2023 Repot Day
April 22, 2023
I have a terrible habit of only repotting my plants when they're not looking too good (sometimes on-the-verge-of-death not looking too good), and then proceeding to believe that it will be an instant fix and my plants will immediately look happy. Because of this, I have a love-hate relationship with repot day. I love giving my plants a new cozy spot to grow in, seeing how their roots have changed, and just making them look pretty. It's refreshing and cleansing to symbolically have a new start (for both them and myself!). I hate that most of the time, they continue to look disheveled and will sometimes take weeks to look like they're even remotely enjoying their lives. But this reflects something we as humans go through too - change can be stressful and it takes us time to get settled and feel comfortable.
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I only repotted a few of my plants today - my Chinese Evergreen, Wandering Dude, and Philodendron (I don't actually know what this is because it was an impulse-buy from HyVee 😬).
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Chinese Evergreen
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This guy had been dropping leaves left and right. To be fair, his soil was looking a little crunchy which is why he made the cut to be on the repot list. As I was lifting him from his old soil, all the leaves of an entire stalk just fell off which is why you'll notice he's significantly smaller in his "after" photo. I threw on some dried Spanish moss for some flair. Hoping he'll be content for the spring/summer season, but only time will tell!
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Wandering Dude
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This was a farmer's market find probably from July that I just couldn't resist - he'd had such cute itty bitty purple leaves! I remember the guy I bought it from had even told me to switch out his soil soon. Welp, 9 months later here I am finally following his suggestion! This Wandering Dude was getting pretty leggy, and brown, and crusty-looking, so he found himself at the top of my repot list as well! He got quite the haircut - probably lost more than he should have. But ya know, sometimes you need to cut away the parts of life that aren't serving you so that you can make room for new growth. I dressed him up with some white pebbles on top of his soil, told him he looked great, and put him back on his ledge.
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Philodendron (?)
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As mentioned before, this was a $10 HyVee purchase that I was super excited about - at the time I thought it was a Pink Princess, but I don't think that's what it is anymore. Regardless, I did not realize how unhappy this plant was until I started moving it around - SO MANY LEAVES WERE LOST. Again, I think they were on their way out anyway, new little buds will replace them, but it's still a crummy feeling to be ripping leaves off your plant. His roots looked good, so I'm hopeful he'll thrive in his new soil.
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And that concludes the first repot day of 2023! I'm sure there'll be more this year, but for now I'll wait with bated breath for my newly potted plants to spring back to life 🌿