Last summer my parents came up for a "fix it" weekend where they helped me with tasks that are difficult to accomplish by myself. One of the tasks was to re-pot the split leaf. We bought a ginormous pot at Home Depot - the largest one we could find, and we bought massive amounts of potting soil. It was a job for all three of us, but we managed to get Audrey out of her old pot and into her new pot without much hassle! We straightened her up a bit and tied her to a new stabilizing stick. She looked great! :-)
When we pulled the plant out of it's old pot we found a bit a "buried treasure" - in the form of about 30-40 medium sized "Barren River Rocks" - obviously placed there by my grandfather when he potted the plant 20+ years ago! This was such a surprise! We hadn't realized that Dr. Ben would have been the last one to pot the plant! He's been dead for almost 18 years now and we have pretty much uncovered all the "surprises" he left for us, except this one! Not only that but the rocks clearly came from my grandparents house on the Barren River Lake in KY - a special place for all of us that was sold a few years after my grandfather died, but that's a story for another post!
Oh and also there was the rubber part of a toilet plunger down in there. We aren't sure what he was thinking with that, but we pulled out it out too! Mom and I painstakingly washed the potting soil off the rocks and she took them to give as Christmas presents to family members! We put the toilet plunger head in the dishwasher to clean it up - royally confused (and grossed out) my cleaning lady a week later! LOL!). We haven't done anything interesting with the plunger yet!
Getting back to the today's point.....
After the re-potting my split leaf just wasn't the same. It did nothing for weeks. I thought maybe I hadn't given it enough water after the re-potting so I gave it a ton of water. Then I decided it needed some miracle grow, and that involved more water. The plant still did nothing. Worse yet, it's bottom leaves started turning yellow. Every few weeks the leaf on the bottom would start turning yellow, then rapidly die. :-( The plant was growing new "viny"* things - so that was giving me hope that all was not lost. But it was still not doing anything. I'd pretty much stopped watering it because the soil on top was constantly wet, I figured when it dried out I'd give it a drink.
My mom has a big split leaf at her house and we had accidentally over watered it when they were out of town and my uncle siphoned off a bunch of water and that helped it so mom suggested I try that. Considering that it's been almost a year since we re-potted, and it's not gotten better, I decided it was worth a try.
Last Sunday I got a trowel and an extra pot from the deck to put the dirt in and dug a hole in the side of the pot, trying to get to the bottom to see what was down there. I stuck my hand down there and there was a HUGE puddle of water!
I decided I needed to siphon it out. The only thing I had that was a tube was the drinking tube of my platypus hydration system for hiking. Ok, I thought, I'll just buy myself a new one before my trip, the one I had was getting worn out anyway! So I went to get it, only it wasn't in the 6 places where it "might" be. A full house search began. About 30 minutes later I'd found the platypus and began siphoning.
The platypus tube, with the bite valve actually is great for siphoning. Easy to suck on and when the liquid gets close to your mouth you can let go and as long as your finger is over the other end the water stays in.
It was tedious, but I managed to siphon out about 24 oz of water! The dirt above the puddle was very and spongy so I left the hole open, much like a surgeon would! In order to get some air down there to get it to dry and to see if more water drained off. More water has drained off so I'm planning to suck some more out later today or tomorrow.
The bottom leaf had looked like it was about to start the death march - however it hasn't yet turned yellow - maybe I got to it in the nick of time? I hope that this has helped my plant! I'll keep you posted! :-)
*The split leaf grows "external roots" that help it stabilize itself.
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