House plants part II
Another Monday and another house plant that need help. Don’t worry I only have 4 house plants and the other two are doing okay for now so this won’t be a weekly thing I hope!
This is my Peace Lilly which technically is not a lily, but a member of the spathiphullm family.
Now I just call it my plant that grows in water, but I looked online and that is what it is. I got this “lily” 10 years ago from my parents when I passed the 2nd half of my Latin course at University. I had gone into my Latin final with 27% from the midterm and no real chance of passing. However, the final was worth 70% of our final grade and I ended up passing with a 65%. So my parents sent me this plant to celebrate my success.
It originally came with a beta or Japanese fighting fish in the bowl, but that little guy is long gone as are about 4 more of his buddies. I haven’t had a fish in there for the past 4 years. In the past year my lovely plant has been slowly declining. This time last year it had about 8 leaves and had even bloomed. Now I am down to one leave and by the time a new one comes up this one till turn brown and die. However, no matter how many times my father says “it’s dead, chuck it” I refuse to give up on it. I think part of its problem was a little side plant was developing at its base. I ripped that out and this leaf has stayed green a lot longer than the other ones were. The other problem in my eyes was that the roots had gotten too big and dead and that was killing the plant. So today I decided to cut the roots back. Is that a good idea...I don’t know, but I already did it so let’s say yes!
Look how long the roots are. I cut about half off and then forgot to take a picture!
And this is the plant after I changed the water and cut the roots.
The roots are still pretty long, but not taking over the whole bowl. I think I may trim them back a bit more in another month and get another fishy. However, since I always forget to water my plants I generally forget to feed the fish too...which doesn’t work out well for the fish!
If anyone was wondering how the lucky bamboo cutting went...well it didn’t. I told Mr. Pickles what I was going to do and he told me that the plant was healthy and beautiful so why the heck would I want to mess with it. So there ya go...lol
I have four peace lilies, but mine are all planted in pots. A few times I thought one had seen it's last days, but now it's flourishing! I have a ficus tree that that I threw over our fence about ten years ago because it was pretty close to dead. Not into the neighbor's yard LOL!! A few weeks later when I went to take it out with the yard trash, it was doing much better, so I brought it back in and it's still doing great today! Good luck with the root cutting :-)
ReplyDeleteEven though your plant grows in water, it continues to need some kind of nutrients. Maybe the fish provided that in the past and that is why it has been declining over the years. Your water may have some minerals in it, but your plant may need a little more than that.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed that you've had it so long! What a great memento!
I agree with Linda. Hope it works. Glad you decided to just let your Lucky Bamboo flourish.
ReplyDeleteI hope your lily lives. I agree it might need the fish.
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