Root rot, not really a good news story. I thought it would be better for me to post my experience in the hope it helps even one person. I will show some of my learning through failure lessons. Oh joy! Though not every one of my failures comes with an informative picture, I will try and express my thoughts.
I believe I have lost plants because of root rot, but that doesnt really provide enough information. Some of the plants were newly received from shipping and had few roots. That is actually a common way to receive materials here.
Receiving shipped materials
I can assure you that in the Philippines plants often come with some wet shirt wrapped around the root. Maybe some bubble wrap and with that comes 14 kilos of packing tape. Then another layer of maybe fiber sacks or cement sacks, then more tape, and then a packing label.
Getting them unpacked and into substrate is an experience in itself. Now mind you, this root stock and trunk may have some small roots or almost none at all.
They are kept in indirect light while they adapt to this new situation.
Watering factors
Well, now you have your plants and they are in a well draining substrate and kept in indirect light. You need to give them water so they don’t dry out the root area they have. Maybe you treated the roots with an agent, either way it is watering time.
Not sure you know this, but it rains in the Philippines, sometimes straight down, sometime sideways. So, your indirect light location under a carport roof may not be free of receiving substantial rain. If the rain is at night, hmm how much did it get? A well draining substrate does not depict saturation at the surface, but it doesnt mean that below the surface isn’t still draining.
Then my joy is that I water, but I have a family of helpers that also want to make my life easier and will water when they think it is needed. Not blaming anybody at my garden. I am just trying to give a more complete answer to this watering question. I hear this many times a month and I am trying to point out that there are many factors to consider when assessing watering volumes and their effect on your plant.
Thewn how about plant, pot, and pot size?
As you can see from that picture I am preparing to repot those hardlandi into more permanent pots. Those little plastic jobs are easy to grab when receiving them and the depth I find better for just shipped plants.
But, what about how much water they get? Well the plant matters due to its root structure. Are there only a few roots, many roots, root bound, type of root, and the list can go on. How about the drainage holes on the pot, what are their sizes, how many are there, have they become blocked by soils or other material?
What happens when a plant is having root water issues?
Normally a plant will try to compartmentalize its functions and divert resources to he waterlogged issue. Thus leaves normally yellow and then drop. Then the bark begins to saturate and flake away, the roots are already engorged with water and sine no longer living really, they become a mush pool or roots. Think about taking a wet sponge inyour hand a squezzing it. Well a waterlogged root is just that, holding water, but since nobody is quezzing it it is basically a non-draining puddle that your plant sits in.
At this point I assume you check the plant, maybe scrape the trunk to see if there is still a living ember insdie and some green. YEAH, there is green! Now what?
Try to rescue your plant
At this point is you feel your plant is suffering from too much water the best coarse of action is to remove it from the pot, examine the base and detemine what options you have that make sense to exercise.
My plant was at this stage this morning. So I took action and I am glad I did.
What did I discover? Indeed it had too much water. The third picture shows a whitish root, well that is where I snapped it with only my hand, it was soaking wet and storing water. There were portions of the roots that were soft. An ant colony had moved in and the rotting wood had become their egg storage area. There were thousands of ants. I got them removed, I did my best to remove any wood in a poor state. Yes, some of it was very WET even though we hadn’t watrered in days.
Then, I removed all of the soil from a very large 24 inch pot. I found that the substrate mixture was not draining enough and that even though there was almost no soil in the substrate, enough had moved to the drainage holes and slowed drainage to almost a stop. I then cleaned out the drainage hole, added large gravel at the hole, then very large lava rocks. The next layer more gravel, then large river sand, then a substrate mix (sand, pumice, lava, river sand) that is well draining. Finally the plant was put back into the pot, again already cleaned and dried to a point, then I add more substrate mix to set the plant set into the pot.
Will I be able to save the plant? I will not water it for a couple of days. I will pass the word to all family that if they water and dont see water coming out the bottom, tell me. And, I will hope for the best. I 4-6 weeks I should have an answer if it will recover or not.
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