Learning how to successfully kill your plants is a valuable life lesson. When you kill a plant it changes you. The thought remains in your head. You feel bad, limp and lifeless it stares at you, blaming you for its demise. But once you learn what you did to cause the death of your plant, you remember it. The pain associated with the loss of your plants life and the money you paid for it is great motivation toward improvement. Learning from our successful plant killings should make future decisions toward living successes all the greater.
To assist you on your journey toward becoming an ex-plant killer, we have developed the list of tips below you can either use to kill your plants or to avoid their demise. Keep in mind the tips listed below are general. Each plant has its own special requirement for survival that you should follow or ignore should you choose to remain a plant assassin.
1. Choose Your Plants Unwisely
If you acquire plants that are not suited for the conditions where you plan on planting them, you can rest assured that they will probably not make it.
Review your property’s light and soil conditions. Do some research and learn about the plant before selecting it. Bring home only plants that are right for the conditions existing on your property. Ask your Professional Landscaper or Garden Center plant expert for help in selecting the plants that are right for you if you are still unsure.
2. Do Not Amend the Soil:
Our native soils are mostly a clay composite and lacking in nutrients. By not adding nutrients and breaking up the soil composition you are restricting the growth of your new plant. The roots will be fighting to break through the tough soil and will not have the strength to go wide or deep enough for a lifetime of vibrancy.
3. Plant to Improper Depth:
If you place your new plant too deeply in the ground you will successfully kill it by suffocating it. Even one inch of dirt on top of the new root ball will keep necessary oxygen from reaching the roots.
Dig a wide, shallow hole for your new plant. Plant the root ball 10% above grade, in other words 10% is showing above the soil level.
4. Fail to Water Them In:
Most plant killers fail to water in plants properly. They figure the soil is fairly moist, so why do I they need to water the plants. What they fail to realize is that watering in also gets rid of air pockets around plant roots and is often the difference between life and death.
5. Smother Them with Mulch
If you wish to kill by letting your landscaping shrub or tree rot, then by all means pack mulch up to the plant stems or trunk.
A layer of mulch tow to ghree inches over the root ball ball will help retard weed growth and retain moisture, particularly during the dry months. But too far up and the tree is not getting required oxygen to the root zone and it will simply rot itself to death.
7. Drown Them
Roots need air as well as water. Keeping the soil soaked at all times means certain death for most plants. Water logging kills by preventing vital air getting to the roots and by encouraging root rotting diseases. More plants die through overwatering than any other single cause. Often this starts with an overly dry plant that looks like it needs a drink. Success at killing a plant is achieved when it is watered, then watered again and again.
To avoid death, a loving landscaper will water well once, removing the excess runoff after an hour or so.
8. Underwater Them
Not watering your plant will kill it. Walk by the plant and totally ignore any signs of wilt or lackluster appearance. If you are lucky, you will lower the plants natural defenses enough to allow insects and disease to infest it which will hasten the effect. See Step 9 below.
If you are serious about learning how to keep plants alive, you will water according to the plant's needs. This might mean you will do a bit of research. If you do, you will find out that many plants like to be kept on the dry side and some like to be quite wet. But most plants want to be kept Evenly Moist.
We recommend that these plants should be watered daily for the first month; every other day for the next thirty days; and every third day for the following month. Plants should be carefully monitored during the first year to make sure that they are not stressed by lack of water as they become established. Establishment may take several months depending on the kind of plant and environmental conditions
9. Ignore Signs of Trouble
If you do not feel you are the plant killing type, you can simply let the bugs do it for you. One or two scale insects or lace bugs can be easily picked off or treated. An infestation can be incurable. Stressing a plant by neglect, poor care or poor environment will definitely help the bugs get a death grip and win the battle. Stress diminishes the plant's natural resistance to pests. The observant, loving plant owner will be regularly looking for common plant pests and treat them or bring to their landscaper's attention when they first appear.
10. Throw before you know.
If you are a landscape plant killer on the down low, this will save you the embarrassment of asking for help. This will definitely help you to remain a killer as you more often than not never learn exactly what you did to do your plant in.
These are the best ways we know to kill your plants. If you know of other effective avenues for plant death, please send them to us by commenting on this article or liking this article on Facebook. We would love to share them.
