By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia

“Come in here and look at my room,” my oldest daughter yelled
down the hallway.

I wasn’t really sure what I was going to see when I got to
Lindsay’s room. It already looked like the night sky with all the
glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

Had my 18-year-old put up more stars? Or had she just put more
stars on the ceiling fan? Were the crickets she feeds her pet
tarantula loose and jumping all around her room?

Thank goodness. The crickets and tarantula were where they were
supposed to be.

Hey, wow!

I was pleasantly surprised to see she had organized her room. And
not only that, but she had tossed out a lot of junk she had
collected over the years. It really looked good.

That’s when I noticed the foliage plant in a tiny pot sitting on
the night stand by her bed. I hadn’t seen it before. “Are you
watering this?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t yet,” Lindsay answered.

“Well, do you see these dried out and brown tips on these
leaves?” I asked her. “That’s telling you there’s something wrong
with the plant. Now the trick is finding out what the problem is.”

What is it?

Brown and dried-out leaf tips can be caused by several things:
humidity too low, temperatures too high, not enough water. Any of
those three can make the leaves give off too much water, causing
the leaf tips to dry out and become brown and crinkly.

And it could be a combination of all three.

The plant in Lindsay’s room is a Dracaena. This plant can develop
brown leaf tips rather easily if it’s not given proper care.
Lindsay said she hasn’t watered the plant, and that might be all
that’s wrong with it.

But Lindsay’s bad about turning up the temperature in the house,
too. I keep turning it back down — I’m considering putting a
locking box on the thermostat control.

I just don’t think temperature is the problem with the plant.

A possibility

Now, low humidity could be a possible problem. Plants require a
humidity of 50 percent to 60 percent. In most centrally heated
and cooled homes the humidity runs about 10 percent to 30
percent. So increasing the humidity around the plant would
certainly help.

How can she do that?

There are several ways. But the easiest might be just to put the
plant in the terrarium with the tarantula. She has to make sure
the spider has water and has to mist water inside the terrarium.
That should make the humidity in the terrarium higher, which
would be great for the plant.

Let’s see — she’s got a tarantula, crickets, a little pool of
water, a plant and stars overhead. Man, it’s like a jungle in her
room.

(Mike Isbell is the Heard County Extension coordinator with
the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.)