Loading…
13
The guy at the garden center in Tulsa said my calathea was "a drama queen," and he was not wrong
I was at a nursery on 15th Street buying potting mix last month when the worker watched me baby a rattlesnake calathea and just laughed. He said calatheas throw fits over tap water and dry air, and most people kill them trying to fix problems that are not even about the plant. I switched mine to collected rainwater and stopped moving it around, and it pushed out 3 new leaves in about 5 weeks. Now I am wondering if my fussiness was the real issue all along. Has anyone else had a plant that only settled down once you left it alone?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
charlest599d ago
That line about "most people kill them trying to fix problems that are not even about the plant" hit me hard because that was 100% me with my first calathea. I hovered over that thing like it was a newborn, misting it twice a day, rotating it, checking the soil every morning like a weirdo. Turns out all my love was basically smothering it, and the poor thing was fine the whole time, just annoyed at me. The funny part is these plants are basically the cat of the houseplant world, they act like they hate you until you finally walk away. Once I stopped messing with mine and just let it sit there in one spot with rain water, it finally calmed down and started growing like nothing ever happened. So yeah, the drama queen was me, not the plant, and I have made peace with that.
3