My plant is dead I killed a cactus It just shriveled up i...
Last watered 1 week ago
3
No, once something dies, it’s rip 🪦. Now if you’re not sure you killed it then maybe there’s a chance. Is it all shriveled up, soft, mushy, completely brown, or hollow with no firm base in the soil? If so then it’s probably a goner. Cactus are desert plants and store water for the months of no rainfall or moisture in the air. So sometimes they look dead but there’s some life still brewing in there.
If any part of it like the top is not shriveled hollow like a mummy, you could chop it off, let it callous for a week or two, then put it in/on some dry soil and see if it grows roots in subsequent weeks/months.
With regard to what happened, you likely overwatered it. A desert plant is not used to getting too much water (or nutrients — fertilizing can be a problem), so if it gets them on a regular basis it just rots, and then bacteria and fungi that eat rotting things attack it and it snowballs from there. When a plant’s roots rot, all the cells that it normally uses to suck up and use water turn to mush, so it’s sort of sitting in a pool of water that it cannot absorb, so it either dies from dehydration or from the plant equivalent if sepsis from all the things feeding on its root mush.
With regard to what happened, you likely overwatered it. A desert plant is not used to getting too much water (or nutrients — fertilizing can be a problem), so if it gets them on a regular basis it just rots, and then bacteria and fungi that eat rotting things attack it and it snowballs from there. When a plant’s roots rot, all the cells that it normally uses to suck up and use water turn to mush, so it’s sort of sitting in a pool of water that it cannot absorb, so it either dies from dehydration or from the plant equivalent if sepsis from all the things feeding on its root mush.
