I grow a ton of Calatheas and Marantas but mine have an advantage of being planted in the ground. They just do not make good long term houseplants. There are probably several factors affecting your plant, and when they affect it "all at once", it can lead to big problems. #1--most Calathea are not high light plants. This is a good rule of thumb to follow for light: if a plant has leaves that have red or maroon undersides, its a shade or low light plant. The red coloration is a genetic adaptation of rainforest plants that thrive in moderate to deep shade. The pigment is made up of specialized cells adapted to catching what is called "green light"...this is light that filters through the canopy layer, hits the ground and bounces back up. These plants with red undersides are specifically adapted to catching and utilizing green light. So putting your plant right in an unobstructed South facing window might have been a little too much light all at once. #2--almost all the Maranta and most of the Calathea have a sensitivity to not only chlorine but also mainly to fluoride in the water. Since most municipal water supplies are both chlorinated and have added fluoride for the kids teeth, you shouldn't use it for plants like these. Your water may also contain added ammonia, which forms what are called "chloramines" which are also bad for plants. All this will cause leaf troubles like the crispy edge. Using pure spring water, distilled or purified water is a good start. #3--Humidity is a key factor for these plants and misting and a pebble tray may still be inadequate, especially in a home in a Northern zone when it gets to be winter and you turn the heat on. Air conditioning is bad enough in summer, drying out the air but the heater is killer in winter. If you can stand it, you might have better results if you purchased a cheepo cool mist vaporizer from Walmart and ran it on a timer to cycle on and off in the close proximity of any plants you have that require higher humidity. You could group all your needy plants together maybe and hit them all at once. #4--5 fertilizer sticks is just way too much for a houseplant that is already stressed.And Calathea and Maranta can be resentful of too much fertilizer. Since you have trouble keeping your plant adequately watered in the first place, it would be much better to err on the side of underfertilizing and just use some 1/4 to 1/2 strength water soluble maybe once a month. #5--if you had white bugs AND webs, you probably had a mixed infestation of mealies and mites. The webs are from the mites, mealies don't build webs. But mealies do infest the soil and also lay eggs in the soil. Calathea and Maranta are rhizomatous plants, and mealies can attack the plant below the soil level. To be certain they are gone you may need to use a systemic pesticide that goes into the soil, like Bayer, on a regular basis. Your plant sounds like it is trying valiantly to make a comeback and you sound like you did your research pretty well. Just give it time.

Ok, Grrrr. It seems not only did I exceed the bandwidth of my photo sharing site (until tomorrow when my month is over I think), but it appears that I may have crashed the Ft2Garden.com server bandwidth as well. I was posting about the photo site when it gave me an error when I tried posting. After checking Judy's blog and the Ft2Garden.com forum, they were all down. I can only assume the two are related. Who knew my 15 minutes of fame would have such unintended consequences. Oops!

You are an amazing person and I love your stories. Have the blog on favorites and will check to see if it updates itself or???? I learned to drive at 17, in CA and on a trip to AZ to see my grandparents, my Dad asked me to drive (night time due to the heat in the desert --no problem, but at 1:30 AM I fell asleep ---thankfully, I wasn't going fast and My dad woke up fast. I went bump, bump off the road into the desert. That ended my driving until we got back home and my Dad paid for driving lessons. Night driving still bothers me, but at least at 82 I am still able to drive Keep up the stories PS, this was a stick shift and we made all our kids learn on a stick shift --not happy, but because of it, 2 of the kids got good jobs--both in driving trucks years ago.

To rhizo, I'm baffled--I thought the boarding school story was on the blog, then looked on KT, then looked for it in my word processor files. I CAN'T find it, but I know it is somwhere. I'll give it a rest and look again. I have been writing some things for the 150th anniversary of my high school and I think it should be in there, too. A mystery. My brain is mushy today, I think. I'm going downstairs to play some sort of dice game-maybe that will brighten me up.