Quote:
Originally Posted by andy17
Hey Aranon,
Not to worry, I think your plant will pull through just fine, but it definitely needs a little help  I agree that poor drainage looks like its largely to blame. It's a bit risky to do heading into winter, but if you find that the soil is really wet and the plant is declining, you can pull the plant out of the pot and take a look at the roots. If there are a lot of roots that are black and shriveled, then I would recommend knocking off/washing off the soggy potting soil until you find almost all white roots. Using a sterile pair of scissors (10% beach solution works great), clip off the rotted roots all the way back till you see white. The trick is to be as gentle as possible to keep from disturbing the plant too much. Then repot in a smaller container that is only a few inches bigger than the pruned root ball with fresh potting mix that is 1/3 standard potting soil, 1/3 sand, and 1/3 perlite. The sand and the perlite don't hold water and will add a lot of air pockets in the soil around the roots. Both of these factors significantly reduce the likelihood of root rot and help to allow plenty of oxygen to get to the roots. haha the plant will dry out in no time flat once it's back outside, so definitely keep that in mind next spring. Once I've brought my plants in for the winter, I only water when the soil is almost completely dry and water just enough to thoroughly wet the soil without it draining out too much. I had this very problem with my Goldfinger, and for a time it looked really rough, but thankfully another member told me this method, and I'm quite certain it saved the plant. Hope this helps! Let us know how it goes!
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Thanks for the advice!, What I ended up doing is I took it out of the container and looked at the roots, most of which I cant get to due to the way the plant was growing when I bought it from Lowes but I did see a lot of blackish mushy roots so I pulled off as many as I could while leaving the white ones. I drilled drainage holes in the container and sure enough it was flooded with water, then I removed a lot of the old soggy soil and added a bunch of dry new potting mix into it to help dry it out a bit before I re-potted the plant. I also added some rocks in the soil towards the bottom to try and assist with drainage. Hopefully she makes it but if not at least I got 3 pups from her.