Plant Language 101 Lesson Two

Help! I'm Drowning Practice Sessions

This is a little harder to practice but I will try to give you hints. What you see is often the same as you see when a plant is dry. You see leaves and stem wilting. You think the plant is saying "Water me" How can you know what the plant is saying?

First: Look at the soil and lift the pot or basket if you can. See if the soil is wet and the basket feels heavy. This is often a sign that plant could be drowning or suffering from too much water.
Second: Take the plant out of the pot and look at the roots. Roots that are healthy are light tan or white and you see them around the edges and in the root ball.
Roots that have been destroyed by too much water or one of several 'water mold' types of soil diseases look dark brown. You can easily break them by running your fingernail down the root ball. If you pick out a single root strand and pull your fingers down it and the outside sheath pulls off the root, that is a sign of bad roots. Water will sometimes drip from the root ball or you can squeeze the root ball and the water comes dripping or pouring out.

Smells bad and old. Ugh!
What happened? Maybe you left your pot sitting in water for too many hours. When the soil and the roots are fully saturated for a long period of time all of the oxygen in the root ball is forced out. Without air the roots begin to drown. Just like you would if some one pushed your head down into the water. Roots start to die very quickly from lack of air. Actually the experts say.. With in minutes some damage is done. This is why we want you to soak dry plants for maybe 10 minutes or so but not for hours.
If your potted plant has a saucer beneath it and that saucer is always left full of water...your plant may drown.

The best preventative is to be sure that your soil mix is a loose fast draining type of mix. Lots of perlite and sawdust mixed into it. Most commercial mixes are this way. Never let your plants sit in water. Always make sure the drainage holes can really drain.

Here is a practice test to see what kind of soil you have. Wet the soil well. Make a ball of soil about the size of a golf ball. Hit it with you fingers. If it falls apart into several pieces you have great loose soil. If you could make an ashtray of it then you have heavy clay. If you can't even make it into a ball your soil is too loose and sandy. If it has the feel and texture of crushed rock you are working with decomposed granite...crushed rock. You need to add lots of amendments to make the rock into soil.
Another practice that you can do. Choose a potted plant that you can afford to play with or buy any 4 or 6 inch plant. Look at the roots. See the color, feel the roots, lift the pot and feel the weight. Now set your 'soon to die' plant in a basin of water. Make sure that the the bottom is always in water. Leave it there and look at the roots every day or so. Watch to see what happens. In a few days. You should see the roots begin to go bad and the plant begin to wilt. Try taking the plant out of its water grave and see if it will grow new roots. [Don't try to fertilize it then. Not a good idea.] Sometimes less water will allow the roots to regrow. In the old days before the nursery people knew much about diseases of the roots then would always keep plants in smaller pots. Sometimes in the winter for house plants they would repot into a smaller size. Why? The smaller pot size kept the plant drier and less susceptible to over water when the light was low and the temperatures colder and wetter.

Think of it this way. The roots are the plumbing pipes that carry water and nutrients up to the green part of the plant. There are big pipes and then there are lots of little tiny pipes. [called feeder roots] When those pipes get destroyed, clogged or damaged the water cannot travel up to the leaves. The leaves react just as though they were not getting water because in reality the same thing is happening. Only the cause is different.

If your plant is in the ground and the ground is heavy clay or has poor drainage the same thing happens. What you often see in larger plants and trees is too many yellow leaves. Eventually the plant wilts and dies. When a plant has stiff leaves like a rosemary plant or a lavender plant you may not see much wilting, just a loss of color and leaves turning gray and or yellow. Lots of leaf drop. Then they die.
Some plants are particularly susceptible to root diseases and over-watering. Plants from Australia and South Africa are prime suspects. Sometimes there are disease pathogens in the soil and they are just waiting to attack vulnerable plants. This often where you go to Lesson Eight and call in for the help of an expert.

Exception...Maiden Hair ferns and some other plants love to grow almost in water. The only way I can consistently keep a Maiden Hair fern alive in the house is to keep it in a saucer that always has water in it. One of my grower friends grows all of his maiden hairs that way. Even then when I take the fern out of the pot the plant has created a space for air at the bottom of the root ball. About a quarter of an inch of air..

This last part is just more information. You can't practice any of this. You probably don't want to. But the more you know and understand the better gardener you will become.

The problem of roots being destroyed either from over-water or from disease is a complicated problem and not one that is easily explained. Sometimes it is just plain over-watering and sometimes the over-watering brings on root/rot type diseases. Sometimes this happens through no fault of yours. Stress factors like too much heat or cold. A weakened plant for any reason. There are some root/rot or water mold fungi that take advantage of any stress and seem to appear from nowhere. They are perhaps always there in the soil or water. Like getting a cold when your immune system is down because you are overly tired and stressed out. A stressed plant is an easy target for root disease that then becomes a drowning problem.

What can you do? Oh boy! Sometimes nothing. The foundation is gone and nothing will save your plant. If the roots are very rotten then just toss it. If you have plants that are very special to you or expensive plants in the ground there are different fungicides that will sometimes kill these bad disease pathogens . The problem for you as a home owner, is that some times the cure costs more than the plants. We in the greenhouse business have more fungicides available and we are treating hundreds of plants to either prevent disease or catch it in its early early stage. We will drench the soil of hundreds of plants It is also costly for us but when you are talking about major crops then a little prevention is worth the cost of the crop. Any thing you do must be done early before the roots are totally gone. It not only sounds complicated...it is complicated. I depend on my grower, Oliver and sometimes a special laboratory that will test the sick plant and tell me what it is happening. You know how it is when you go to the Dr. and the visit costs mucho $$$$ and the Dr. tells you that you have xxx disease and maybe we can save you and maybe not. Well, plants are the same. Some plants are particularly susceptible to root diseases. If you have plants that die more than once from root rot don't plant them in that location again. Use pots, change your plant material choices.

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