One of the most popular herbs in the home garden is the Lavender. In fact, it has been around for a very long time and it still grows wild in Europe, Asia, Australia, and USA.
One of the most unique things about lavender is that it can grow as a plant at ground level. But what causes the Lavender plant to die out?
Some of the major causes of Lavender drying out
1. Lack of nutrients
When a plant dies out, it is due to a number of reasons. Sometimes, the reason is a lack of nutrients in the soil. You need good soil structure to promote the longevity of your plants. If the soil is not a structure, it will not allow the roots to stay in the ground and grow properly. The roots will also rot and eventually die.
2. Too much water in the soil
Other times, the problem with the soil could be too much water. When plants get too much water, they can rot because they are so heavy. Too much water can also drown the roots as well, which can cause the plant to die.
When the soil lacks the essential nutrients, it can also kill the plants. Good nutrients, like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, are what make the soil hard and healthy for your lavender to grow in.
3. Starving roots
When the roots are starving of these vital nutrients and they are not getting enough water, then they will eventually die.
This will result in a plant that looks dead. The most common sign that your lavender is about to die is a white powdery substance on the exterior of the plant. It will begin to wilt. If you see this happening, you should move on because the dying lavender plant needs to be removed quickly.
Sometimes, people try to revive their dying lavender plant by putting water in the soil. When this happens, the liquid from the water will wash away all of the nutrients that are in the soil, including the potassium and phosphorus that your lavender needs to grow.
Therefore, the plant will not have enough nutrients for it to produce new leaves. You may also see some spongy leaves on your lavender plant.
This is caused by the soil being too dry. You should water more often and water deep down into the soil to give the plant the moisture that it needs.
How to Prevent Lavender from Dying:
1). Fertilizing your Lavender: Is it important?
Now, I want to talk about what you can do to prevent dying plants from happening. One of the best things you can do to prevent dying plants from happening is to fertilize your plants every three weeks during the growing season.
Make sure you use a fertilizer that has a good phosphorous content.
2). Pruning your soil
Another thing that you can do to prevent dying lavender plants from occurring is to prune your plant regularly. Pruning your plant helps to keep the amount of oxygen in the soil high.
Lavender leaves drooping
Drooping leaves of lavender are a common sight in spring and autumn. If you notice your lavender growing bushy flowers and have them drooping towards the ground, you’re seeing a symptom of overwintering (first year dormancy).
The leaves may be browned with yellow before becoming overweight. Overweating is natural during the fall or winter but can also occur in the spring when there is a large rainfall.
A simple way to tell if your lavender is blooming is to watch it closely as it blooms. If the leaves are falling to the ground, this means the plant has produced enough to use up. You can further diagnose an overwintering plant by seeing if the main body of the leaves have a yellowish tinge.
Another tip is to determine if the plant is producing enough to provide food for the birds feeding on it.
The most dramatic signs of overwintering are the number and colors of the falling leaves. Lavender typically produces purple-blue flowers in late summer. Spring flowering is usually a vivid pink. As the plant tries to conserve water, it will produce leaves that are less than perfect – meaning these are also less attractive to birds.
To solve this problem, it’s important to give your lavender leaves some time to recover from the stress of pollination before trying to fertilize it.
Also, it’s a good idea to harvest your lavender plants when they have bloomed for the season. By contrast, late summer flowering means that you shouldn’t prune your plants until the last frosts have died down. If you want to get all of the leaves you need, you can harvest them right after the flowering period has finished.
The reason your leaves droop in the fall is that the floral tissue has expanded during the warm months but remains constricted as the plant experiences temperatures that are below what it prefers to be in.
This constriction causes the cells contained within the tissue to shrink, making the flower smaller. The constriction of the leaves is also a cause of loss of coloration as well as reduced fragrance.
In order to compensate for the shrinking constriction of the leaves, the plant puts on more foliage. But, if the leaves continue to shrink, they stop providing the nutrients the plant needs to survive and eventually die.
Avoid too much sun
One solution to alleviate your lavender leaves drooping problems is to make sure you don’t leave your plants exposed to too much sun.
It is especially dangerous to let your lavender leaves grow too tall since they may block the sunlight from reaching any of the blooms. Also, don’t over-wilter your lavender plants either. Wilting your plant will only encourage the drying out of the leaves.
How to revive a dying lavender plant
So you’re looking for how to revive a dying lavender plant? The Lavender is a beautiful perennial flower that blooms in the Spring. If you’ve been around the flower garden for a while, you know that with each new year the plants seem to die a few days earlier than they did the previous year.
To revive a dying Lavender, do these:
i). Use moist soil
The first step is to make sure the soil is moist. I recommend that you use an organic soil mix and add one tablespoon of lime per 5 square feet of area. This will help keep your roots nice and moist and it will also slow down any rotting that might occur.
It’s important that you don’t over water your plant. Drying out your plant will cause damage to its roots as well as killing the plant.
If you are going to be keeping your Lavender indoors, you should water it every day and then keep it inside for the rest of the time.
ii). Introduce beneficial insects
The next thing you need to do is to get some Beneficial Insects to get into the hole where your plant is falling. If you don’t have any, then you can just use an old blanket or t-shirt.
I recommend that you go to your local nursery and purchase a couple of bumble bees to place in the hole.
Once you have the bees in the hole, put the dying lavender plant in the bottom of the hole and press down on the roots for a few minutes. Now you should have a nice healthy plant with plenty of color!
I’m going to assume that your falling Lavender plant isn’t falling directly on to the ground. The soil that the plant is resting upon will probably be too dry and therefore the plant won’t be able to root.
It may also get spongy from the lack of water. In this case, you should take some additional soil and add it to the top of the dying lavender plant.
Make sure to replace the soil in the bottom of the hole with a new one. This will help the plant have a better root system and will make it easier for it to root in the new soil.
When you are ready to transplant your lavender into the new container, I recommend that you put it right up against the wall, so that it’s higher than the roots. Then just put a good tarp over it and you’re done.
Conclusion
Now you know how to revive a dying lavender plant. I hope that it’s going to take off and become popular again.
In fact, I even heard that my neighbor has a plant that’s blooming now!
I’ve always found lavender pretty tough to maintain, but this process seems to take care of that problem nicely. Now I just need to get an indoor herb garden started.