WHY POT PLANTS DIE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 248, 19 October 1908, Page 7

WHY POT PLANTS DIE.

(By Leonard C. Clement.) In almost every house in England one many find plants growing in pots. In many cases it would be more correct to describe the plants as dying. The short life of the average indoor 'plant is not to be attributed to carelessness, but to a lack of knowledge on! the part of those who tend them. A plant, like every other living, thing, needs food, and this food is largely taken from the soil in which it lives, in the form of soluble salts. In Nature the salts are continually being replaced in the soil by the weathering of minerals, but in the plant pot this i.- impossible. . . " What actually occurs is this: The plant for a time flourishes at the expense of the salts already in the soil, and then begins to show signs of failing. The usual course adopted1 under these circumstances is to shower the poor plant with water, and with more water, until it eventually dies a lingering death. The explanation of this is simple. Though it is true that a plant must have water (for it can only absorb its food-salts when these are in solution), it is also clear that every time it is watered some of the salts in the soil are carried away, and the soil is left poorer in plant food, until eventually a point is reached at which the soil is "poor indeed" ; too poor, in fact, to supply the plant with food at all! When the. plant begins to fail it is most probably in need of more food, and not of more water.

Clearly then, attention, must be paid not to the plant but to the soil, and two courses are open to us.; We may either re-pot the plant with fresh soil or we may add to the surface of the original soil those salts which have been lost. - / A pennyworth of potassium nitrate and of superphosphate of lime can be purchased from any chemist; it is then only necessary to mix the two powders to obtain a rich and complete fertiliser, which, when spread over the surface, of the soil in the plant pot in a thin layer, will ensure a rich soil and a well-fed plant. The soil in a plant pot should always be kept fairly moist and;, should never be very wet to the touch. More plants die of hunger than of thirst, but a still greater proportion are drowned! — Daily Mail.