How to save an overwatered Monstera, step by step

How to save an overwatered Monstera, step by step

Overwatering is the easiest way to kill a Monstera, and it's also the one that looks the most like underwatering, which is why so many people water a drooping plant again and finish it off. The plant isn't thirsty. The roots have been sitting in wet mix long enough to start rotting, and a rotted root can't take water up even when the pot is full of it, so the leaves droop exactly the same way they would in a bone dry pot.

How to tell it's water and not something else

Yellowing on the older leaves down low, starting at the edges and working in, is usually the first thing you see. Then there's the soil, which should smell like soil and not like a drain, and if you get a sour smell out of the pot the roots have already started going. Brown patches with a yellow halo around them are further along again.

The test that actually settles it is to get the plant out of the pot and look. Healthy Monstera roots are firm and pale and they hold their shape. Rotted ones are brown or black, they feel like cooked pasta, and the outer sheath slides off when you pull on them.

The rescue

1. Take it out of the pot and get as much of the wet mix off the roots as you can without tearing them.
2. Cut off every root that is mushy, using scissors you have wiped down first, and take it back to firm pale tissue. Losing half the root system is survivable and leaving rot in there is not.
3. Take some of the leaves off too. A plant with half its roots gone can't support a full head of leaves, and pulling a couple off now means the rest get what is left.
4. Let the roots sit out of the pot for a few hours somewhere with air moving and no direct sun, so the cut surfaces dry off.
5. Repot into fresh mix in a pot with drainage holes, and go one size down rather than up, because a bigger pot holds more wet mix around a smaller root system and that is the whole problem repeating itself.

The mix matters more than the watering does

A Monstera climbs trees in the wild and its roots sit in leaf litter with air all through it, so a dense potting mix that holds water like a sponge is already the wrong environment before you have watered it once. What you want is an ordinary potting mix opened up with something chunky, so roughly two parts mix to one part perlite, and a handful of horticultural charcoal through it as well if you have some, which keeps the mix sweet and stops it going sour between waterings.

And the pot has to drain. A decorative pot with no hole in it works fine as long as the plant stays in its nursery pot inside it, and you lift that out to water and let it finish draining before it goes back in. Water sitting in the bottom of the outer pot is the same as having no drainage at all.

Watering it from here

Stop watering to a schedule and start watering to the pot. Put a finger in up to the second knuckle, and if there's any moisture down at that depth, leave it alone. When it's dry that far down, water it properly until it runs out the bottom, then let it drain and tip out whatever is sitting in the saucer. A Monstera will forgive you being a week late. It will not forgive being wet for a month.

Give it a few weeks before you decide whether the rescue worked, because a plant that has lost roots puts them back before it puts out any new leaf, and there's nothing to see above the soil while that's going on.

Nobody gets this right the first time, and killing a houseplant or two is more or less the entry fee.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Perlite 5L. The chunky white stuff you mix through potting mix to open it up.
• Brunnings Premium Potting Mix 36L. The base mix for the repot.
• Brunnings Horticultural Charcoal 5L. A handful through an indoor mix keeps it from going sour.
• Brunnings Propagating Sand 5L. Coarse sand for drainage if you would rather not use perlite.

Did you know we also stock plastic pots in 18cm and 28cm, gardening gloves and Gardenmaster hand trowels in store. They're not on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The potting mixes and the rest of it are in the garden centre, and if you want a second opinion on whether a plant is worth saving, bring it in and we'll have a look at the roots with you.

Read next

• Monstera care, the 6 things that actually matter
• How to care for a monstera and get the split leaves

I water everything indoors on the same day and then wonder why the ones in the small pots look so smug about it.

Candeece

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