The gorgeous devil’s ivy plant that lives on our living room bookcase started producing yellow leaves this past week. That in itself is not uncommon, especially in winter. But these leaves looked different than the usual yellow leaves, and there were considerably more of them on the plant.
Usually, when the devil’s ivy drops leaves, they’ve gone a consistent yellow and then slowly brown all over—not in a spotty pattern, as happened now.
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Watchful waiting
This Epipremnum aureum is one of the first plants I got. It’s a second-hand plant that I got at my favourite plant store. It used to grow in the teacher’s lounge at the owner’s former school, but got too big for it. I love that the plant has this story, and over the years I’ve propagated lots of smaller plants from it.
One of the devil’s ivy’s children.
My usual response in situations like this is, first, check whether a plant needs water or is unusually wet and, second, watch and wait. The soil felt fine, and when I climbed on a chair to take a closer look, I didn’t see any bugs or pest crawling on them (check the bottom of leaves in particular, which is where many pests like to hang out). I took the most yellowish as well as the brown leaves of the plant, and kept an eye on it for a day or two.
A day or two revealed that an even clearer pattern on the leaves, and not only on the yellow ones. Some of the green leaves also had brown spots on them, some of the new leaves were completely yellow without having been green, and more leaves were turning yellow with brown spots.
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After consulting some of my favourite plant books, I figured out that I was dealing with leaf spot, a fungal disease. Plant Society suggests that it can be prevented by good air circulation around the plant, and only misting it when it is hot and dry. I only mist plants when it’s hot and dry anyway, and until now, the plant hadn’t been bothered by a lack of air circulation. But I needed to act.
Plant Society recommends removing affected leaves and spraying with a natural fungicide. I don’t know a lot about fungal plant diseases, but there’s always a chance that a fungus—or pest—is in the soil as well. So I took the prevention a step further.
Here’s what I did.
First, I took the plant to my potting table outside to take off the affected leaves. I also decided to prune it quite severely and as such giving it a better chance of recovering. Whenever you’re pruning houseplants, make sure to use scissors or secateurs that are really clean: I keep a small bottle of alcohol handy with which I clean the secateurs before and after pruning a plant.
Next I took the plant from the pot and removed as much soil as possible. I did this by gently running my fingers across the root ball, and by shaking it gently to remove the soil. As you can see, the roots themselves look healthy.
Especially since the plant was growing in a terracotta pot, I also decided to use a new pot. I filled it with the soil mixture I like to use (keep your eyes out for an entire post on repotting in the coming months), and moved the plant back inside.
Before putting the plant back in its regular spot, I sprayed it with the natural fungicide Plant Society suggests.
Organic fungicide recipe (from Plant Society)
4 1/2 cups of water
1 drop of vegetable oil or neem oil
1 drop of dishwashing detergent
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
Mix in a spray bottle, apply to the plant during the day.
This plant is not right next to any other plants, otherwise I would have made sure to isolate it a bit. But the leaves aren’t touching another plant, so I’m hopeful it will be fine.
The pruned, repotted and misted plant.
And now? Now, I wait. I’ll continue to keep an eye on the plant, and hopefully the repotting and treatment with the fungicide helped. I’ll make sure to update you on how the plant fares in the coming weeks, but couldn’t resist sharing this experiment with you in real time.
Have your houseplants ever had leaf spot? Or are you dealing with another plant issue? Do leave a comment and join the conversation.🌱
Thank you for reading A Houseplant Journal! If you’d like me to cover a particular topic in the future, do leave me a comment and let me know! Until next time x
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After joining a local rose society despite never having grown roses before, I decided to give growing some mini roses from seed a try this spring. Although a decent amount of the seeds sprouted, unfortunately the majority of them have fallen over and wilted at this point. It's a bit disheartening to come home after a busy day of work to find that yet another one of my seedlings have fallen over, and I think that they are probably damping off due to my tendency to over-water everything. I noticed that white fuzz was growing on the soil for a lot of them, which is another sign that there's too much moisture.
Even though this is pretty disappointing, I'm still pretty new to growing plants, and I know that it's normal to go through an awkward phase at the start where it seems like everything is dying. For the remaining seeds, I'm going to try watering them from the bottom more infrequently and see if this helps with the excess moisture problem. I don't have the time right now to do much more than that because I currently have very limited time and space, but I will definitely be in a better place to expand on my plant-growing soon!
After joining a local rose society despite never having grown roses before, I decided to give growing some mini roses from seed a try this spring. Although a decent amount of the seeds sprouted, unfortunately the majority of them have fallen over and wilted at this point. It's a bit disheartening to come home after a busy day of work to find that yet another one of my seedlings have fallen over, and I think that they are probably damping off due to my tendency to over-water everything. I noticed that white fuzz was growing on the soil for a lot of them, which is another sign that there's too much moisture.
Even though this is pretty disappointing, I'm still pretty new to growing plants, and I know that it's normal to go through an awkward phase at the start where it seems like everything is dying. For the remaining seeds, I'm going to try watering them from the bottom more infrequently and see if this helps with the excess moisture problem. I don't have the time right now to do much more than that because I currently have very limited time and space, but I will definitely be in a better place to expand on my plant-growing soon!
So THAT’S what’s been happening with my Pothos! Thank you so much for this post. Now I know what to do.