My monstera got root rot and I had to act fast

I was watering my monstera last Tuesday when I noticed the leaves looking droopy and yellow. Pulled it out of the pot and sure enough, the roots were brown and mushy down at the bottom. Ended up cutting off about a third of the root ball with clean scissors and repotting it in a terracotta pot with fresh soil. It's been a week now and the new growth looks healthy again. Anyone else had to do emergency surgery on a plant before?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivera.jesse5d ago

Noticed over the years how most stuff that goes wrong with plants is just us being too nice to them. Overwatering, too much fertilizer, babying them when they actually need tough love. Same thing happens with people honestly. Usually when something crashes its because we gave it too much of what felt good instead of what it actually needed. Glad the surgery worked out, that's always a tense moment with scissors near roots.

grace_hunt845d ago

My golden pothos did this exact thing back in 2021 after I left it sitting in a cache pot with standing water for like two weeks straight lmao. What nobody talks about though is how the type of pot you switch to matters way more than the soil. I put mine in one of those mesh nursery pots inside a decorative ceramic one and the airflow difference was insane. The roots started bouncing back in like 4 days compared to the week or more it took in a solid pot before. Also rivera.jesse is totally right about us overdoing it with love, sometimes plants just need us to back off and let them breathe lol.