Why Is My Calathea Drooping (Signs, Causes And Solutions)

Nobody wants to see their Calatheas go from gleaming and radiant to sad and droopy.

A delicate touch is needed to keep calathea at its best because of its bright, captivating foliage and temperamental nature.

But with a bit of know-how and perseverance, you’ll soon have yours glowing and lush.

Calathea leaves droop due to water stress, such as overwatering or drowning. Other possible causes for this issue include low humidity, lack of light, repotting shock, and temperature stress. While drooping leaves can be upsetting, they are thankfully easy to fix. Often, it’s simply a matter of adjusting the plant’s watering or light levels.

Let’s look at some common causes of droopy calathea leaves, and how to fix them.

Causes of Calathea Drooping

Nictinasty

Calathea is called Prayer Plants, thanks to their gentle, constant motion. Known as nictinasty, a calathea’s leaves change position as the day progresses.

In the morning the leaves descend and rise again in the evening. Like many indoor plants, calathea come from rainforests, and their daily dance is a response to changing light levels in their tropical homelands.

Before you take any drastic steps, observe the leaves at a few different points throughout the day. Does the droop correct itself each night? If that’s the case, it’s simply the natural cycle of this charismatic plant.

Lack of Water Make the Plant Droopy

A thirsty plant is a limp plant, no matter what the species. I know I feel wilted when I need a cool glass of water, and a plant is no different.

Pop a finger into the soil, to perhaps three inches. If things feel dry, you have a problem.

Water When The Soil Dries Up

Give your wilting beauty a nice soak with distilled or filtered water. After that, remember to keep them topped up by using a calendar app. Just set a reminder in and you’ll never forget again.

Calathea doesn’t need vast amounts of water, so water at least once every other week. Plants in strong light will want a little more, so I recommend once a week for these ones.

Overwatering Damages the Root System

The key to keeping a healthy calathea is mastering the art of watering. They are notoriously fussy plants and are very particular about their water levels. Soil should be moist, but not wet.

Soggy soil encourages a host of problems. Calathea has delicate, shallow roots that are vulnerable to rot.

Standing water in their saucer or tray is a dead giveaway that you’ve been too enthusiastic with the watering can. Their soil should be no more than moist.

How To Fix

Let your calathea dry out a bit. Empty any saucers or trays and keep them dry. Once your plant is no longer sodden you can re-commence watering. Once every other week is enough, up to once a week in the spring and summer.

Small amounts of filtered or distilled water are best, with no flow.

Calathea loves good drainage. Your pot should have drainage holes and a free-flowing medium. If this isn’t the case it’s probably worth re-potting.

An organic mix blended with peat moss and perlite is ideal. This will allow free drainage while retaining the right amount of moisture for your calathea to thrive.

Over-watering is the most likely cause of your drooping leaves, but thankfully it’s straightforward to correct by simply doing less!

Lack of Nutrition

Calathea isn’t the hungriest plant, but it does benefit from fertilizer during the growing season. Drooping leaves can indicate a lack of the critical minerals a plant needs to build sturdy leaves.

Apply a Balanced NPK Fertilizer

A balanced all-purpose fertilizer, such as a 10:10:10 ratio of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, is ideal. During the summer and spring, a careful application avoids leaves and stems once a month. Water your calathea first to ensure that it has access to nutrients.

Don’t be heavy-handed, as too much fertilizer can cause its own problems. You’ll know you have the balance right with lush foliage and perhaps even flowers.

Temperature Stress

Consider the temperature of your calathea’s environment. These are tropical plants, and I can’t stress enough that these dainty darlings need a cozy home to flourish.

How To Fix

Aim for a stable temperature of 65-75ºF (18-24ºC). While they can tolerate a few degrees cooler, you won’t see much growth.

Stable is the watchword. Even if the room is warm, drafts will stress your plant. Blasts of hot air will dry it out, and cold ones will damage the foliage. Check the temperature, and make sure your calathea is sitting in an area free of drafts.

Low Humidity

Calathea is notoriously fussy about humidity levels. Their distinctive glossy leaves draw moisture in from their surroundings and will dry out much faster if your humidity is too low.

Climate-controlled environments often lack that precious atmospheric moisture that calathea needs to thrive. Dry air pushes the plant into survival mode and can kill it altogether if not remedied.

Calathea like 60% humidity or above. While it may not be comfortable or practical to bring your whole building up to that level of humidity, you can create a local area of comfort for your plant.

Increase Humidity to 60%

Short term you can just mist your plant with clean, distilled water. This should increase the local humidity for two or three hours, enough to correct mild drooping.

A humidity tray or electric humidifier near the plant will give it that all-important tropical atmosphere.

It’s also a great idea to group your tropical plants together. Every plant releases some amount of moisture from its leaves, and when you group them together they help regulate the humidity in the air.

Not only that, but a mixture of tropicals makes a spectacular feature in any home.

Repotting Stress

Re-potting any plant puts it into a stress state, and calathea is no different. Roots do not tolerate exposure to air for long periods without sustaining damage, and changes in soil consistency and pH can shock the plant.

Additionally, a crisp new pot is often the inspiration to put your plant in a more prominent place, resulting in a change in light level, humidity, and temperature.

How To Fix

When re-potting, it helps to view it as a sort of surgery. Treat the patient delicately, swiftly and with consideration of their needs.

In this case, your calathea needs the same soil with similar pH and fertility levels. New pots must be well-draining, just like the old.

Make sure your re-potted calathea is returned to its original position in your home wherever possible. If the new pot won’t fit, try to find somewhere as close as possible to the original light and humidity levels.

Poor Quality Water

A common cause of problems in all houseplants is poor quality water. It’s tempting to use tap water, but most tap water is chock full of dissolved mineral salts.

Salty soil damaged the roots and prevents your calathea from using the water at all.

Water The Plant Using Rain or Distilled Water

Flush your Calathea with distilled or filtered water to remove what salts you can. If you can see salts on the surface you may benefit from repotting entirely.

Once you’ve cleared as much salt from the soil as possible, stick to distilled or filtered water and resist the temptation to take the easy route of watering from the tap. Rainwater is ideal plant water, so collect it when you can.

Insufficient Light

“Low light” is not the same as “no light.” All plants need some, or they starve to death.

Their entire biology is focused on turning the sun’s light into sugars through photosynthesis. Cut off their light, and you cut off their food.

The best calathea light level is as close to an open rainforest floor as possible – bright but filtered, indirect light.

Move The Plant To A Spot With Bright Indirect Light

Relocate your plant to a place with brighter light. Avoid direct sunlight, as this can burn the leaves. Bright but filtered light is ideal.

That said, it’s important to be careful when correcting your light level. Move your plant in stages to allow it to adjust, with a day or two in ever brighter locations until you have reached a brighter setting.

You can use an artificial light source if your apartment does not have access to natural light.

Pests Sucks the Life Out of Your Calathea

I’ve often reflected on the use of Calathea leaves in South America to wrap food and gifts.

It indicates that the leaves are free of natural defensive poisons common to tropical plants. It makes them vulnerable to pests.

Your drooping leaves may be the result of an infestation. Aphids, spider mites, and scale bugs pierce the stems of your plant with a sharp proboscis, sucking out the fluid and causing the leaves to sag.

How to Get Rid of Calathea Pests

Before you do anything, move the infected plant away from the rest of your greenery. Parasite infections spread quite quickly, and it’s always easier to treat one plant than all of them!

Take a good look at your plant, especially in the crevices and folds of the leaves and stems. Some pests can be pretty tricky to spot.

Spider mites and thrips are small, scale bugs that hide under a sugar nest, and aphids cluster away from the light.

If your calathea pest infestation is mild, it can be most efficient to prune away the infected area. Be sure to destroy the afflicted cuttings – don’t put them in your compost!

Some insects, like aphids or scale bugs, can be removed by hand or a little rubbing alcohol on a cotton tip. Others, like spider mites or thrips, can be sprayed off with water.

Next, apply an insecticidal soap to kill off any nasty creepy crawlies you may have missed. It may be necessary to treat your plant repeatedly as eggs are often surprisingly resistant to treatment.

For more severe infestations dispose of the plant, pot, and all. Sad though it may be, a small sacrifice is worth it to prevent your entire indoor jungle from succumbing to infestation.

Fungal Diseases Causing Droopy Calathea

The same hot, moist conditions that calathea need to thrive are also unfortunately perfect to incubate disease.

The precision watering required of calathea leaves them vulnerable to fungal diseases, and stem and root rot are often problematic if the roots show black, mushy areas that likely rot, the cause of your sad droopy leaves.

How to Fix

Treating calathea root rot is twofold – a new pot and less water. Plants with root rot need to be repotted with a more free-flowing mix into a container with suitable drainage holes.

Wash the roots carefully in free-flowing water to clear away the dead roots.

It’s also a good idea to prune back the leaves. Without a robust root system, they will likely die off anyway.

Removing them will give your plant a chance to regrow its roots without tending to the demands of its leaves.

Like many things, prevention is always better than cure. Never leave your calathea sitting in standing water, and be careful not to over-water.

Make sure your space is well ventilated – it’s not just suitable for your plants, but for you, too.

Excess Application of Fertilizer

Fertilizer is potent, and its application makes it easy to make mistakes. Too much fertilizer can burn your plant, damage the roots, or feed the bacteria and fungus that cause disease.

In addition to droopy leaves, over-fertilization will cause yellowing of the lower leaves, browning in the tips and edges of the leaves, and in extreme cases visible buildup on the soil of the plant.

Apply Fertilizer Sparingly

Your best cure for over-fertilization is to flush the plant, effectively washing the excess fertilizer from the soil.

• First, remove any visible fertilizer buildup that may be visible on the surface of the soil.
• Next, deeply water the plant until water flows freely from the draining holes, allowing all the water to flow out of the pot. Do this two or three times.
• Finally, trim away any yellowed or damaged leaves.

Refrain from fertilizing for at least a month, and as this process also deeply waters your plant it’s a good idea to lay off the watering too until the soil has had a chance to dry out.

Only fertilize during the spring and summer months, as the plant puts out new growth. Be sure to water beforehand to allow the mix to reach the plant’s roots.

Root Bound

When a plant grows too large for its pot, its roots begin to interlock. This tangled mass can’t access water or nutrition in the soil, and the plant begins to suffer.

This is how to spot root-bound calathea plants – Place two fingers around the base of the plant. Gently flip the pot and pull the plant from the pot.

If the entire mass of the plant quickly moves from the pot in a solid lump, it’s time to re-pot. Roots inching above the pot rim or out through the drainage holes are also clues.

Repot the Plant

Calathea generally requires a new home every two years, and it’s best to re-pot them in the spring. However, a truly root-bound calathea plant needs rescue immediately.

Choose a pot an inch or two wider than the old one. While it’s tempting to give a root-bound plant a much larger pot to spread into, root binding makes it hard for the plant to spread its roots and the new soil is likely to become stagnant, the perfect home for more root rot.

This is a great opportunity to ensure your fussy plant gets the necessary drainage. A potting mix with plenty of peat moss and perlite is best.

Make sure the new pot has at least two good flowing draining holes – for calathea, the more the merrier.

No matter how efficiently you re-pot, it will take a while for your calathea to bounce back, so be patient.

Why Is My Calathea Drooping After Repotting

When you move a plant from one place to another, you must cut some of its roots. This happens because it was hard to get them out of their pot or because they had grown so much that they couldn’t be moved.

Direct exposure to sunlight or open air would damage the roots, so they should never be exposed to these conditions. They are very fragile, so their function can be harmed if they are handled.

You may notice a droopy appearance when you move it into its new pot because of this reason. Don’t water too much after transplanting, which can worsen the situation.

• Only change the pots of your plants if it is vital. Prepare a well-draining capacity soil mix. 
• Do your transplanting in the spring and summer when the days are longer, and there is less direct sunlight. 
• Remove the plant as quickly as possible without removing the root ball. You don’t need to remove the soil clinging to the plant as long as it appears healthy. 
• Give it some time to adjust to its new surroundings by watering it usually. It will soon appear rosy and healthy again.

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