I finally had a plant guy at a garden center in Tampa tell me I was watering my monstera all wrong

He just looked at the yellowing leaves and said "you're drowning it, give it a drink only when the top two inches are bone dry" and now it's pushing out new growth after 4 months of looking sad, has anyone else had a random stranger save one of their plants?

3 comments

3 Comments

sam_thomas27d ago

Man, that's basically the story of my life with indoor plants. I had a cactus that was turning brown and mushy at the bottom, and some random guy at Home Depot told me I was watering it like it was a fern. Turns out it needed like a tablespoon of water every 3 weeks and now it's thriving. I used to think I had a black thumb but really I was just a serial over-waterer, which is way more embarrassing. Maybe I need to start wandering around garden centers looking for strangers to judge my plants before I kill the next one.

karen_roberts427d ago

Wait, you're calling yourself a serial over-waterer and acting like that's some major character flaw? I mean, it's a plant. You gave it too much water, it got sad, you fixed it. That's not a whole identity crisis. People act like killing a houseplant is some deep personal failure. It's a plant. They die sometimes. Even those cactus experts you're hoping to run into at Home Depot have probably killed a few succulents in their day. You learned your lesson on the cactus, that's the point. You don't need a random garden center stranger to validate your watering schedule every time you buy a new fern. Just read the tag, put it in a pot with a drainage hole, and give it less water than you think it needs. Most of us who keep plants alive are just guessing based on what worked last time. It's not a science, it's just not drowning the dirt.

jake63817d ago

Man, I feel you. @karen_roberts4 is right though, it's not that deep. I've killed a few plants by being too nice with the watering can. That mushy brown bottom thing happened to a jade plant of mine, thought I was giving it love but I was basically drowning it. Now I just stick my finger in the dirt, if it's wet I leave it alone. It's not rocket science, you just gotta learn what each plant actually needs.