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Why do my plants always die?

Updated: Jun 11, 2020

Plants survive mainly on these factors:

1. Light

2. Water

3. Air

4. Temperature

5. Nutrients/Fertilizers


1. Light includes sunlight and artificial lights.

Different light intensity (lux) and wavelength is required for different plants.

Simi is lux and wavelength i tell you later.


2. Water includes method of watering and (i'd add) temperature of water.

Different plants have different tolerance level of watering.

You frequently hear people say do not over water or under water.

3. Air includes oxygen and humidity.

Different air content is required for different plants.

4. The optimum environmental temperature varies for different plants.

An optimum temperature will result in highest productivity in photosynthesis.

5. Nutrients include macro and micro nutrients.

Different plants require different levels of nutrients to survive.


All of the above factors contribute to the success of respiration and photosynthesis, which is why it is so important to have a balance of all of them in order to survive. If you're done absorbing these content and don't want to know even further, you can skip to the last paragraph and get your answer straight away.


Why is the success of photosynthesis so important for the plant to survive?

The process of photosynthesis gives the plant a type of energy to function essential cell activities.

carbon dioxide + water + light energy → glucose (aka food/carbohydrate/sugar) + oxygen


This "food" produced will provide a different kind of energy needed.


Why is the success of respiration so important for the plant to survive?

The process of respiration provides energy that drives cell activities.

This one is the energy that we mean when we put battery for something to "run".

glucose + oxygen carbon dioxide + water + energy (ATP)


You probably already realised that photosynthesis is respiration in reverse.

Knn sibei chim hor? Basically photosynthesis will help respiration to help photosynthesis to help respiration ok. That's why both are very important.


There's probably (I hope) a lot of questions in your head now, like why didn't i put "light" in front of the word "energy (ATP)". Hmm very good question. If you want to know how in-cell-depth photosynthesis works, you can put in a request and i'll try my best to explain as simply and as accurate as possible.


External nutrients serve different functions in the cell but they are also important.

To put it in a relatable context: My body may be healthy and running but I always have hair loss because my body doesn't have enough Zinc. Which doesn't make me look pretty enough.

So to answer the question above, why do my plants always die?
Ans: You accidentally killed it because you didn't understand what it needed to survive.

Most of the time the area that we choose already have some essential environmental factors that allow plants to stay alive. Unless you choose to put a plant under your bed. Then you'd be building an exceptional absolutely unnecessary greenhouse under your bed. But that's pretty cool too.


An additional information that you didn't ask for:

The reason why certain plants are so popular is because there is less need to control certain factors like watering. In short, people tend to pick those plants that require less maintenance. Well, naturally.



Check out the video below as i elaborate more on the points above.


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Food for thought: Do plants photosynthesis to live, or do plants live to photosynthesis?

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