Areca Palm, The Most Basic Diva

I picked up my Areca Palm from my local garden centre. She was affordable and perfect for adorning my entryway as a a classy yet simple statement plant. A quick Google assured me that she was a beginner friendly plant and I purchased her with an air of confidence about me.

So imagine my surprise when only a couple of weeks later she began to turn brown and crispy. It turned out I had a lot to learn about tropical plants and the internet was not much help to my plight. The crispiness was either due to underwatering, overwatering...

...or lack of humidity.

So this post is for those of you who have killed or are currently in the process of killing your tropical plant and you're not sure how you got here with a plant that is SUPPOSED to be easy to care for.

Here's what I did.

I put a humidifier next to it.

Yup, that's it. To begin with, I wanted to introduce solutions slowly to work out the true cause of The Big Crisp. A few days later, I saw that the leaves were getting worse, so I implemented a new watering schedule. I installed the app Planta, logged in all my green bois, and resisted the urge to defy it

Up until this point I had been watering my plants as and when I fancied; as often as every day in the summer. At the time, it was late autumn and in retrospect, I was definitely overwatering the poor thing and not only that, I hadn't been giving it enough water each time so I had wet soil but dry roots at the centre.

- Leaf of wisdom - It honestly doesn't matter how much water you give your plant us one sitting, it's about how long a time period there is between waterings that will determine if you over or under water your plant. Some plants like their soil to dry out completely between waterings, others like it kept moist; do your research!

My ignorant watering habits had left me with a bad case of root rot to deal with. I mixed up a large batch of hydrogen peroxide and water solution (1:1), place her in a deep bowl and slowly poured the solution through; the resulting reaction always fascinates me, if it fizzes, it means it's working! Not only that, the air bubble it produces makes the soil rise like dough!

See all those bubbles? S C I E N C E

So let's recap, I had increased the humidity, set a watering schedule, and dealt with the white fuzz of impending doom; it should have been smooth sailing from here on, right? I should have been able to just sit back with my badge of honour as a plant mama, right? Nothing else could go wrong, right?

Wrong!

The root rot resurfaced not just for a second time but it came back a third time too! By this point I had had it with the potting medium, it had to be the root cause right? (get it?) Further research told me I needed a much airier soil mix, and so, I ordered some bark to break up the soil. You'd think this would be expensive, or at least hard to find but actually, it was surprisingly cheap and easy to find! You just gotta know where to look.

Urban Plant Child is a UK based Etsy store with high quality, yet affordable soil components including New Zealand sphagnum moss, leca clay balls and, you guessed it, chunky red bark! I rave about this store to anyone with ears and plants because it is a gem among gems, honestly. I swear by their moss and now, I swear by their bark too.

I love shopping from small businesses, I hope to have one of my own one day too, but as a student, I have to say, it helps when the small business offers better value products than even Amazon or your local garden centre even with the postage I would rather give my plants their best shot, and it's thanks to Urban Plant Child that my areca palm is still here today.

In the new potting mix I used 2 parts soil, 1 part bark and 1 part clay. I just used standard grey hydroponics clay pebbles; not as trendy as leca but it works just as well for a potting mix. I bought it before realising Urban Plant Child had introduced it to their store *sad times yo*

This step made a humongous difference for my palm, she has been putting out many a new leaves ever since! And throughout all of this, I had accumulated new baby plants that now reside beside her on my kitchen windowsill. The reason I mention this, is because grouping plants together is a great way to create humidity without the need for a humidifer. I found this out when I noticed more white fuzz in my palm, spritzed it with my HP solution to kill it and removed my humidifer. Since then, no more issues.

F I N A L L Y

And there you have it! Growing a palm unintentionally became quite the experiment but I am glad I stuck with it. She's a little bare right now as she lost quite a few stems from all those bouts of root rot but I am hoping to find some bulbs I can propagate when she eventually outgrows her pot and needs a new one. My areca and I have gone from fast friends to enemies and now back to besties; she has been worth all the trouble.

I hope this post proves useful to any beginners out there! Give a like and subscribe to be informed of new posts!

See you next week my darlings!