we need to see the plant.. not the flowers ... usually if it flower in profusion.. thats a good indication its not dying .... but i would like to see the plant itself ... ken

Hi there, I got a Variegated Monstera, and it’s seemingly doing fine got new leaves and root growth) but couldn’t help but notice the leaves are a bit floppy. I checked the soil and there’s seemingly no pests. I bought this plant as a cutting with one leaf, and i now got four leaves so presumably it’s quite happy?

Monstera is really an epiphytic vine and rarely produces a stem thick enough to be self supporting. In nature they use trees as supports......as a houseplant, they typically are grown with a support provided - moss poles or coconut coir sticks or similar. btw, it is common for the appearance of a fungus to form in damp potting soil. It is just a saprophytic organism that feeds off the organic matter in the potting mix - a natural decomposer. They are not harmful to live, growing plants and the only need for repotting if it appears is if the soil has stayed too wet long enough to cause root rot.

"My water is softened" jumps out at me as something that needs looking into. If you have an ionic exchange water softener, one that uses a less pure form of sodium chloride (table salt), and the water you use to water your plants is routed through that device, there is no question that the level of sodium and chloride are at levels well beyond the toxic threshold; and, this would be especially true when watering in smaller amounts to ensure water doesn't puddle and sit in the collection saucer. That type of watering strategy ensures that all dissolved solids in the softened water remain in the soil and build to highly toxic levels. I have issues with (bi)carbonate build-up in my grow medium in the winter when I can't flush the soil as freely as in summer when plants are all outdoors and watered with a hose and water break. To combat the build-up of carbonates, I bought a small r/o water system that produces water at 0 ppm dissolved solids. Your ionic exchange system removes the magnesium and calcium carbonate and replaces those ions with with sodium and chloride. While plants need both sodium and chloride to grow normally, they need both in minute quantities, which makes this a situation where 'the poison is in the dosage'. Here is what I would do, and pay particular attention to the part in italics: Flushing Soils When you water, you should be able to flush planting's soil to eliminate the potentiality of salts from fertilizers and tapwater accumulating in the soil, thereby limiting the plant's ability to take up water and the nutrients dissolved in the water. If you think you shouldn't flush the soil during your regular water applications for fear the soil will remain saturated for a lengthy period, limiting root function or worse, you should consider a different soil or take steps to reduce the amount of excess water your soil can hold. By whatever means necessary, getting to the point you can water correctly is going to make a very big difference in the opportunity to realize as much of it's genetic potential as possible. Once you can water correctly, you no longer have to do battle with a water-retentive medium over control of your plant's vitality. There are several methods of limiting how much water your planting can hold, all but 1 or 2 are completely passive, requiring no effort on your part other than set-up, which is monkey easy. I can help if you have interest in that, I'm continually improving my proficiency at monkey easy tasks. To flush the soil of a planting: Water with room temperature water until the soil is completely saturated. Allow the planting to rest for 15 minutes to an hour to allow as much of the salt accumulation as possible to go into solution, then slowly pour a volume of room temp water equal to at least 10X the volume of the pot the plant is in through the soil. This will remove most of any accumulation of offending salts and resolve any skewing of nutrient ratios. It's a good idea, no matter what time of year, to fertilize most plants immediately after flushing the soil. Try to be sure you're using a fertilizer that has a ratio as close as possible to the ratio at which the plant uses nutrients. The NPK % listed on fertilizer packaging is not its ratio. 7-7-7 and 14-14-14 are 1:1:1 ratios. 9-3-6, 12-4-8, and 24-8-16, are all 3:1:3 ratios. Container growers should try very hard to avoid use of fertilizers advertised as 'bloom-boosters', or any number with a middle number (Phosphorous) higher than either the first or third numbers (Nitrogen or Potassium). These fertilizers can badly skew nutrient ratios with even the first application). On average, plants use about 6x as much N as P, so there is NO potential for a positive outcome when supplying many times as much P as the plant requires. I, and a large number of other members, use Dyna-Gro's Foliage Pro 9-3-6. It's designed to closely mimic the uptake ratio of the average plant, and has many other attributes not commonly found in other fertilizers. It also has ALL of the nutrients essential to normal growth. Summarized, it makes fertilizing as easy as it can be, and from 1 container. Do you have any thoughts/ questions/ concerns? There is no way to determine to what degree the plant is damage. Using r/o water would be best; but, if you're not willing to go that rout, it would be better to use water not routed through the water softener if you can find a source. Usually, the outdoor hose bib supply plumbing will not have been routed through the softener. You could tap into that supply line or look for other plumbing routed around the softener. Al