5 Common Problems with Tropical Plants in Florida and How to Solve Them
When you’re on vacation, swaying in a hammock, sipping a delicious exotic drink, surrounded by lush tropical plants, who cares what problems those plants are battling?
Mites? Not your problem!
Not enough fertilizer? Whatever.
Bad pruning? Buzz off — you’re on vacation!
But when the tropical plants are in your own backyard, the vacation’s over, pal. Better keep an eye on those beauties or they won’t be beauties anymore.
Grab a tropical drink and get ready for Florida tropical landscaping tips. Heck, go ahead and read these from a hammock.
How to care for tropical plants in Florida? Boost their soil. Banish bugs. Feed them. Water wisely. Prune them — but at the right time, and not too much.
Let’s learn more about common plant problems, including:
Bad Soil
Beastly Bugs
Watering Issues
Getting Fertilizer Just Right
Bad Pruning
1. Bad Soil is Among Common Plant Problems
The soil in Sarasota yards isn’t always the perfect environment for plants. You could probably build a sand castle out there.
Sandy soil causes water and fertilizer to flow through too fast, so your plants don’t get the full benefits. Or you might have thick, sticky clay. Or maybe your soil is lacking the nutrients hungry tropical plants need to thrive.
If we handle your tropical plant care, your plants will get our special soil blend — a mix of surface sand and Comand Soil, a specialty compost that helps restore the soil ecosystem by providing all-important organic matter and beneficial microbes crucial to soil health.
This nutritious blend enriches your plants’ soil with great nutrients — and provides the perfect drainage set-up that tropical plants love.
2. Mealybugs, Aphids and Mites, Oh My!
OK, maybe this trio isn’t as scary to you as lions, tigers and bears, but to your plants, they’re terrifying.
There’s a whole horde of hungry munching little beasts out there with their beady little eyes on your tasty, tender tropical plants.
So pest control for tropical plants is super important to keep destructive bugs like scale, whiteflies, mealy bugs, mites, and aphids from destroying your beautiful croton, iris and blue daze.
Preventing Pests: Say Hi to Horticultural Oil
It’s a lot easier to prevent plant-eating pests than to treat them after they show up all hungry and rude.
Horticultural oil spray is a highly refined petroleum product used as an insecticide to suffocate insects and insect eggs on trees and shrubs.
Instead of poisoning the bugs, you’re basically smothering them with the oil. The oil kills any lingering insects as well as their eggs, so they won’t hatch.
Pest Control for Tropical Plants: Put Pros on the Job
Why should you leave your hammock and abandon your tropical drink for something called a mealy bug? You shouldn’t, for Pete’s sake. Plus, do you even know how to banish bugs?
Partner with Tropical Gardens’ full-service maintenance plan, and our team will be on your property each week, closely monitoring your tropical plants for early signs of dastardly plant pests.
If they notice a few aphids as they’re trimming, they’ll walk back to their truck and get the insecticide needed to keep a real infestation from happening.
It’s kind of tricky, because this motley assortment of bug munchers eat in different ways — some eat the leaves, others feed through the plant’s vascular system, sucking up plant juices faster than you can get that pina colada through your twisty straw.
So Tropical Gardens crews use an insecticide that works both ways, targeting bugs that eat through a plant’s roots and through contact with the leaves, for a one-two punch.
A full-service maintenance plan means we’re on your property often, which keeps hungry pests under control. They’re pretty scared of us.
3. Common Plant Problems Include Watering Issues
Keep your plants watered. That’s simple enough, right? You’d think so, but this is Sarasota.
As we said earlier, the soil here is often sandy, which means water drains right through it. But if you live in a newer housing development where builders brought in a ton of clay to build up the area, your soil is thick and sticky.
Different plants here have different water needs, too. You might have tropical plants that are native to rainforests, so they’re pretty thirsty. But maybe you have native Florida plants, too, which need less water once they’re settled in. It makes tropical plant care in Florida kind of challenging.
How long to water plants around here? In a nutshell, give them plenty of water at the beginning when you plant them, then ease back on the watering so their roots have to dive deeper into the soil to get a drink.
Make all of this plant watering stuff easier with a couple handy gizmos.
Drip irrigation works great for plants, and most Tropical Gardens customers have either drip irrigation for their plants or low-volume Maxijet irrigation, which waters plants through tubes attached to short stakes at the plants’ base.
Bonus: these are low-volume watering techniques, so there are no pesky county watering restrictions. But it’s still smart to water less frequently, so your plant roots have to dive deep into the soil for moisture, growing long and healthy.
Pro tip: make sure your irrigation system is in top shape to keep the water flowing.
Regular irrigation system inspections means worry-free peace of mind for you. More hammock time.
You’ll know irrigation pros are keeping an eye on things, noticing small signs of potential problems before your precious plants suffer.
4. Tropical Plant Care in Florida Means Getting the Fertilizer Right
Tropical plants are hungry. But when you fertilize them, your sandy soil causes that important food to quickly drain right through before your poor plants can even digest it. They’re out there saying, “What the heck?!” (Or possibly something worse, depending on what kind of plant they are and how they were raised.)
So they need more frequent fertilizing than you might think — several times a year. Lack of fertilizer is a common plant problem.
Timing is important, too. You don’t want to fertilize your plants too late in the fall. That burst of nutritious food creates a late flush of tender new growth that’s vulnerable to cold weather. Stick to spring, summer and early fall fertilizing for your hungry plants.
5. Common Plant Problems? Hello, Bad Pruning
If you hear your plants sigh at the mention of pruning, that’s understandable. It’s a whole big thing with them, and one of the most common plant problems.
Plants need pruning. It controls their size and shape, encourages more of those flowers you love, and gets rid of unsightly dead or diseased parts.
Plus, they get really unattractive and leggy if they’re not pruned regularly.
But not everybody is a pruning expert. We’ll actually go out on a limb and say hardly anybody is a pruning expert.
Bad pruning is really common — even among some landscaping crews. It takes real skill, and knowledge about each plant’s preferred pruning time and method. It’s a key part of tropical plant care in Florida.
In general, the best time to prune most shrubs in Florida is in late winter or early spring, when the plant is dormant.
A big exception: spring-flowering shrubs. Prune these pretties right after they finish blooming. Prune at the wrong time and you’ll cut off the buds that turn into those spectacular flowers.
How to Care for Tropical Plants in Florida? Talk to Us
It’s tough to focus on staying steady in your swingy hammock when you’re stressed about all these common plant problems.
Get on board with a comprehensive plant health care program, and experts will catch things like damaging insects and undernourished plants early, before the distressing damage is done.
Leave the soil boosting, proper watering and tricky pruning to expert landscape maintenance services in Sarasota FL who will show up at the right times with the right care to keep your tropical plants healthy and thriving year-round.
Tropical Gardens provides tailored, full-service landscape services in Sarasota that ensure your Florida landscaping gets all the care it needs.
We can’t wait to get started.
Give us a call or fill out our form today! Our team of Sarasota landscape experts can’t wait to help you out with all your plant care needs and get you back in that hammock in no time.
