Air Plant Designs recently received an message on our Air Plant Designs Facebook page asking for advice about their airplants. We thought we would share this with you in case you to have experienced a similar issues and seeking some answers.

Question on Facebook

I currently have an air plant that I bought (elsewhere) with no labels or any kind of identification. I am having some issues with it and was hoping you could help.

I have a plant with large silvery leaves, the new leaves in the middle of the plant have some damage and are turning brown, it also has a large dark green spot that doesn't have the fuzzy part if that makes sense.

Care I do: I use cactus fertilizer for them once a month, I spritz it daily with water and bath it in a water bath twice a week, it is not in direct sunlight but are in a well lit room. My climate is fairly dry.

Please help, any insight would be great, I really love tillandisas and would really like to get more.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my letter.

Katrina

Answer from Air Plant Designs

Hi Katrina. Thanks for your enquiry. It sounds like you are over watering the plant and the brown spots could possibly be some rot. 

In dry climates, air plants still only require watering twice weekly. Depending on the plant type, we recommend a mist spray generously sprayed every 3rd day or you can soak them for 1-2 hours in a bath (upside down) every 1-2 weeks.

The plants need to be completely dry before watering again. This is very important and should alleviate any problems with rot. Make sure to shake off any excess water from any plants with fleshy leaves. 

Fertilizing should be done quite minimally as Tillandsias do not really require fertilizing however if done every couple of months it can increase growth i.e pups and flowers. Air Plants like filtered all day light or morning sun. 

I hope this has helped you 

Cheers, Brigitte

You can find full details of care instructions on our website here: Care Instructions for Air Plants