Calathea roseopicta is simply the epitome of beauty in the plant world. Though a sight to behold, you only need to pay attention to the temperature, nutrients, light, water, and humidity needs of the rose-painted calathea to grow it without problems; however, as you carry on reading the following article in order to learn the necessary requirements of the plant which are all compiled.
Contents
What Is Calathea Roseopicta Plant?
The calathea roseopicta is an evergreen perennial that forms clumps of large rounded leaves which are dark-green above and red below. The leaves with feathered margins have cream or pink stripes along their veins. It is a beautiful plant that is native to northwest Brazil.
Calathea Roseopicta Plant Care
This plant may be the most beautiful plant in your garden, but it is relatively low-maintenance when you compare it with other plants. To get started, here are the needed tips for you:
– Soil Requirements
When it comes to the potting mix or soil needs of your calathea, it is not a picky plant at all. You can grow it in a basic potting mix which comprises two-part peat and one-part perlite. However, the type of mix can make you spend so much on fertilizing the plant because it lacks nutrients. Therefore, you should add one-part compost to the mix.
Nonetheless, you must also make sure that the pot of your Calathea Roseopictas permits the drainage of excess water. This means that the pot should have up to three large drainage holes as well as a saucer below it. The key reason behind this is to avoid the growth of any type of fungi or even root rot from taking place.
– Water Requirements
Watering the calathea plant is super easy. You must only make sure that the soil is constantly moist and never too wet or dry. To achieve this, make use of your fingers or a moisture reader. Dip your finger or the stick of the reader into the substrate. You should water the plant when the top two to three inches of the substrate is dry.
Please ensure that the substrate and pot permit great water drainage so that the plant will not stay in a very wet substrate for up to one hour. This plant has a rhizome that can start to rot when the water in the substrate does not drain.
– Light Requirements
While this plant does not mind direct or indirect light, it also does not like the scorching heat of the sun when you grow it under direct light. The latter elaborates that you should grow the calathea plant under indirect light, for the best result. You only need to grow them in a bright but shady place that the sun does not reach.
While you can grow the plant close to a window, it is only the south, east and west-facing windows that can provide the right amount of sunlight to it. However, you may want to use shade cloth for the west and south-facing windows as the amount of direct sunlight that passes through these windows, especially in the afternoon, is high.
Additionally, you must keep in mind that in order to preserve the leaves with just the right amount of light, or else they might face sunburn when they are placed under a heavy amount of sunlight.
– Humidity Requirements
One factor that is very important yet overlooked by a lot of people is humidity. The health and beauty of Calathea Roseopicta plants rely partly on humidity, so you must put this into consideration. As for this calathea, it is not picky so long as you can grow it in a location where humidity levels are above 50 percent.
The ideal spot for the Calathea Roseopicta plant is a place with no draft as winds can easily damage the plant leaves.
Furthermore, you should occasionally mist water droplets around the leaves of the plant so that they can feel as though they are growing in their natural habitat. Be mindful and do so only in the morning the reason why is that the leaves can get dry before noon which will leave the plant thriving.
If you live in an area where the humidity is low, you might want to consider mulching. Mulching makes the Calathea Roseopicta very beautiful for sure, but it serves another purpose, which is to keep the humidity of the plant.
For example, mulching prevents water from quickly evaporating from the calathea substrate. Additionally, mulching will help prevent weeds from growing in the substrate.
Don’t worry, to mulch the plant isn’t very challenging, when you get your stones, pebbles, or other types of fancy items that you would love to beautify the pot, pour them onto the substrate so that there are two layers of mulch. This means that a layer of mulch should be on top of another layer of mulch so that the substrate below comes completely inaccessible to the eyes.
– Temperature Requirements
Every plant relies on temperature for all its life processes. For example, they wait until the temperature is just right before they start to grow, produce flowers, and know when to go into dormancy.
This means that you must get the temperature right (naturally) when growing houseplants. As for the Calathea Roseopicta plant, its preferred range of temperature is 65 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
You do not need to always measure the temperature with a thermometer. All that you need to easily grow your calathea plants is to grow them in the right region. You should grow this beautiful plant in USDA hardiness zones 11 and above since that is the best zone where this plant would be able to thrive and be stress-free.
– Fertilizing Requirements
This is one unique plant as even though it is very beautiful, it is not a heavy feeder like other plants. All you need for the Calathea Roseopicta plant is a balanced diluted solution for indoor plants.
Ensure that it is diluted to half-strength or slightly lower and then feed the calatheas every two weeks in their active growing season which comprises the months of April to early October.
If you do not want to feed the plant regularly, consider using nutritious amendment products such as coffee grounds, compost, and bone meal to amend the potting mix so that they can enrich the plant.
However, make sure to add extra perlite into the mix so that it can drain water easily. As for the large and beautiful leaves, ensure that the fertilizer has nitrogen as leaves rely on nitrogen to have their green pigments thriving.
– Pruning Requirements
Even though you love to see the striking colors of your calathea leaves you may get tired of the plant’s appearance when it produces too many leaves and grows out of your desired shape. Therefore, it is up to you to decide the best shape and size of your Calathea Roseopicta and to prune the plant when it grows larger than what you want.
Using clean and uncontaminated tools, prune the calathea leaves from their bases. Asides from overgrown leaves, you should also prune the leaves that look sick, weak, or have become pale. After pruning the plant, dispose of the large leaves and do not leave them to rot on the substrate as they can attract pests.
Propagation
When your plant is mature enough, you can propagate it so that you can have more beauty in your garden instead of going to a shop to get them. When you are ready to propagate calathea roseopicta plants in spring, use any of the methods below:
– Propagation Through Root Division
First and foremost you must be aware that below the surface of the soil or potting mix is the rhizome of your rose-painted calathea. The rhizome or underground stem is an organ through which you can propagate the plant.
All you need to do is to carefully dig the substrate and reveal it. This means that as long as you can see the rhizome and carefully remove it from the soil, you will be successful when it comes to the propagation process.
When you get the entire root system out of the soil, use a sharp and sterilized knife to divide the rhizome. Each part or division must have a stem or at least an eye through which a stem can grow. When you divide the rhizome into as many parts as you want or can, keep it on the substrate and wait until it partially dries up before you plant it.
While the cut on the rhizome is getting dry, you should prepare the potting mix or soil if you have not already. What you must do is begin by burying the dry rhizome in the substrate and then water the plant.
Lastly, you should be seeing new leaves growing in less than two weeks as long as you did it well because the plant will happily be ready to be planted. Otherwise, the leaves will fall and the plant may start to rot and this means that you did not wait for the rhizome’s cut to dry up.
– Propagation Through Cutting
Digging the substrate to reveal the root can be difficult and time-consuming. While this method is similar to the other, it is less stressful. All you need to do is to reveal the part of the rhizome from which some leaves are growing.
Keep in mind that using your sterilized knife, carve out that part of the rhizome, in order to avoid any infestation from taking place, it is very important to sterilize your tools the right way by using rubbing alcohol.
You should wait until the rhizome below the soil dries up before you cover the section where you collected the cutting. When you are ready to plant the cutting, bury it in the soil and leave a few leaves attached to it. In a few weeks, the rhizome will produce roots and then leaves. Note that you can speed up this process when you use a rooting hormone.
To propagate these plants is easy as rhizomes are hardy organs in plants. The major cause of failure in propagating this plant is when you propagate them outside of their growing season, which starts from the spring season or you may expose the cut rhizome to contamination.
However, In the summertime, this beautiful plant produces very small white and purple flowers, as you propagate it. The flowers are non-showy, but they are still fun and fulfilling to see.
As soon as you see the first flower or a sign of bloom, you should switch to fertilizer for flowering indoor plants. The fertilizer should have higher amounts of phosphorus and potassium so that the plant can grow and maintain its flowers.
Problems
Some common problems for the rose-painted calathea plant are:
– Limp Stems
When you see limp or weak stems, the first thing that should come to your mind is overwatering. This is because the roots of the plant can no longer breathe when the substrate is clogged and in time, the cell walls that give the stems their firmness will start to burst.
However, keep in mind that overwatering can also lead to root rot which will be the end of your plant. Because root rot begins when you overwater the plant, and as the roots get weak since they develop fungi, which won’t let the roots be healthy.
These roots will be damaged and they won’t let the proper amount of water reach the plant. Overall, the result will be a stressed plant with limp stems.
This is likely to happen in the cold and humid months as plants generally need less water when growing in higher levels of humidity. Furthermore, another associated sign of overwatering is wet patches on the leaves. Immediately you see that the stems are limping and look broken when you know that you did not heat them, you must cut back on your watering rate.
To fix this, you may need to take the plant outside so that the sun can help to evaporate the excess water in the substrate. Also, check the pot and substrate to make sure that they are well-drained. When was the last time you repotted the plant or changed its substrate?
– Dry Leaves Dropping
When you see that the rose-painted calathea leaves are dry and they are also drooping, you should check the room humidity as this problem usually happens in arid rooms. You can also find some similar symptoms when the temperature is very high or if you overfed your plants. In any case, these symptoms signify that you are growing your plant in the wrong environment.
The first thing you should do in this case is to increase the room humidity with a humidifier if the humidity is below average. Also, you should take the plant to a cooler spot in case the temperature of the previous place was too high. Finally, you should flood the potting mix with clean water to wash off the excess nutrients. You must make sure that the potting mix drains quickly.
The dried leaves may not come back up, hence you must prune them off so that they will not continue to consume water and nutrients just like other leaves. However, in a few week’s time, you should see new leaves growing.
– Plant Leaves Curling
What happens when you fail to water the rose-painted calathea plant? It will die, but before then, it will tell you by curlings its leaves. Even though curling leaves can indicate a high amount of nutrients in the soil, the most likely reason for this problem is lack of water. This problem is very common in the summer months when you need to increase your watering rate.
Nonetheless, preventing this problem is easy; you only need to stick to your watering schedule and observe the plant substrate. Hence, do not wait until the substrate is entirely or halfway dry before you water the plant.
Additionally, just in case you may not have enough time for your rose-painted calathea plants, you should use mulch on their potting mix so that the water does not deplete quickly by evaporation.
When you see that the leaves are curling, do not panic, instead, what you can do is water the plant. To quickly fix this problem, spray water on the rose-painted leaves. However, do not let the water stay on the leaves for a long time. Also, just in case the problem is caused by overfeeding the plants, you may need to flood and drain the pot.
– Pests and Diseases
Some examples of pests that you can find on your plants are scale, spider mites, fungus gnats, thrips, and mealybugs. Well, you must know that the presence of pests on your plants can indicate many things. For example, healthy plants easily resist pests, so when you see many problems with the plant, it simply means that you may be growing sick plants.
Fungus gnats on the plant can mean that you are giving the plant too much water or there are too many organic materials in the potting mix, so you want to check the substrate when you see these insects. Well, you must remove these insect pests as soon as you see them. While fungus gnats will not directly harm your plants, other pests such as scales and aphids can be disastrous.
If you see lesions on the rose-painted calathea leaves, it could be a sign of disease. The cucumber mosaic virus, short written CMV, causes a condition that gives the leaves some jagged yellow streaks. This disease usually does not kill the plant, but it makes the plant less attractive. You should isolate any diseased plant and prune off the sick leaves immediately.
– Dry and Brown Leaf Tips
Going to observe the beauty of your rose-painted calathea plant, you might notice that the tips of the leaves look dry and brown. If you are watering the plant as scheduled and also not overfeeding them, the cause of this problem is the exposure of the leaves to too much sunlight. Remember that this plant does not grow well under direct sunlight.
To prevent this, the first thing that you should do when you bring your first calathea home is to select the best position for it. Go for the spots that are bright but do not have direct sunlight. You can also plant the calathea under shades or canopies; just make sure that they still have access to enough light.
Well, you should also check the temperature as this problem can occur at high temperatures. In case you see this problem, you only need to shift the pot a few feet away from the direct sunlight.
– Leaves Turning Pale
Just as the previous problem can be a sign that you are exposing the plant to too much sunlight, this problem is a sign that the light is not enough.
The leaves of your rose-painted calathea can get chlorosis and will turn primarily pale because the plant does not receive enough light. Another common reason is that there is not enough nitrogen in the plant’s fertilizer or soil.
You want to give your plant as much light and food as it needs. While you should feed it with a diluted fertilizer, remember that the rate is two times monthly. Also, when there is not enough sunlight, especially in the months of winter and fall, you should use fluorescent bulbs to support the plant.
Some leaves that were pale will get their green color back when you fix the problem. After two weeks, however, remove any leaf that stays pale so long as you have fixed the issue.
FAQ
Is Calathea Roseopicta a low maintenance plant?
Calathea Roseopicta requires moderate care, making it suitable for those seeking a moderately low maintenance plant.
Can Calathea Roseopicta grow in low light?
Calathea Roseopicta can tolerate low light conditions, but thrives in medium to bright indirect light.
How do I know if my Calathea Roseopicta is thirsty?
To determine if your Calathea Roseopicta needs water, check the top inch of soil—water when it feels dry. Avoid overwatering.
Conclusion
Even though you can now grow and propagate your calathea roseopicta with ease, remember the following:
- As long as you can grow your rose-painted calathea plants above average humidity and in a spot at 65 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, the plant will grow just fine.
- Make use of a balanced fertilizer for your plants. Dilute it to half-strength and then feed the plant with it every two weeks.
- You can use any type of mulch for the plant, but to bring out its beauty, use rocks and other inorganic mulches.
- All you need to propagate your rose-painted calathea plant is its rhizome.
- Remember to repot your plant every two years. While repotting it, you can propagate it if you want.
you know all there is to know about this gorgeous plant, from taking care of it to even making sure it lives stress-free. Now, what you can do is wear your green thumbs and start planting.
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