Tony O’Neill, gardener and author of the popular “Composting Masterclass” and “Your First Vegetable Garden,” combines lifelong passion and expert knowledge to simplify the art of gardening. His mission? Helping you cultivate a thriving garden.
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Many homeowners post images of their shriveled and dead store-bought plants on social media platforms and might have been experiencing the same with your store-bought plants. So, what makes these plants too delicate, and how can you keep them fresh and alive for a long?
Store-bought plans may die quickly due to a lack of favorable conditions and necessities such as water, good soil, air, and the inability to meet their unique needs specific to the species. It may also be due to the plant feeling transplant shock. The plant struggles from the sudden change in settings from the perfect conditions in the store’s greenhouses, which causes it to continue to decline.
Table of Contents
Read on more to learn tips and actions you can do to help and foster an excellent growing environment for your store-bought plants.
Reasons why store-bought plants die quickly.
Unlike what most people think, these plants are not a scam but have a low survival rate in your home.
Within the stores, they have been grown in the perfect conditions to make them look their healthiest and prettiest before being placed on the shelves to be bought.
To make them thrive, you must meet those conditions again, or above it, to keep your plant well.
The store-bought plant’s needs are being unmet.
Simple things like water intake, proper watering measures, the daily sunlight needed, and the specific soil needs must be considered when getting a plant.
Their specific needs vary among different species, and you should research the unique requirements of the plant you are growing. This will give you a basic understanding of how to keep the plant thriving in your home.
Check whether the plant needs direct or low light and whether you should keep the soil dry or moist after each watering.
Once you get your house plant’s name, you can search on Google to get more information on the favorable conditions for its growth.
Common store-bought and ‘hardier’ plants that you can get to buying
Now, if you feel like being too overwhelmed with all this information and are now double guessing yourself if you want a store-bought plant, especially for indoor purposes, you might want to look into getting these hardier plants that are less likely to keel over in your hands when you skip over some of their needs by mistake and such.
Plants like succulents, cacti, spider plants, and many more are covered in this article that I wrote on Best houseplants to have beginners talk at length about this and the care needed for these plants. Feel free to check them out here.
While all is well and good for those just thinking of buying store-bought plants, the following section will be for those who already have their store-bought plants and have done all they can to ensure the thriving but can still see a decline in their plant’s growth.
You might want to look into the possibility of a transport shock.
Transport Shock of store-bought plants
The store-bought plants have been accustomed to their initial pots and have adapted to specific light conditions, watering schedules, and the environment of the store’s greenhouses or nurseries. When there is a shift from the conditions they were thriving in into something different, transport shock happens.
Transport shock happens when a drastic shift from the plant or a transporting/transplanting problem occurs in the plant.
When the plant you brought fails to have a proper root system in its new transplanted site, there will be a decline in health and possible death.
Below are the factors related to transport transplant are as follows (source):
- Stresses may have been felt by the plant when it was moved from one site to the other
- Injuries that it has acquired during the transit from the store to your homes
- The possibility of improper planting and transplanting techniques
- There may be poor cultural practices present
It is tough for trees or shrubs bought from stores and may even have a 3 to 5-year covering period from being transplanted from their pot and into your garden’s grounds.
How best to acclimatize store-bought plants from transport shock?
Consider the actions below to help your plant from dying off due to transport shock; This includes transferring the plant into a garden bed, the garden itself, and transferring the plant into another pot.
| How to help the plant acclimatize? | Type of store-bought plant transfer. | What does it do to help the plant? |
| Choose a protected area to acclimatize the plant. | Pot to gardening bed | Within a week, set your plant into a protected area when the frost has passed (take it indoors, however, if there is a frost forecast). Water the plant when its soil dries up but refrains from fertilizing it. Make the plant stay outdoors longer with each passing day and ensure they receive the same sunlight as possible in a gardening bed. |
| Transferring the plant into another pot | Pot to pot | Choosing a proper plant pot for your plant and taking into consideration effectivity instead of aesthetics (which often lacks proper drainage mechanisms), as well as its drainage holes, will allow leeway for water to escape and prevent soil oversaturation. |
| Remove the containers that they come with | Pot to pot or pot to ground | Before transporting your plant to the ground, always remove the containers, binding, and things that hold them. This process will help prevent girdling, which is when the roots grow next to or around the plant or tree, effectively cutting its ability to look for nutrients and water in the soil. |
| Prune out dead roots during the transport process | Pot to pot or pot to ground | After removing the plant from its container for transplanting, carefully check the roots and cut off the dead ones. They could be entryways for plant root problems if they stayed with the plant. Also, if planting it into the ground and a planting hole, make sure to spread the roots well. |
Light is also essential for the growth and development of your house plants. When it comes to light, direct sunlight is way brighter than the room’s lighting, and it may be hard to realize this with your eyes.
To prevent this, you must pick leafy house plants as they adapt to low-light conditions and easily survive in your darkroom.
How to tell when my store-bought plants are dying
If your plant lacks the requisite survival conditions, it will start turning pale or shed its leaves. Eventually, it will wilt.
A sign of your houseplants dying would be the tips of the leaves turning brown and, at some point, starting to soften.
After some time, the plant will die, especially when you don’t correct its conditions.
Tips for preventing store-bought plants from dying
Though you have bought these plants and look healthy while they were in the stores initially, the possibility of them dying off is high if you expect them to thrive while not doing your part in making it thrive.
Below are some tips on ensuring that your store-bought plant can thrive and bloom in your homes.
Divide the store-bought Plants
Most supermarkets pack the herb plants too closely such that they struggle for space, food, and nutrients. Therefore, the plants are healthy but are packaged in a way that requires you to handle them carefully to ensure their survival.
You should divide these plants to increase their chances of survival, and since they will be continuously looking for their nutrients, there won’t be high competition.
Divide the plant into three and plant them in three different pots. Keep them at the previous height and firm the soil gently.
Also, avoid overwatering the plants and place them in a sunny environment with the conditions for survival.
Proper Watering must be done for store-bought plants
Store-bought plants are delicate and have been adapted to a regular watering schedule in the supermarket, and if you fail to water them, their roots will dry up.
Improper watering can mean less or too much water, resulting in the death of the plants.
By looking into the symptoms, you can also see when you have overwatered your plant to possible death: growth stops, the leaves turn yellow, and the plant wilts.
All these and how to save your plants in this situation are covered in this article I wrote on overwatering plants. Feel free to look into that here.
Also, if the soil underneath the plant is too moist and has poor drainage, it will rot the plant’s roots. This problem is solvable by removing the dead plants.
Also, ensure you allow the soil to dry after each watering session and avoid watering the plant unless the soil is dry when touched.
Store-bought plants should have their soil evenly watered
To ensure proper airflow within the soil and roots, you must water the soil evenly. It will also help prevent the build-ups of chlorine and bacteria in the soil.
To avoid the build-up of chlorine and bacteria in the soil in your store-bought plants, water the soil from the top slowly and consistently.
Alternatively, if your pot has a drainage hole, fill a bowl with water and place it in it. Leave the plant for one hour to suck the water before you discard the remaining contents.
Look into sufficient fertilizers for store-bought plants
The ecosystem has natural ways of recycling nutrients after decay of twigs and dead leaves. Since the houseplant will lose its leaves, you can replace the lost nutrients using some fertilizers.
However, most homeowners exaggerate their usage and use excess fertilizer, damaging the leaves.
Store-bought plants can also die from fertilizers after the evaporation of water, which leaves solid salts behind.
Even after watering it, the over-fertilized plant will still wilt, and the leaves will also soften. Alternatively, the tips of these leaves could change to brown color, and when this occurs, it’s time to reduce the number of fertilizers.
Most store-bought plants have enough fertilizer or organic manure, and you won’t need to add fertilizers.
Bottomline on why store-bought plants die so quickly.
Unlike our ancestors, who used to live in fields of greens and animals, our modern life has dictated that some of us live in urban cities with refrigerators, cubicles, computer screens, and noisy streets.
We try to reduce the urbanity and shades of concrete by growing indoor plants or buying store-bought ones and fostering their growth.
Their existence in our homes brings beauty and a great sense of well-being, which we, in turn, should also give to them by looking into what helps them stay healthy. Hopefully, the steps above will help you do that for your plants.
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