Herself’s Houseplants

I picked this plant up at a store this week. I brought it home and found it so pot bound it was sitting like a loose rock in its pot! It had pulled all the dirt in the pot into a tiny ball it was so pot bound.

The first thing to do with a pot bound plant like this is get it out of that pot and soak it. This one soaked for an hour and still the dirt/root ball was too stiff to loosen.

If after soaking your plant you can very gently and slowly loosen up the root ball do so.

If you can not loosen the root ball take a very sharp, very clean knife and make 4 cuts, one on each side, from the top of the root ball, to the bottom about 1/4″ deep. This will allow the new roots to grow out instead of continuing to circle which would in time strangle the plant.

Once the roots are loosened or cut you can repot this plant in a larger container with some fresh potting soil.

I think the houseplant most commonly affected by soft rot is the jade plant. In the winter, stems become weak, then mushy then rot. This occurs because your plant has caught a bacterial infection. Any plant can be a victim.

Although over watering is blamed as the cause; the problem is really a lack of light. The rest of the year the water you put in the soil gets used and evaporated. During the winter the plant slows its grow and there isn’t much sun to speed up water evaporation. So by watering less in the winter, or giving the plant more light or both you can avoid the problem.

Two things need to be done once soft rot occurs. First you need to unpot the plant and put it in a new pot with fresh soil. If you must reuse the pot, run it through the dishwasher or scrub it down with bleach first and rinse thoroughly. You need to get rid of all the bacteria.

Next you must perform an amputation on the plant.  Wipe the outside of the plant down with alcohol. Take a very sharp razor and sterilize it. Slice off the part of the plant effected plus some of the unaffected area below the rot. The bacteria spreads out before symptoms show. You must remove all the bacteria with out spreading it to the section that doesn’t have any bacteria.

Usually cats and houseplants do well once the cats get past the kitten stage. But not always.

My biggest problems with cats and plants has been cats knocking the flowers off cut flowers and blooming indoor plants. I’ve chased more than one around the house with barren flower stalks threatening to turn them into dog food.

Common problems with cats and house plants:

1) The cats use your plant as a litter box.

- Replant the plant and put sharp gravel on top. It’ll look pretty and the cats won’t dig through the gravel. A half inch to an inch is fine.

2) The cats eat the house plants.

- I’ve had some but not great success with a spray called ‘Bitter’ you can buy at the pet store. It hasn’t hurt any plants I’ve tried it on and the cats don’t like it. The problem is they don’t know they don’t like till they eat it a few times. Cats are slow learners.

3) Some house plants are toxic to cats. ( see links here for correct information on which plants are toxic to cats ) most are not. Usually the cats instictivly leave them alone, but there is no harm in not having toxic plants near your pets. There are lots of non-toxic choices.

4) The cats tip plants over. This is my biggest problem. If the plants are not against a window but on a counter or table Fred likes to rub up against the pots and often lighter weight ones tip when he does this. Putting the plants near a window or weighing them down with a few rocks fixes this.

5) Waterbottle training. This has worked with every kitten we’ve had. The first time you see the cat doing something to a plant, spray him with a bit of water from a spray bottle. The second ( or third for slow cats ) time you’ll only need to pick up the spray bottle. I’ve yet to have a cat that needed more than 3 sprays of water to avoid all the house plants. Persist and the water bottle method will work in less than a couple of weeks.