How To Save An Underwatered Pothos? Tricks You Should Know
Your pothos looks unhappy. If you see drooping vines and yellow leaves on your plant, it must be suffering from underwatering.
How to save an underwatered pothos? This article will show you the best ways to fix this issue. You can also learn some tips to prevent it.
Let’s jump into the details!
Table of Contents
show
Signs Of Underwatered Pothos
It’s important first to determine if underwatering is the case. An underwatered pothos will display these three symptoms:
Drooping vines
Water aids in the leaves’ and vines’ resilience and upright posture. You can see watering as the process of distributing nutrients and promoting health.
Your pothos plant’s vines will look limp when the roots dramatically dry out. You can blame the lack of water in its cellular system for this problem.
Yellow leaves and brown tips
Discoloration suggests that the leaf’s chlorophyll is disappearing. The green-to-yellow transition is a warning for dehydration, and you may also see brown leaves then.
Yellow or brown leaves will become droopy and wilted because the roots fail to transfer water to the leaves. After a while, these drooping leaves will fall off.
Stunted growth
Any problem in your plant will inhibit its growth, and underwatering is among the most common causes.
As discussed earlier, water plays a vital role in transferring nutrients and moisture to nurture the whole plant. Without enough water, your plant will dry out, and the roots can’t perform their task of distributing living resources.
Read more:
Dry soil
Is your plant dying due to the lack of water? You can answer this question by checking the soil dryness. If it dries out too fast between the waterings, underwatering must be your problem.
Dry soil pulling away inside the pot also means that your pothos plant doesn’t receive enough water. The soil may be too dry if you see the space between the pot and the soil.
How To Save Your Pothos From Underwatering Issues?
What should you do with your underwatered pothos plant? The following tips will help you save it.
Remove the affected vines and leaves
First, minimize the stress your dying pothos is experiencing. It may occasionally be using excessive energy trying to repair its affected parts.
Hence, you should remove the damaged leaves and dead vines from your plant. This step will prevent those parts from affecting the whole plant and encourage new vines and leaves to grow.
Before pruning your plant, wipe the cutting tools with alcohol. Dirty scissors or pruning shears will hurt the healthy parts of the plant.
Increase watering
To revive a dying pothos, give it what it needs. With an underwatered plant, you should water it more than you used to.
Pothos plants love watering every one to two weeks. Yet, while dealing with underwatering, remember that indoor plants don’t like overwatering, either.
An overwatered pothos will encounter tons of problems, such as root rot, wilting leaves, and stunted growth. Among them, root rot is a terrible case you want to avoid at all costs.
To water your plant correctly, we recommend checking the topsoil. If it feels dry, give your plant water. If it doesn’t, then wait until it acts for the next watering.
Move your plant to a shadier spot
It serves no purpose to expose your pothos to the sun as it is already stressed from underwatering. The soil will dry up much more quickly there.
So, relocate your plant to a shadier spot where direct sunlight doesn’t access. This tip will help it cool down.
Place the plant on a tray of pebbles
To increase the humidity around your underwatered pothos plant, place it on a tray of pebbles. By doing this, you can maintain its well-being and safeguard its leaves.
Use liquid fertilizer
When your plants recover from near-death experiences, they have already drained every last nutrition from the soil. But you can revive a dying pothos plant with some liquid fertilizer.
A liquid fertilizer will give your dying plant what it requires to recover. Make sure you follow the package guidelines carefully and start feeding your plant slowly to avoid fertilizer burn.
Mist
You should spritz your dying plant every few days to nourish leaves and improve water uptake. Giving the leaves the ideal environment helps them recover faster.
Spray your sick pothos two to three times weekly with a spill-proof spray bottle using filtered or tap water until it restores its vigor, and the leaves look healthy.
How To Keep Your Pothos Healthy?
Indoor plants like pothos require optimal conditions to thrive. To keep your pothos healthy, please bear in mind these tips:
Avoid direct sunlight
Pothos plants love bright, indirect sunlight. Overexposing them to the sun will dry them out, slowing down the transmission of nutrients.
Water appropriately
Your plant’s watering routine may vary with the seasons. Plan to water those potted plants less throughout the winter and more in the spring and summer.
Increase humidity
It’s a good idea to raise the humidity in the house where you grow your houseplants. As the plant draws moisture from the surrounding air, you won’t have to water it much.
Conclusion
Is your pothos plant fading because of thirst? After checking for the signs, such as yellow and brown leaves or poor soil, treat your plant immediately so it can recover soon. It’s important to water the plant regularly while keeping other conditions ideal.
Hopefully, this guide can help you save your plant from underwatering. If you need more information to deal with the case, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for reading!
This video will help you have a better understanding of watering pothos:
FAQs
Underwatering and overwatering have some similar symptoms, such as wilting leaves and a slow development rate. However, underwatering causes too dry potting soil. Meanwhile, overwatering keeps your plant in wet soil all the time and results in root rot.
They may survive for up to two or three weeks without water. But if you don’t give the plant the right conditions, it might die from dehydration in a week.
Plants that are just starting to undergo dehydration usually begin to heal within a few hours. On the other hand, for more severe dehydration, it may take several days for your plant to recover completely.
