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Help! My desert rose leaves turning brow

6 years ago

I recently moved my desert rose inside here in Missouri for fall. It's under a grow light for about 12 hours at night. The grown light is about a foot and a half from the plant. I feed and water the plant every two weeks. I'm feeding it special desert rose food. Steam and branches are firm. This is my first desert rose so I'm a rookie. The soil is dry when I stick my finger in. Am I not giving it enough water?

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Comments (5)

Tin N
6 years ago
How often do you water when it was outside during the summer?
Chelsea Wagner
Original Author
6 years ago
Fairly often. During the summers hottest days, probably once a week soaking the medium entirely.
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Tin N
6 years ago
I water mine every day during the summer season. I water until I see water comes out of the drain hole. I’ve read somewhere that if the leaves are brown at the tips that means that it is underwatered.

I would prune those two branches next spring so more branches will grow out. I don’t want to tell you to water it every day next summer because your soil mix is probably different from mine. Mine is very well drained.
Chelsea Wagner thanked Tin N
Hyn Patty, Western NC Mountains (USA)
6 years ago
Browning leaf tips usually do mean it's not getting enough water. But that said, if your indoor temperatures are not very warm it may be a good idea to let it go dormant for the winter and keep it very lightly watered. The leaves may drop but that's better than the roots rotting.

Or if you can keep your temps above 70 degrees and plenty of sun exposure, you may be able to increase watering and keep it actively growing indoors. I had the same problem with mine last winter. I didn't water enough but they were warm enough that they didn't really want to go dormant, but I forced them dormant anyway for lack of enough water. Soon as I was watering them more, they fattened up and put out new leaves.
Marie Tran
6 years ago
Chelsea, most of my plants have brown spots on leaves, large amount of spots this past 2-3 weeks.

Marie

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