My potted plants keep dying :(

[sfagan2022]

I've been trying to carefully look after my potted plants by getting suitable plants for shade / sunny spots and the right type of soil but I can't keep most of them alive beyond a week! Is this normal?

How much water are you giving them ? Dead within a week ??

How big are the pots? Even small plants like annuals need quite large pots because they dry out very quickly in the summer.

I've got large pots. I'm watering daily unless raining. I actually wonder if the garden centre sold me a bunch of diseased plants as even my rose bushes I planted in the ground are dying!!! I thought maybe the snails were eating them and killing them off

Do the pots have drainage holes?

How wet is the soil in the pots?

It has been really hot and dry recently, so the rose bushes in the ground will need watering too while they get established. A full watering can per rose, a couple of times a week. Water slowly to make sure all the water soaks into the soil at the base of the plant, don’t let it run off into the rest of the flower bed.

If the plants looked perfectly fine when you bought them then perhaps disease isn't the answer.

You shouldn't need to water more than twice a week at the most. If you're doing it every day then either the pot is damp at the top but totally dried out at the bottom, or the whole pot is waterlogged and the plants are too. Too much water often turns the leaves a pale yellow before dying off.

So, water each pot thoroughly, move onto the next and do the same, then return to the first pot and do it again. This is to give the water in the first pot time to absorb into the soil/compost, because if the pot is totally dried out, then the water will run straight through, as the soil/compost will have shrunk through dehydration.

If waterlogging is the problem, are the pots stood in saucers which are full of water? If so, then empty it out.

Have you fed the plants? Through summer they need feeding once a week. There is a variety of feeds available, but I've always used tomato food for everything and they love it.

As a PP mentioned - drainage hole. Do you pots have any? If not, there needs to be a good amount of broken pot/stone/large gravel etc to prevent the roots from becoming waterlogged.

Also, check that there has not been any chemicals sprayed anywhere near them, not just from your garden, but neighbours too. If any weedkiller has been used near them, this may be your problem. If the WK gets on the leaves or the plant takes it in via its roots (this is if any residue lands on the surrounding ground area) it can take several days to show sickness in the plant.

Finally slugs and snails. Because my pots are stood on a gravel bed and have copper tape around the bases, they don't seem to bother with mine - or maybe I don't have tasty plants, I don't know! I also have frogs and hedgehogs in the garden which like to each the slimy ones, so check to see what you can do there.

If non of these applies, look at the plants/flowers/leaves. Are there any bugs eating at the leaves - there may be holes? I have upwards of 60-70 pots in part of my garden, and a few weeks ago I found whitefly on one (looks like tiny white dash lines). So I isolated the pot at the end of the garden, gave the plant a good blast with the hose, then sprayed it with a mild mix of water and washing up liquid (I don't use pesticides). Once the plant was cleared, it went back to the pot garden.