Overwatered jelly bean succulent is not a problem to take lightly, and you need to address it immediately to save the plant.
Sure, overwatering can cause many issues with your Sedum rubrotinctum, but some factors, such as a small pot, poor drainage, or low temperatures, can also make overwatering worse.
In this article, we bring them, so you learn how to prevent overwatering your lovely succulents and keep them safe and healthy.
Contents
What Factors Can Lead to an Overwatered Jelly Bean Succulent?
The factors that can lead to an overwatered jelly bean succulent are a small pot for the plant, poor drainage, low temperatures, and of course, poor watering habits. The effects of adding too much water can be amplified greatly by these factors, besides making overwatering more likely.
There are ways to tell if your pink jelly bean plant has been overwatered. The leaves can appear soft and mushy and will fall fairly easily at the slightest touch. Some obvious signs are a moist and spongy feel to the soil. Other symptoms may include yellowing or even browning of the foliage.
But if you think your Dedum rubrotinctum ‘Mini Me’ has been overwatered, it looks a bit weak and has changed its appearance, definitely separate it from others, quarantine the thing and do some thorough inspection!
Cut back on the water and let the soil dry if you think that your plant care is the reason, but check out if anything else is going on after you’ve done so. Here are the factors that might make overwatering your jelly bean plant more likely!
– A Small Plant Pot
Your Sedum rubrotinctum needs a place to thrive, and plenty of it. These Mexican beauties like to spread their stems before they harden and produce those beautiful, luscious bean-like leaves.
Many people simply grow their succulents in too small places, such as tea cups or small flower pots, all of which will constrict your succulent and prevent it from growing healthy with time.
Succulents have fragile roots, and given too small a space to thrive, the roots will begin to rot and die, causing the plant to die as well. Overwatering a pot that is small, to begin with, is much easier than overwatering a big pot, and the negative effects can be greater in the case of the former.
The roots will have too much on their plate at all times, and with the soil being overlooked, they won’t be able to breathe and will suffocate. If the yellowing is caused by this issue, your succulent may be considered a goner!
– Poor Drainage
The second on our list of great succulent killers is poor drainage. Any plant and succulents, especially, need to have a healthy root environment to grow properly. A healthy root environment means that your succulent roots live with enough air, just enough water, and fertilizer!
Remember, only just enough water will do it – too much of a good thing will kill your plants. Good drainage plays a great part here. Having good drainage in your container will ensure that excess water gets carried away quickly, the air is always present in roots, and soil particles can carry nutrients to the roots.
Without enough drainage holes or if the pot contains soil that’s not very good at drainage, then the soil will stay moist for longer, suffocate the roots, and also invite other problems such as fungal infections.
– Low Room Temperature
If you think about overwatering issues, then you have to consider that overwatering and low temperatures go hand in hand to create a host of problems for your jelly beans. Low temperatures can have the same effect on your succulent plants if you’re adding more water than the plant can actually use in this environment.
This is because if there’s not enough heat, then it will take longer for the soil to dry, and if you’re watering the plant too often, the plant will constantly live in waterlogged soil.
Frost or cold temperatures will affect your plant even without too much water being present, but with soil that’s too moist, your jelly beans will have an easier time getting cold struck too.
Severe frostbite symptoms can even manifest as crystals forming in jelly bean foliage. Other common signs are darkened spots, the plant becoming too soft to touch, or if it’s beginning to lean or collapse.
– Low Light Issues
If your plant is getting watered more often than necessary, low light can cause even more trouble. The sun won’t heat the soil, and with the soil being too moist already, your plant will have a hard time extracting nutrients from the soil and growing. You can spot overwatering and low light issues by observing leaves slowly going brown, at first being mushy and yellow.
A big reason for your jelly beans looking like they’ve had too much to drink is inadequate sunlight. In this condition, leaves are even mushier and prone to falling off. This problem is a long-term one, as plants will show symptoms only months into the problem when it may just be too late.
What Are Some Easy Fixes For Overwatered Jelly Bean Plants?
Some easy fixes for overwatered jelly bean plants are replanting in a bigger pot, improving drainage, raising the temperatures, and moving the plant to a place with more sunlight. Fixing nutrient deficiencies caused by overwatering is also a must, and so is combating fungal diseases.
As you can see, all of these jelly bean issues will stem from the plant being overwatered! Your Sedum rubrotinctum ‘Aurora’ pink jelly bean plant will particularly be prone to issues related to overwatering, so here are our natural and tested solutions!
– Ensuring Good Growing Space
You need to choose a proper container for your succulent! As a rule, it’s good to have a container that’s twice the size of the total root depth and thrice the size of the total width area of your roots! This will give your roots plenty of space to breathe and develop, stay in a comfortable zone, and not be water-clogged all the time.
General advice is to repot your plant as soon as you’ve spotted any issues with roots or soil. Also, a clay pot may be a great option here, as the clay will soak up and evaporate any excess water that your jelly bean doesn’t need. Pot your succulent in a well-draining inorganic potting soil.
– Providing Good Drainage for the Jelly Bean
When choosing planting pots for your succulents, you should look at containers with drainage holes on the bottom.
Not all planting containers will have these, and you shouldn’t be looking at those, no matter how pretty they may be. Just a few holes on the bottom will ensure excess water is drained completely and that your succulent will be happy and safe from drowning.
If you do like a container that hasn’t any drainage holes on the bottom, you can drill a few holes yourself! Just make sure you’ve moistened the spots you need to drill through beforehand. For extra drainage, use clay pots and containers.
Also, you can add a draining mesh on the bottom of the container when planting your succulents to ensure no soil gets lost through your drainage holes.
– Resolving Temperature and Light Issues
If your succulents cannot be moved inside to a warmer spot, you can buy frost cover to protect them from severe cold. Mulching the ground around them is another frost-fighting option and it will protect roots from freezing over too!
Even if the plant is severely affected, you can still save it if you can find any living tissue on it — simply cut off the surviving part and try to grow it from the beginning in a more safe environment.
Remember that acclimatization is crucial when moving your succulents from place to place. Don’t water them as soon as you’ve placed them in a warmer spot. Try to wait a few hours before they get familiar with a sudden temperature rise – even if we’re talking only a few degrees difference!
Also, make sure that you move the jelly bean in a place where it gets more sunlight exposure. This will help the plant synthesize essential nutrients and develop properly, and also minimize the chances of overwatering since the soil will dry faster in sunlight.
– Adding Nutrients to Nutrient-Depleted Soil
One thing that can get you in trouble and the most difficult problem to realize you even have is a lack of nutrients!
Your succulents’ leaves may turn yellow and eventually brown and show signs of overwatering when suffering from malnutrition. Original potting soils have some fertilizer, but these will get washed away faster if you’re overwatering the plant.
If you’ve grown succulents in overwatered soil, then fertilization is needed. Eventually, all of the nutrients would have been flushed out or dissolved to the point of not being present in the soil, and you can always add some more!
But be mindful of the application, as cacti and other succulents aren’t heavy feeders, and the salts in fertilizers can suffocate and kill your roots.
When a lack of nutrients occurs, it’s always a great idea to repot your jelly bean plants in a fresh potting mix – this way you’re safe not to have any lingering traces of nutrients and you can start feeding your succulent fresh.
You can either add a fresh potting mix that already has some nutrients inside or use a well-balanced fertilizer right after the repot. Just make sure that your new mix is free-draining.
Succulents and cacti aren’t heavy feeders, so they won’t take much fertilizer from the ground. That’s why it’s advisable to dilute any fertilizers in a substantial quantity of water before applying them to the soil, as huge amounts will only linger and can damage and burn the roots.
Feeding your succulents once a month during the growing season (spring to summer) should be quite enough for them to thrive!
– Getting Rid of Fungal Diseases
Last but not least on our list are fungal issues that arise from overwatering, and these are quite difficult to deal with. Fungal diseases often require a complete change of living conditions, repotting, and demand a quarantine regime.
Root and stem rot will be the most common diseases occurring with your jelly bean plants. Rot will easily make your jelly bean vulnerable to bacteria and further disease, and the symptoms may include discoloration, and flesh going mushy.
The best disease control method is to place your succulent in quarantine and give it some methodical approach to operation.
Cut off any sections of stems and leaves that appear affected by the disease — if this applies to the majority of your jelly bean, don’t worry, as you can easily regrow from the remaining stem.
After you’ve eliminated the rotted parts, repot your plants in new and fresh soil. Before watering your succulents, let the cut parts callous over. If you’ve experienced root rot with your jelly bean, it can usually mean that you’ve overwatered your plant, so take this as a warning to adjust your watering regime!
Conclusion
If you think you’ve been overwatering your jelly bean plant and that’s the reason it’s dying, then you now know why this might have happened without you realizing it!
Let’s reiterate how to deal with your jelly bean succulent being overwatered:
- Close inspection is a must. Stop watering your plant if you think this is what’s harming it. But bring it into quarantine and inspect if there’s anything else.
- Factors such as a small pot/restricted growing space, poor drainage, low lighting and cold temperatures can all contribute to overwatering and make matters worse.
- Replace your potting mix, choose a larger pot that has good drainage, and optimize your succulent living conditions before it’s too late.
Following these steps, you should be growing healthy jelly succulents in no time!
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