Experts Warn Gardeners Against Over-Caring for Their Plants — It Does More Harm Than Good

Pampering your child is a nice thing. However, overpampering can cause them to become spoiled. If plants were your babies, this would be just as valid. Neglecting your plants’ needs will turn them sad, wilted, droopy, or lifeless. But smothering them like a helicopter parent is, by no means, a wise step either. Parade Home and Garden interviewed gardening experts who shared advisory notes for newbie gardeners who often make these common plant over-care mistakes.

Over-fertilization 

You slip your hands into gardening gloves and squat down on the garden bed to dig holes with a trowel and inject the fertilizer or spray liquid with a sprinkler. While you’re doing this, let’s say, your phone rings and you leave the tools to attend the call. Meanwhile, a naughty sparrow flying across kicked the bottle of fertilizer. The entire bottle spills and empties into the bed. Fertilizer, being the “plant food,” is necessary for its growth, but an excess of nutrition can suffocate it to death.

Over-fertilization, according to Climate Hero, is when there’s an excess build-up of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil bed. This can cause nutrient burn in the plant, leading to yellowing or wilting leaves, droopiness, and limp stems. Plus, not every plant needs the same amounts and types of nutrients. Horticulture expert Stephen Pryce Lea told Parade that the best thing a gardener can do is to equip themselves with the knowledge and science of their plant and understand its fertilization needs. 

Overplanting

Space and distance are quintessential qualities even in human relationships. Plants are exactly the same. When plants are clumped too close to each other or when they are clustered too densely, it can hinder the air circulation in their bodies, thereby increasing humidity, which results in fungus and mold, per Strawberry-Plants. Overcrowding also makes plants wrestle in a competition for resources like light, water, and nutrients, which, ultimately, reduces their ripening process, making them dull.

“A common mistake I see is overplanting in the early days of a garden,” Elizabeth Brown, resident gardener at Cliff House Maine, told Parade, adding that “It is important to be patient as planting things too closely together means they are more prone to disease and often don’t reach their full potential.” Whether it is a garden bed plot or a decorative planter, disregarding the element of space and stuffing them too closely can end up injuring them.

Overwatering

Water is a basic need of a plant. But overwatering kills as many plants as underwatering. Therefore, it’s important to understand the unique water needs of your plant. You can scour Google with your plant’s tags and names, and quickly make a note of how much water it needs to be healthy and thriving. You can also buy a moisture meter and poke its spike into the soil to check whether your soil is thirsty or wringing wet. “Occasional overwatering may not be fatal if soil drains well, but done repeatedly, roots drown and leaves yellow,” said Lea.

Overwatering not only causes waterlogging but also dehydrates the plants more than they were earlier. Another point to keep in mind for suitable watering is the plant container. Denver Gardeners explains that all planters should have drainage holes. For good water retention, plastic containers are the best. Ceramic containers need to be “high-fired” so they don’t crack in the winter frost. And those crafted from wood should have rot-proof lumber. Additionally, Brown suggested touching the soil to determine if your garden needs watering.

Overpruning

Like other needs of plants, pruning is a plant’s basic need, especially when it comes to trees in urban settings. As they grow, these trees can often stretch, blocking the views of windows. Their skeletal branches can coil and curl around the buildings, garages, or constructions, obscuring lights and pathways. On the flip side, over-pruning can disrupt a plant’s growth patterns and trigger stress and shock, as A-Plus Tree explains. The stress amplifies for older trees that are unable to take the toilsome trims and heavy cuts.

Two processes experts advise against are “topping” and “lion's tailing.” Topping can leave the stub of a naked tree trunk in lingering shock, and lion tailing can strip away stored energy from naked branches and bald bark, causing weakness in the tree. The ideal approach, therefore, to pruning is “prudence.”

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