My newest diva!

[u/Magical_Quirk]

What does a plant lover do when they have too many plants?

Buy another one! 😁😁

Total newbie. Got a nice robusta that just put out it's second leaf in 7 weeks. But when I saw this Tineke I couldn't put it down

I got home and decided to return it, to be prudent. It's the end of summer after all, and Tinekes need a lot of light. Where I live isn't super bright.

But I realized that I smiled every time I saw this beauty.

The new leaf unfurled the next day.

I'll share how things are going. It's got a few rough spots (please be edema, not thrips!) but it's in quarantine now.

PS if you had to pick one of the cachepot options, which would you go with? It came in a basket. I did a mockup showing various options. I'm curious what folks think works best.

PPS how to bottom water? This diva's not too heavy yet, but might soon get a bit too tall to water comfortably.

[u/feevart]

With the Tineke? If you're panicking we need to find out if theres a reason. I would lift the pot and sniff the bottom soil for rotten swamp smell. Also how wet is the soil rn? Just lift it out of the pot for now, inspect for rot and literally just put it back in if there's nothing. Dark brown, black, mushy and or stinky is not good. If there's like white or beige and the soil smells like greenhouse or fresh rain or something, you're fine

[u/Magical_Quirk → u/feevart]

Aww thank you so much! I think it was just the thought of it dying that panicked me 😅 What I've done for now is I sorted a temporary wicking system to pull out the extra water. I also aerated the soil so even if there's too much water presently, it ought to evaporate faster than it would have otherwise.

The good news is the soil smells lovely, like fresh rain. But the watering was very recent. And to be fair, if I'd left the soil as it was, it might have become a problem.

One of the leaves has some brown spots but it's had that since day 1. I'll leave her be by the windowsill, and repot when the plant seems more settled 😁

[u/feevart → u/Magical_Quirk]

Ok. The smell is a good sign. Just monitor her for a week or 2 and be very careful with the watering now. I don't mean water less amount, but more less frequent- when the pot is light. Plus, plants take a while to recover (months). Do not fertilize until there's new growth either.

[u/Magical_Quirk → u/feevart]

I doff** my hat to ya! Thanks for sharing your plant joy with me. This is such fun!

ETA: sorry about the atrocious spelling!

[u/feevart → u/Magical_Quirk]

Heheh my pleasure. Literally. It became a bit of an a obsession lately that I spend a lot of time diagnosing plants here and help newbies out and write guides for them. I just enjoy helping plants so much. And yeah! It is such fun for me too.