Before you give up and throw away your dead-looking potted plant, check for these signs of life and revive it
Does it look like your plant has perished after repotting? It might still have some fight left in it just yet
With high temperatures and lots of repotting being done, this time of year can sometimes lead to some rather sad-looking plants. Luckily, just because your potted plant might look dead, it doesn't mean it actually is.
It can be heartbreaking, seeing your favourite patio container plants seemingly perish the second you repot them. And whilst you can do everything possible to keep your potted plants happy in the heat, sometimes they just don't take to their new pot kindly. Which often means you're left with a plant that looks destined for the garden waste bin.
However, before you completely lose all hope, your plant might still have some life left in it. Follow these tips and tricks from garden design expert Ish (@gardening.with.ish on Instagram) to give your plant a second chance at thriving.
If you've been sorting your garden out this weekend, you may have noticed that some of your newly potted plants might not be in the best shape. Don't panic yet, there's still something to be done.
"What if I were to show you that this plant isn't actually dead at all. In fact, it's perfectly fine, let me explain," starts Ish.
"It can be incredibly disheartening when you've spent quite a bit of money on a plant, especially like this eucalyptus, and then a week later, it's turned into this crumbly mess," he continues.
"You'd think well, that's the end of it, I'm going to throw it away, I gave it my best shot. But chances are, it wasn't something you did; it's something to do with the plant itself, and that's known as transplant stress," Ish adds.
In the same way, when you repot a houseplant, your garden plants will take some time to acclimatise to their new containers. But there are things you can do to help them along the way.
"Now, you can minimise this as best as you can by keeping it well watered, giving it a nice, rich feed a couple of weeks in. But chances are, it's still probably going to do it and don't worry too much, it's actually really easy to fix," explains Ish.
"First thing to do is a very simple scratch test. So, when it starts to look like this, give it a scratch at the bottom of the base, and you can see just there, there's green still on the bark, the plant's alive. But what will happen, especially with eucalyptus and other smaller plants, like hydrangeas, is that they'll start regrowing once they've settled in," he adds.
"So as you can probably see right there, actually, I've got loads of life bursting through and even on the stems here, I can see new shoots coming through. So the best thing I can do is actually remove any of these dead stems by either clipping them off or just peeling them off," Ish points out.
You may have heard of the scratch test when checking if your plants have survived the winter, but it's great for general health checks too.
"Do the scratch test up the stem. If it's starting to look brown, that's where you chop it off completely, because that's where it's died, but the rest of it is perfectly fine," he says.
"Once you've pruned off the dead stems, you're left with all the healthy stems, and whilst it may not look like much right now, this is going to regrow, and it will do absolutely fine," finishes Ish.
Just like that, you'll have a happy, thriving plant back to its full health in no time.
Should you have a few unhappy-looking plants, cutting them back should be added to your June gardening jobs. This will then give them plenty of time to regrow and properly establish themselves in their new pot.
