bass these bugs actually suck the juices out so if you if you notice like a little brown kind of bump on your plant so you could scrape it off with your fingernail or if you notice that like cottony white insect usually in the crotches and the crevices of the plants it's typically mealy bugs and in scale and you can actually get a q-tip with hydrogen peroxide and scrape them off or I like to use integrated pest management yes in the home I use some green lacewing so you can release those spider mites spider mites generally come when it's very dry and the plant is stressed and they proliferate quite readily so I again I don't spray anything that would be an insecticide into my house so I use green leaf swings I release those up green lacewing a fruits come in all different colors I kind of love squeezing them between my fingers because they pop a little bit and again those insects really like to suck the life out of the plant so the way that I deal with those quick sprays quick strong sprays is my hose and then again green lacings is kind of my answer to all bug problems fungus snaps I use BT I they don't really harm your plant they're just pretty annoying white flies which are like little white they look like little mods um little white flies that I just use yellow stick sticky traps that's kind of what I do for white flies and I think of what else I think that's pretty much it gosh I went through a lot I will probably do a post on this if I could get to it on a homestead Brooklyn comm so you could refer to everything that I've said but again under watering over watering nitrogen deficiency sulfur deficiency calcium deficiency chlorine toxicity and rust and a bunch of the bugs that's what we went through so I think that those are some things that you could kind of signs that you can look out for when it comes to your plants and I hope this is very helpful keep all of your questions coming you could follow me on a homestead Brooklyn on Instagram make sure you subscribe here to the channel if you're loving these q and A's and reach out to me on Twitter on Facebook and also here you can write your questions underneath the videos so thanks again guys bye

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 57,136

Rating: 4.9229584 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, sustainability, houseplants, houseplant, greenery, houseplant care, indoor gardening, indoor gardens, gardening, gardens, green, plant pests, plant diseases, troubleshooting plant problems, houseplant problems, brown tips on houseplants, brown leaves on houseplants, yellowing leaves on houseplants, yellow leaves on houseplants, insect pests on houseplants, rust on houseplants, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me

Id: S4lXNULAIDg

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017