Troubleshooting

Wilting: too much water or not enough?

Here’s the cruel joke of wilting: too little water and too much water look exactly the same. The droop is identical — because in both cases the roots have stopped delivering. The fix, though, is opposite. Guess wrong and you finish the job.

The ten-second test

Push a finger into the soil to the second knuckle, right at the base of the plant. Dry and crumbly? It’s thirst — water slowly and deeply until it runs from the drainage holes, and it will usually stand back up within hours. Wet, cool, maybe a little sour-smelling? Do not water. The roots are suffocating — waterlogged soil has no oxygen, and drowning roots can’t move water no matter how much is around them. For pots there’s an even faster tell: lift it. A dry pot is shockingly light; a waterlogged one is a brick.

Rescuing a drowned plant

Move the pot out of its saucer, out of any cache pot, and somewhere airy and shaded. Let it dry until the top two inches feel dry before the next drink. If it’s bad — soil stays soggy for days — tip the plant out and look: healthy roots are white and firm, rotted ones brown and mushy. Trim the mush, repot into fresh, drier mix, and go easy. In beds, drowned spots are usually a grading or downspout problem more than a watering problem; fix where the water sits and the plants fix themselves.

The afternoon fake-out

One more wrinkle: on a 90° July afternoon, big soft-leaved plants — hydrangeas, ligularia, squash, pumpkins — droop even in moist soil. Leaves are losing water faster than any roots could pull it in. That’s heat wilt, and it repairs itself by evening. Check them at 8 pm before you conclude anything; if they’ve stood back up, they never needed you.