Is your monstera drooping, yellowing or turning brown even with your best efforts?
I have had these problems myself, and since studying botany, I have rescued many friends, families, and colleagues’ monstera for my own satisfaction!
Monstera can actually be incredibly tough and live well in our homes despite it not being anything near its native tropical habitat. In my experience, as long as you have a firm stem and some healthy nodes, our dying Monstera can be saved!
So if your monstera is dying, then don’t give up on it, as we’re going to look at the most likely reasons from a botany standpoint, and I am going to speak from experience rather than dish out generic advice.
1. Why Are My Monstera Leaves Turning Yellow? (Is it Overwatering or Natural Ageing?)
Yellow leaves are by far the most common sign that your monstera is stressed, but rather confusingly, monstera can turn yellow for several different reasons…Here’s how to identify them.
The Damp Potting Soil Yellow (Overwatering & Dense Soil)
If your lower leaves of the monstera are turning a pale, sort of sickly yellow, and the stems feel a bit mushy rather than nice and firm, you are likely dealing with the most common problem of all, which is root rot.
My Own Insights…I find that most people think that root rot occurs because they have overwatered it. However, the most common culprit is actually that there is a lack of oxygen in the soil.
The reason I know this is because I once ran an experiment with 2 monstera plants that I was rescuing. I repotted one back into normal potting soil that you’d find in a garden centre, and the other in a special potting mix. 1 part normal bagged potting soil, 1 part pine bark (orchid potting mix) and 1 part perlite. * My Results: The plant in normal potting soil continued to turn yellow because the peat-based potting soil from the garden centre stayed damp for days on end. However, the monstera in the pink bark mixed halted its decline because the roots finally had access to oxygen for root respiration.
When roots can respire, they can draw up moisture and nutrients to transport to the leaves. If they can’t respire, then the leaves continue to turn yellow. So my advice is to repot your monstera (into a pot the same size) with this nice aerated potting mix to give your monstera a fighting chance.
This potting mix alleviates 99% of problems with watering in my experience, and it drains so well that it is actually hard to overwater your plant!
Only water your monstera when the top inch or two has dried. You can test this by picking up and assessing the weight to see if it has dried somewhat, or use your finger, which is the most accurate method.
The Nitrogen Drawback (Natural Ageing)
Don’t worry if it’s just a leaf at the bottom of your plant that is yellowing, especially if the rest of the plant is still growing. Monstera does this in the wild and at home every now and again, an its essentially redirecting its resources from supporting older leaves to newer growth.
You can just wait until it turns brown or just snip it back to the base whenever you like.
2. Why are my Monstera leaves Turning Brown? (Splotches vs. Tips)
So, of course, brown is a sign of some kind of environmental stress, but where the brown specifically is helps us to identify what is causing it.
Large Black or Brown Indistinct splogdes (Fungal/Root problems)
If you have dark, splotchy areas that are nearly black and that feel soft, this is likely to be a fungal infection caused by the roots sitting in too much water in the potting soil.
The only way to fix this is with dramactic intervention… The hydrogen peroxide flush. In order to tackle fungal infection at the roots we need to perform a Hydrogen Peroxide flush (which is a lot less scary then it sounds).
I mix 1 part 3% Hydrogen Peroxide with 2 parts clean water. This is a fascinating process to observe. This causing a chemical reaction which realeases a burst of oxygen into the soil which effectively shuts down the anaerobic bacteria that are causing the rot, without harming the roots. It truely works like magic and I have revived some seriously infected houseplants this way, including monstera!
Take the monstera out the pot and gently risnse any potting soil off under a tap. Then submerge youur roots in the hydrogen perioxde solution for 5 minutes to get rid of the bacteria.
Crucially then clean the pot with disinfectant (which gets rid of any bacteria on the pot) andd repot it into the potting mix with pine bark and give it a water to help it cope with the shock. This always works best in the growing season but depending on the condition of your monstera you may have to do it at anytime of the year if you really want to save the plant.
Crispy Brown Tips (Humidity & possible tap water Minerals)
If just the very edges are turning brown and crispy, then your monstera plant is upset but not dying. In my experience, this is just a reaction to very low humidity (Monstera are tropical plants), or if you are in a hard tap water area with chlorine and fluoride in the tap water, this could be the problem.
The best antidote to this is to use rainwater or filtered water. Once I switched to rainwater, my monstera have looked at their healthiest.
In terms of a remedy for low humidity. I have found the humidity in most homes is fine just as long as the monstera is not near a radiator or in the draught of forced air or air conditioning. You can always mist the leaves, which helps, or you can use a plant humidifier, which is the most effective solution, but to be honest, it usually isn’t necessary for Monstera, as they can be quite hardy.
If you don’t like the brown tips, just gently snip them off with a sharp pair of scissors. Just a warning, don’t use blunt scissors to prevent bruising the leaf even more.
3. Monstera Leaves Drooping? (Overwatering or Underwatering)
From a botanical standpoint, a drooping monstera is a plant that has lost its Turgor Pressure.
However, here is the part that confuses people, it can lose its pressure due to not enough moisture in the soil or because of too much (which prevents root respiration).
The Stem Firmness Test That I Use
I always check the main stem as this is the most reliable indicator of what is going on.
- Is the stem firm and the soil dry… Then your monstera is drooping due to thirst. What I do in this scenario is place the monstera in a basin of lukewarm water for 20 minutes and allow the soil to draw up moisture through the drainage holes in the pot’s base. The pot should feel reassuringly heavy afterwards, and drooping should alleviate in the coming hours and days.
- Softer Stem and Damp Potting Soil… This is a real big problem, and you need to take drastic action to save your dying monstera.
4. Drooping Monstera with Soft Stem Rescue
If you take the monstera out of the pot and the roots are black, slimy, and smell bad, then the mother plant is probably going to be too difficult to save, but this doesn’t mean the plant as a whole is doomed. I once had someone bring me an expensive variegated monstera that was in this state, and we decided the only way to save it was through propagation.
Monstera are one of the easiest plants to propagate, and it has a high success rate, but this only works if some of the nodes and stems are still viable and not mushy.
Propagation is a very visual process, so here’s a YouTube video showing you the best way to do it.
5. Monstera Not Growing? (Stagnant Rescue)
Sometimes a Monstera isn’t dying, as such, but rather it is just a bit stuck if it isn’t putting out many leaves in the growing season.
My Experiment with Light Intensity… In my experiments, the number one cause of a stuck monstera is a lack of light intensity. This can be tricky to get right, as direct sunlight can scorch, so ideally you want an area of bright, indirect light. However, if you want the most spectacular monstera, with the most splits and holes, then a grow light can make a huge difference.
I used to live in a small apartment, and I started using my grow light that I used on my succulents on my monstera, and it grew bigger leaves with more holes and splits than ever before. The results were amazing! I would also recommend repotting in the spring to the airy pine bark soil I described earlier, as more oxygen in the soil means the roots can do their job better and boost the growth of the monstera.
My Summary reference Table…
| Symptom | The Biological Cause | My Real-World Fix |
| Yellowing Lower Leaves | Roots without enough oxygen / Overwatering | Switch to 1:1:1 Soil/Bark/Perlite mix. |
| Black Splotches on Leaves | Fungal/Bacterial Root Rot | hydrogen peroxide flush and check for damp soil and roots. |
| Drooping + Wet Soil | Advanced Root Collapse | Emergency repotting; cut away rot; callous the stem. |
| Crispy Brown Edges | Low Humidity / Mineral Build-up | Use filtered water and Pebble Tray. |
| Small, Solid New Leaves | Light Starvation / Lack of Support | Move to brighter spot; add a Moss Pole. |
My Monstera Final Thoughts…
One of the most common mistakes I see is overwatering, in that they see the monstera droop and assume it needs watering, whereas most of the time, it’s that the roots need more oxygen.
By getting your Monstera into a pine bark soil mix and providing a moss pole, you can give the plant the structural and biological energy it needs to recover. Monstera are serious jungle survivors that want to live and grow big leaves. You just have to make the adjustments to the environment so they can.