Dieffenbachia new leaves yellowing and dying
Plant: Dieffenbachia
How long have you owned the plant? Around 2 months
Plant Parent
The yellowing/dying leaves have progressively gotten worse. I use a soil moisturizer meter and an app to keep track of watering/fertilizing. I have watered about every 8-9 days based on when the meter dial dropped to the border between moist and dry. I fertilized it once, about a month after purchasing. It is still in the nursery pot, which does have drainage hole and a small saucer. I’m not sure if the yellowing is due to a watering issue or a lighting issue.
The overall plant:
Light Situation:
Darryl
Thanks for the photos and care details. Your plant definitely has a spider mite infestation:
The leaf surface has the tell-tale silvery pin-prick patches, caused by spider mite eating away the leaf surface:
And if you look really closely, you can see fine webbing:
IMPORTANT: you should move this plant away from your other plants as spider mites can easily spread to adjacent plants.
Here’s my detailed article on treating spider mites.
In the future, you should get familiar with how spider mites look so you can act on the infestation much earlier rather than let it get this bad.
Good luck!
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- Read my books: ‘The New Plant Parent‘ and ‘The New Plant Collector‘
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