It happens to every indoor gardener sooner or later: one of your house plants develops an issue. Leaves turn brown, wilt sets in, or brown spots appear where they shouldn’t. Your plant is clearly having a problem but unfortunately plants can’t talk and just tell us what’s wrong. So what do we do? When houseplants get sick, we have to play detective and use what we know about plants and the conditions under which they thrive to figure out the problem and the solution. Most of us are dealing with cold weather right now and thus spending a lot more time with our houseplants, so we’re likely noticing issue more readily than we might in warmer weather. With that in mind, here are some tips and insights for diagnosing and fixing house plant problems.
Making a List . . . and Checking it Twice!
We recommend starting off by making a list of your plant’s symptoms. Write these out before you start searching online for possible problems; you want as thorough and honest a list as possible and making a list of symptoms or problems before starting the research tends to help us avoid overthinking. We also recommend taking a moment and making a list of your plant’s current growing conditions. This also helps us establish an honest baseline of what’s going on so that we can start making changes as needed.
Common Houseplant Problems and Solutions
Now that we’ve gathered the information we need, let’s learn a bit about common houseplant symptoms and what they mean. Most of the time for most house plants and container plants, common symptoms tend to indicate common problems. So with that in mind here’s a short list of some of the most common issues found in house plants, container plants, and indoor gardens and some of the most likely solutions:
· Wilting, the leaves and other “green” structures of the plant looking droopy or withering, is one of the most common plant problems and generally has a fairly simple and direct solution. Wilting is most often caused by either over-watering or under-watering. If you notice a bit of wilting in your plant, check and make sure that the container or potting soil is appropriate for the plant in question, that the soil is draining correctly, and that you’re not either watering too much/too often or too little. Wilting can be a sign of other problems like disease, so check and make sure your plant isn’t showing other symptoms. If wilting is chronic or ongoing, you may want to gently remove your plant from its container and check for signs of root rot. Root rot is what it sounds like—roots will appear dark or otherwise discolored and will be swollen and soft or mushy. If root rot has set it, cut away the damaged sections of the root carefully and re-pot the plant in new soil.
· Leaves turning yellow is another common plant symptom. We’ve compared it before to the “cold and flu-like symptoms” that precede so many human diseases; something is wrong but it’s hard to know what exactly! Yellowing may be caused by over- or under-watering or root rot, so check for those issues first. While you’re doing so, five your plant a fairly thorough examination to see if there are any signs of pests or parasites in residence. Aphids and mites can often cause leave yellowing, as can diseases like scale.
· Leaves turning black or otherwise darker in color is a fairly easy one, as it’s most often a sign of cold damage. You’ll probably notice a plant wilting as well. Your plant got most likely got too cold, so move it to a warmer location, keep it within its temperature range, and may provide a bit of extra shelter even indoors. Symptoms should clear up withing a few weeks or when the plant starts to put out new growth. If the whole plant is showing signs of damage, it may not recover, however, so be prepared for that possibility.
· Leaves turning white or looking “bleached” is most often a sign of sun damage or sun burn. Check and make sure that your plant isn’t getting too much sun at any part of the day, or that light isn’t being focused or reflected onto the plant from a shiney or lens-like surface nearby. Some common window décor items can create bright and focused areas of light, and while that’s lovely to see in interior design it might not be good for a plant in that location.
· Leaf mottling, discoloration, or fuzzy growths on the leaves are most often a sign of a parasite or disease. There’s a lot of those so we recommend isolating the plant from its neighbors and then checking for signs of infestation. Aphids are a possibility as are other kinds of bugs or pests.
· Parts of the plant or the container show signs of browning or wilting is a really tricky one. It can indicate root rot, it can be a sign of disease or infestation, but one of the most common and easy-to-miss issue is uneven watering. This means watering part of the surface or part of the container, but not the whole thing. If your plant is showing partial browning or area browning, try watering more evenly and see if that doesn’t help.
This is only a partial list, of course, and it’s geared towards the most common issues affecting the most common houseplants. If you’re running into another issue or if you’re growing a more exotic plant, we recommend reaching out to your local extension office or garden club for more information. For exotics, we recommend finding an online community or subreddit for that particular plant and seeing what they have to say. The world of plants is vast and no one knows it all, so every houseplant issue is also a learning opportunity.
Learning and Growing with Houseplants
That’s how we try to approach any plant issue: it’s a chance to learn more about how plants work, how we care for an interact with them, and how it all fits into the broader natural world we’re all part of. Plants connect us to things bigger and older than ourselves, and houseplants or indoor gardens are a great way to maintain that connection year round. We hope this article helps you find the answers you need to care for your houseplants. If you need more help, reach out to your local cooperative extension office, your local garden club, or let us know via email or in the comments and we’ll do our best!
Leave a comment