Indoor plant - leaves going brown. Why?

WittyName1

Hi,

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to gardening.
I have two pink flowering anthurium andraeanum/Flamingo Lilies in my house. The leaves on both are starting to go a little brown.
Is this usually due to too much sunlight, not enough sunlight, or not enough water?
I have them on my mantle piece and water them just once a week as per the instructions.

Thanks!

geosynchronous orbit

WittyName1 wrote: »

Hi,

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to gardening.
I have two pink flowering anthurium andraeanum/Flamingo Lilies in my house. The leaves on both are starting to go a little brown.
Is this usually due to too much sunlight, not enough sunlight, or not enough water?
I have them on my mantle piece and water them just once a week as per the instructions.

Thanks!

Too little water - although the instructions state once a week, that does not account for heating etc... they don't like wet roots but you may be allowing them to dry out a litlle too much.

As long as they are not in direct sunlight they should be good. If they are growing then they are getting enough light.

You will also need to feed the plant with a diluted plant feed about once every 4-6 weeks.
dilute a plant feed to a 20% contentration

WittyName1

geosynchronous orbit wrote: »

Too little water - although the instructions state once a week, that does not account for heating etc... they don't like wet roots but you may be allowing them to dry out a litlle too much.

As long as they are not in direct sunlight they should be good. If they are growing then they are getting enough light.

You will also need to feed the plant with a diluted plant feed about once every 4-6 weeks.
dilute a plant feed to a 20% contentration

Thanks a million!

Yeah the soil is bone dry by the time the week has passed. I'll start watering twice a week instead.
Should I remove the leaves that have started to go brown? Or can they recover?

Thanks again.

geosynchronous orbit

Plants tell you what they want but are not vocal enough for my liking

the brown patches will not recover but new leaves will grow and you can cut the affected leaves back to the base once you have replacements grown

The antuhurium, natively, lives on the side of a tree in rain forests. So think about that ....
low light because of the tree canopy. No soil up a tree. Torrential rains once a day, hot and humid the rest of the time.

Trying to recreate these conditions is not straight forward lol,

If you bought the plants and they are still in their orignal pots, consider repotting them in a 1:1:1 mix of perlite, orchid compost and coir of spageum moss.. that takes care of the growing medium.

Mantle is fine for location as long as the room is not too dry - I doubt it gets direct light.

If you repot, the mix above will not hold on to water. So the roots get a drenching and then dry off but remain moist - mist the leaves for humidity...

feed the diluted solution or add a little slow release fertiliser to the soil mix and the plant will give you great blooms for years...

houseplants are all about finding a little information about the habitiat and providing a similar environment for the plant tho thrive....

WittyName1

Thank you so much for the detailed reply.
They are still in the pots I purchased them in so I will take your advise and re-pot them using the soil combination you recommended.

Thanks again. Very informative and interesting!