Troubleshooting

Even if you aren’t a Plant Killer type of Plant Parent, you are going to experience the pure fear of a plant that’s starting to look just a little fucked up at some point. You might be able to save it! But you might also make it worse. Here’s a quick guide to give you just a bit of hope in saving your suffering plant.

Yellowing Leaves Could be too much light, too much water, too little water, a whole mess of things. Goodluck figuring that one out.

Dried Out Leaves Gonna be too much light, not enough water, or a mix of both. I think this is one of the easier issues to fix. I’d rather have an underwatered plant than an overwatered on any day.

Shriveled Up Leaves This is for succulents, FYI. Shriveled, shrunken leaves mean you underwatered your succulent. A shriveled-up cac tus means the same thing. I know succulents and cacti don’t need as much water, but you still gotta water them, dude.

Mushy Leaves The other succulent one. A mushy leaf is a sign of overwatering in a succulent. It’ll be lighter in color and real sad looking. Put that shit in as much sun as possible and do not water it for as long as you can.

Leggy Saying “leggy” is a funnier way of saying your plant is stretching. For succulents, this means they need more sunlight. For some houseplants, they might need to be “pinched back” to encourage the plant to grow bushier. You can use some scissors, or your gross fingers, and remove part of a plant right above a leaf separation. Two more sections should grow back.

Wilting Leaves See: yellowing leaves. I’m not typing that twice; it would just be redundant.

Icky Smell from the Roots Root rot. You can also tell if you have root rot if the plant’s roots are brown. OOF, good luck. Honestly, I have no clue how to save from root rot, unless you find some roots that are still white. Remove all the brown roots and replant the white ones and you might be good. Might.

Well that probably wasn’t very helpful at all. Sorry bud, RIP to your plant.