I know... I KNOOWWWW!!!!!
Pothos... one of the hardest plants to kill... indestructible... survivalist... yet somehow I managed to almost kill them? XD
So here's the story.
planting seeds and I got myself wanting to buy indoor plants. I like planting seeds too but my patience was not that high so I wanted something inside the house that's already grown haha. So I got myself some plants and one of them was pothos.Early February, @acidyo and I got into plants. Well, for him it was more into
I got golden and njoy variety of pothos. I know they are hanging plants, easy to take care of, and can climb as well... so they are very interesting for me.
As seen from this post, the pothos were healthy when I got them. They were in an ugly pot and loam soil so I wanted to repot them into nice pots and better soil. I also needed to repot them so I can check for pests that live in the soil and maybe hiding under the leaves.
I was researching what I needed to buy, do, best way to take care of them, etc etc all while also learning how to grow seeds at the same time. This is an important detail so you gotta pay attention! Haha.
Anyway, I figured it would be best to get a soilless potting mix for the plants since it is best for indoor plants since it doesn't get clumped and hard compared to garden soil. Though, in soilless mix, you gotta put the nutrients yourself.
When the soilless mix arrived, I immediately repotted them into new pots that I bought. The mix didn't have big perlites and so what I did was I added pumice and perlite too because pothos likes that. I added a bit of parker neem cake as well to prevent pests from living in the soil lol.
I was very happy, they look pretty in their new pots and I feel secured knowing I saw no pests or anything like that especially they are in their new soil. 😌
Days passed and I didn't see any growth. I know, pothos must be adjusting to its new environment. The roots have to settle first then it can continue growing. But even a week has passed, it just stopped growing when normally it should've grown by now and pothos grows really fast. Like maybe in 3 days you would see new growth.
Aside from the lack of growth, I would see the leaves turn yellowish day by day. I tried to wait for a few days if it would be better but it didn't. As you can see, the supposed to be white part of njoy pothos turned yellow and that's when I started to worry.
I researched what might be causing this because I'm pretty sure I didn't let it overwater.
I also checked the rest of the pothos and what they have in common: I recently repotted them. To my horror, they are all drooping and even one of the leaves started looking like it's burning!!!
Ok so what the hell was wrong???
I made sure the soil was fine, they would have stones so they can breathe, the pots have holes, I don't overwater, they get okay amount of sunlight, and the pets don't touch them (specifically don't pee or poop on the soil haha).
Until I came across this thing called overfertilizing.
I thought, pretty sure I didn't put any fertilizers there yet except for the neem cake. The soilless mix I bought had a balanced amount of fertilizers like vermicast, carbonized rice hull, which is beneficial for plants. I didn't put any osmocote fertilizers yet.
Then, I thought wait a minuteeeee, then I checked the packaging of the soil I ordered.
Soilless potting mix... 1:1:1:1 mixture of vermicast, chicken manure, carbonized rice hull, and cocopeat...
1:1:1:1 MIX.
OH MY GOD.
An equal mixture of these fertilizers is so bad for the pothos!
Then I checked the order, apparently this mix is ideal for crops!!! Hahaha.
Why is it bad?
So a little explanation, crops like tomatoes, bell peppers, sweet peppers, and such are heavy feeders. They need a lot of sunlight, water, and fertilizers in the soil. This way they produce fruits and stuff... These seedlings were also growing in the balcony and like I mentioned earlier, I was learning how to grow them at the same time learning with indoor plants.
On the other hand, indoor plants like pothos are not heavy feeders. They can take nutrients as well but they can also just live with soil and water as far as I know. Too much fertilizer in the soil will dry out their roots and eventually kill them since the fertilizers are very "salty".
The reason why I ordered the soilless mix for them was because fertilizers are still beneficial for them, especially having a balanced N-P-K, they will grow very healthy and fast, and that's what I wanted cos I'm an impatient bitch.
I didn't pay attention to how much the ratio of the mixture was, so of course, the pothos were slowly dying!!! 😱
So, I immediately repotted them.. it's an emergency!!!
I had to order cocopeat from a local seller who delivered it an hour after. I didn't throw away the other soil of course, but I transferred them to a new potting mix without any fertilizers for now so they can recover.
Just after 3 days, you can see that they are growing already!! How fast! :D I was seeing new growth and I was so relieved that they are surviving.
And after 5 days, they are still continuing to grow at the normal rate. They even started growing new leaves on the nodes that lost leaves.
Now :DDDD
Now, they're all very happy and thriving. These are both giant golden pothos which were both affected too lol and after a couple of repotting, they have now settled themselves in the soil. Also thankfully they didn't complain about the size of the pot since it's quite big. I wanted to put them there because the coco pole is 4ft tall and I didn't want keep on repotting haha.
They are placed in a lowlight area and as you can see there are new growths on top and they liked it anyway. That's why pothos are easy to take care of, they can tolerate low light. :D
The wall-potted pothos that you saw in earlier photos are now looking like this. :D I think they got less yellow but the important thing is that it is growing fast.
I'm really glad I was able to catch this silly mistake earlier. Maybe a few more days would've completely killed them.
One thing I learned here is that no matter how careful you are with something, you will make a mistake eventually and it's okay. I was able to find the problem and solved it. DONE. I was also happy for myself that I learned to accept that I can make mistakes no matter how tiny they are and there is no need to be harsh to myself because all I had to do was to solve it. And this is one of the proofs that it is going to be okay in the end. :D
I learned a lot of lessons with taking care of plants and I'm glad to say that I am also growing as a person and not in the surviving mode anymore. :>
I usually kill indestructible plants by forgetting to water them. I did that with a snake plant once. 😖
I didn't know that pothos don't like too much fertiliser. I'm glad I found out now, before I make the same mistake. I was just pleased I'd been remembering to water mine occasionally. It was a gift from a friend, so I'd be mortified if I killed it. It's recently survived being disturbed by getting wrapped around a frame and it stopped growing for a bit, but it's back to its usual speed growing now, thankfully.
Maybe have the plant somewhere where you can see it all the time? I don't know, at least that's how I don't forget them haha tho I have a tendency to overwater which also kills them. 🤣 Yeah you really have to be careful with putting fertilizers on indoor plants. Slow release fertilizers work fine, those you can just put in the soil and you don't have to add another til 3 months later (depends on what the instructions say). But yeah, most indoor plants will survive without fertilizers.
Nice! I also love how fast pothos recover haha, even on the verge of dying. 😂 They are now my favorite plant cos of how fast they grow.
I'm just not sure what I'm going to do when it gets even bigger! It's shooting back across the desk it's on, in front of the window and will be trailing over the edge again in no time.
I love how yours are positioned on the stairs. It will be lovely to see how they'll start to cover the rails and drape down the walls.
Your photos now Ma'am @hiddenblade looks very healthy after repotting
Yess and I see growth day by day. It makes me so happy haha
It looks amazing when you shifted the pot.
It seems to like the new soil as well. :D
I was riveted after I read the title and nearly scrolled to the end immediately to find out how you almost managed to kill several pothos! I feel like Acid should be a little scared of you by now 😝
My pothos are lucky because I rarely repot anything and the only fertilization I give them is leftover coffee 😂 but good to know that pothos are in fact not indistructible.
Haha I think it's also the overthinking/babying the plants too much but at the same time being confident that they're hard to kill that I managed to do that. It would've thrived honestly if I just left it alone.
Now I've learned my lesson and I just leave them alone and next thing you notice is a new leaf! Thankfully they didn't fully die and I was ready to accept it since I also had propagated some hahah.
It's best to give them fertilizers once in a while cos apparently it's so easy to overfertilize an indoor plant. So what you're doing is already enough and be careful I guess if you wanna change stuff. :D
I love nature, I love the fact that some plant has perseverance and can survive hard times no matter what.
Loving nature
Haha yeah this plant is a pretty much survivalist given the really high amount of fertilizer I put!
Via Tenor