Hi Tribe, I hope you all are leading a green life at your best. This summer we had one unfortunate incident at home related to my baby plant. I have a tiny curry leaves the plant. It’s a fresh green curry leave plant. I love the smell of curry leaves & I use its leaves in my cooking along with other herbs from my edible garden, read here more.
As our apartment is facing north, we don’t get direct sunlight entering our house through windows. This orientation is very useful for saving electricity for air-conditioning during summer, but not very good for our plants. They mostly thrive on indirect sunlight.
One weekend when I was working & I told my husband to keep our baby plant in the garden downstairs just for a while so that it will get direct sunlight hoping it will help the plant grow better. From my experience, it is always better to show sunlight to outdoor plants especially early in the morning when the sun is not harsh. However, my husband, being short on time that day, did not want to wait with plants in the garden or leave it there. Instead, he did the biggest mistake. He kept the baby plant in our locked car during the hot afternoon. After a few hours when he remembered about the plant, he found a burnt curry leaves the plant in the car.
Because of lack of ventilation in the car & in a closed system like car temperature always increases beyond ambient, the plant was suffocated & burnt. Feeling guilty he brought the baby plant to home & watered it. I was quite sad after losing my baby plant especially because of an un-thought of action. Later on, we kept watering the plant as usual but without any good results.
Just as a last resort, I tried a trick, which I learned in geography textbooks during my school years. I threw some sprout beans (moong beans) in that plant pot. I remembered learning about Indian farmers practice those who grow the main crops like wheat, rice. They grow legumes once in two years in the same farmland, to refresh the soil & add some nutrients in their farmland. The beans and legumes while growing leave nitrogen in soil adding fertility to it.
Miraculously my baby plant got some more stems with some fresh green leaves within 5-6 days. Though the upper part of the plant was burnt & I trimmed it later. But these leaves at the bottom stem proved the legumes benefit of adding much necessary nutrient to the soil, nitrogen.
I felt this experience is worth sharing with you all, where we learn few theoretical things in the past when used in practical life can be life-saving (in this case life of my baby plant!). I am listing a few lessons I learned from this experience,
Never use your car to store living things not just pets but not even plants, especially during summer afternoons.
Whenever you have to add nutrients to your plants (or give them new life) growing sprout beans in the same pot is beneficial.
Never throw away any damaged (or burnt) plant, you can revitalize it.
This was definitely our successful attempt to restoring habitat in the window garden!
Other tips to remember when reviving and restoring dying plant
Remove all brown, yellow, wilted parts of the plant, so that plant is not wasting its energy in those parts.
Never fertilize a plant during the troubleshooting phase. Fertilize the plant only after it springs back to the healthy phase. I always use my homemade compost, the best organic fertilizer you can feed to your plants. Read more about composting here.
Be patient with your plant. Some plants take longer than others to recover, so give it the time it needs.
Home remedies for adding nutrients to deficient plants
Your plant stopped flowering? Add sour curd, they start blooming again
Iron deficiency, yellowing green leaves giving a spidery look to the leaves? Give iron water to your plant. Keep water in an iron vessel for 2 days or soak iron nails in water and pour that water into the plant pots, this works like magic.
Always remember to cut off all the brown bits of the plant and you’ll get even more growth. (I kept dried or burnt bits just for the photo purposed and chopped them later).
Here is another example of reviving curry leaves plant after a few years with the help of legumes. This plant was burnt when my self-watering mechanism failed when we were traveling in summer.
I hope this post will help you revive your dying plants. Don’t forget to download our free checklist for ‘keeping plants alive’ at your home and garden.
Hello, did you through in full mung beans directly into the plant pot or sprouted them first before putting them in? Thanks! Trying to keep my baby curry leaf plant alive
As our apartment is facing north, we don’t get direct sunlight entering our house through windows. This orientation is very useful for saving electricity for air-conditioning during summer, but not very good for our plants. They mostly thrive on indirect sunlight.
Hello, did you through in full mung beans directly into the plant pot or sprouted them first before putting them in? Thanks! Trying to keep my baby curry leaf plant alive
Hi Shivaly, let your mung beans sprout in the soil, that’s when they’ll start releasing much-needed nitrogen into the soil. Good luck!