Question
QUESTION: Hi. I just bought an orange bird of paradise. It was in good shape when I brought it home. I waited a couple of weeks to let it adjust and then I repotted it into a slightly larger pot with a regular potting mix + bonemeal. After a week or so the leaves started turning yellow and then dying from the bottom up. There are still a lot that look healthy at the top, but they still seem to be slowly dying at the bottom. I think it might be that there isn't good enough drainage, but I am worried about repotting it again. Does that sound like it might be the problem? And if so, would wrestling it out of the pot to re-mix the soil be too stressful for it?

ANSWER: Hi , its sounds like a drainage problem, are you over watering it? check the bottom to make sure its not sitting in water. Follow up and let me know and we will take it from there..regards Nick

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QUESTION: well. it would be logical if that was the problem. i haven't over-watered it. but i have it in one of those pots that comes with the tray attached to the bottom. and at first i thought that it had space for the excess water to escape out the bottom into the tray. but then i was in the store the other day and saw one that had the stay pulled right off. and then i realised that you're supposed to take the tray off. so the holes for the water to escape were probably plugged up for the first 4-5 days after i trasplanted it and watered. but i did pull off the bottom and haven't watered it since, and it still keeps turning yellow. and the soil just isn't drying up. it's been off and not watered for about two weeks now, i would have thought it should have cleared up by now. i don't want to water it again until the top of the soil at least dries up. it wasn't sitting in the blocked pot for that long. unless you have some different advice, i'm just going to take it out and remix the soil with some perlite and vermiculite and see how that goes. i hope it's not too tressful on him. sound like the right idea?

Answer
Hi Ashley, ok, the rootball is saturated and holding water, you do indeed need to pull it out, spread the roots and repot it with a light potting soil (no vermiculite or perlite needed); Birds like moisture, but not saturation, and the fact that its not drying out for you tells me the ball is holding too much water. This time when you repot it, line the bottom with about 2 inches of drainage medium (pebbles, crushed stone etc.) then add the potting soil. regards Nick