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A retired botanist at the Richmond plant swap told me my 12 houseplants were "loved to death," and I'm still not sure if she was right
I was at the plant swap in Richmond back in April with about 12 plants on my folding table, feeling pretty good about my pothos and my two monsteras, when a retired botany professor stopped and looked them over for a long time. She picked up my fiddle leaf fig, turned the pot around, and said the plant wasn't dying from neglect, it was dying from too much care, and that my "loving it to death" with weekly water and plant food was the problem. I had been watering on a strict Sunday schedule for almost a year because that felt responsible, and here she was saying the soil should dry out more and that the yellow leaves were my fault, not the plant's. She was kind about it, she even showed me the roots through the drainage holes, but I walked away feeling like every plant on my table had been quietly suffering while I thought I was doing great. Now I keep going back and forth on it. One side of me thinks she was right, that plants evolved to handle some dry spells and my constant fussing never let them build strong roots. The other side thinks a house is not a forest, and indoor plants in a dry Virginia apartment need more help, not less, so maybe my schedule was fine and she was just old school about it. Has anyone here had a moment like that, where someone with real plant knowledge looked at your collection and basically told you your whole routine was wrong? I want to know if you changed anything or kept doing what worked for you.
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jakef668d ago
My uncle had a koi pond he messed with every single day, chemicals and netting and special food, and those fish were always sick. Then he went to Florida for six weeks and left his neighbor in charge, and the neighbor basically ignored them, and the fish thrived. Sometimes doing less is the actual skill and nobody wants to hear it.
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