If You Think Your Plant is Dead, Try Moving It!

I’ve had this happen 3 times now; I thought my plant was dead, put it somewhere else, and voila! Now it’s thriving.

I’ve read countless forum posts where people banish their “dead” drama queen plant to the back porch and it comes back and thrives, seemingly just to spite them.

In my case, it has been with ferns. A maiden’s hair fern, rabbit’s foot fern, and a Pteris fern to be precise.

My main problems have been with light and watering. I have 2 places I can put plants in my house; a south and a west facing window. At the south window, depending on where you position the plant, it either gets blasted with light or near complete shade. The west has privacy glass that filters the light, but the light varies a lot depending on the time of year.

I started with the ferns on a shelf just below the south window, where they were behind and underneath some other plants. That was WAY too much light still. Plus, there is a heat vent right above there and they were drying out faster then I could keep up with.

I tried putting them in the full shade spot, but that wasn’t enough light.

So now they had dead or damaged leaves, and at one point I thought each of them might be dead.

Some people banish their “mostly dead” plants the back porch, I banish mine to my laundry room with the west window.

And they ALL came back! And are the happiest I’ve seen them. I honesty wasn’t sure what was going on with the Pteris fern, because it was getting covered in little black spots and the new growth looked awful. Turns out it was also too much light.

I’m definitely leaving them there for now. I’m curious to see if they will like it all year round there, as I think they will get a loss less light in the winter.

My rabbit’s foot fern and Pteris when I bought them, verses now on the right.

Should have moved them sooner, but I honestly forgot that window existed. I just banish my plants there because that’s where I keep all my gardening supplies.

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