My 4 foot Brug is in a large pot (about 2 feet deep and 18 inches wide. Now, it has been unusually warm here, but i'm having to water it (yes till it drains) every day as the poor thing becomes wilted. After 5 minutes it looks great again. Is it just that my soil has little water retention or something else? Also, I'm getting a lot of lower leaves yellowing. Solutions, please.
wilting Brug
fertilizer... more room for roots?
I'd put it in a bigger pot. If these guys become rootbound, and it's horribly hot out, they'll tell you by wilting and having yellowing leaves. Chances are, if you pull your brug out of the pot it's in, you'll see that it's rootbound.
It can wilt because it's dry or just because it's hot. Although, if it was because of the heat, it wouldn't perk up until it cooled off. The size of your pot should be big enough for a 4' brug, so maybe it is moisture retension. My brugs always go crazy when I repot them after a year or two.'
When I repot, I renew the soil with a third to a half of compost or soil conditioner/planting mix (which is mainly ground bark) and some mini-nugget bark mulch. The rest is usually a "soilless" mix which is usually sphagnum moss, perlite, vermiculite, ground bark and a little sand. I also add plenty of bone meal and, whenever I have it, worm castings. Then I water in with root stimulator or just liquid fertilizer. Some poor potting soils will have a lot of clay and sand which pack quickly and don't hold water well.
I always recycle soil, so renewing it with lots of new organic matter (compost, ground bark, bark nuggets) is essential.
I hope that's helpful and not overly obvious.
I always water Brugs in containers every day. It's too danged hot here. Even the ones getting mostly shade, get watered every day.
I also put a large saucer under the plant, so when I water, I fill the saucer, and then the plant gets to take that water back up during the day. Brugs generally don't like wet feet, but when it is very hot and dry, they suck up the water in a matter of a few hours, and seem to appreciate the extra water. I do this for other tropical plants that probably are rootbound in pots too small, but that I don't have room to move them up to a larger size.
Susan in Minneapolis