The tips of my house plant are turning brown :( what can I do to help her and prevent this?

Question

Do I trim the brown parts or the whole leaves?

I have all kinds of house plants

Answer 1

Burnt tips are usually sign on chloride toxicity.  Cl is common in municipal drinking water systems. Often, we only apply a cup or two of water to our houseplants and levels of Cl begin to build over subsequent waterings (months).  Therefore, it is a good idea to leach these accumulated salts by watering your plants heavily.  I usually will take all of mine outside on the lawn and water each plant- about 5 times!  

This will remove the salts and hopefully make your plants happier.  

PS. It's a great time to fertilize your plants after you leach them.  Elenors, VF-11 is my favorite.

Good Luck

Answer 2

well if you take the whole leaf off a new one will grow back but if you just trim the brown part of it will just look kinda weird but i think the brown part is just that leaf dieing so a new leaf can grow...

Answer 3

First try buying some plant food and adding it to your water.Also use a spray bottle to spray the plants leaves and setting it out in the sun.

Answer 4

If it is just the tip of the leaves that are browning then it is probably that you are using tap water.  If you leave the tap water out over night the chlorine will come out of the water and will not cause the brown tips to form.  Plants that are especially susceptible are spider plant and peace lily.  

Also if you are watering too often you may be drowning them.  Try to water your indoor plants only once a week and check before you water to make sure they aren't still wet from the week before. If they are moist then give the watering a pass for a few more days.  The reason the leaves turn brown with this sort of thing is that the plant is actually losing it's root supply and if it doesn't have roots then it can't take up water and the plant dies from lack of water even though it has too much.  Leaves will go from yellow to brown and then die.  Sometimes new leaves will do this.  Weird huh?  

If you aren't watering once a week then it may be too dry.  In this case they usually start by losing the oldest leaves first by browning and getting brittle dry.