NERVE PLANT Care(Everything You Need To Know)

Water

When it comes to watering your nerve plant, they do like it fairly moist. They do come originally from tropical climates, so they do get a lot of water in their natural home, and we want to mimic that by providing quite a lot of water for our nerve plants in our houses. That means that you want to water once pretty much the top layer of soil is dry.

So even though the nerve plant likes it quite wet, we still want to make sure that the soil is well-drained because if it’s not well-drained and we overwater, the plant could get root rot and eventually die. One of the signs of overwatering is that leaves start to yellow, so if your leaves are yellowing, kind of drooping, and falling off, that usually means that it has been overwatered. I water my nerve plant about every two or three days, and he seems to like that.

I just let the top little bit of soil dry out before giving him some more water. When you do water your Fittonia, you want to make sure that you don’t use water that’s too cold because it can actually shock the roots, and because it’s such a tropical plant, this will freak it out and it can actually kill the roots.

You don’t want that. One of the funny things about nervous plants is they actually faint if they don’t get enough water, so if they’re super thirsty, they’ll just kind of collapse all over and wilt, and that’s why they can be such drama queens. The only thing you have to do is water it, and then it’ll pop right back up, spring back into life.

But it was actually really funny because the first time that happened to me because I hadn’t watered it, I thought I had killed my plant. Common misconception, it can easily be brought back up with water, but I thought I had killed it, and so I freaked out. I didn’t know what to do.

I watered it, and then I was like, oh no, I probably overwatered it. I don’t know what’s going on. And so I freaked out.

I ended up repotting it with new soil because I was so worried that I had messed up, but the bad boy perked up right again later that day and he was totally fine, and he’s been going strong for eight months since. So if you do miss a watering, he will survive, but he might tell you that he’s really thirsty later by having a good bait.

Light

So nerve plants really like bright but indirect light, but they can tolerate some shade.

If it is too dark for them, especially for brightly colored varieties, they can lose color if they’re in too dark of a space, so you want to make sure they are getting some bright indirect sunlight. I personally keep mine two meters, about six feet from a northeast-facing window, and that seems to be just the right amount.

Humidity & Temperature

Because nerve plants are tropical, they do really like warmth, so their ideal is probably about 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 to 25 degrees Celsius.

If you’ve got it by a drafty window, it can put him in a shock just like if you used too cold of water. Again, because he’s a tropical plant, nerve plants really like quite high humidity, like 60 or 70 percent humidity, so quite a lot. You can achieve that by having a humidifier in your home.

I personally don’t do that just because our house is fairly humid as it is, probably about 40 percent, and we’ve got a tendency to get mold, and we don’t want that. So instead of having a humidifier, I actually just mist about every other day, and it really likes that. They also do really well if they go in a really humid room in your house, like a bathroom or a kitchen, because of the humidity from cooking or showering.

Another way you can keep your plant humid is in a terrarium. They thrive in terrariums, so if you do want an earth plant and you can’t have high humidity in your place, then just throw them in a terrarium, and the humidity from being in that space is enough for it.

Fertilizer

When it comes to feeding your nerve plants, they really like being fed probably about weekly in the spring and summer months in the growing season because they’ll put out loads and loads of new leaves. I personally use All-Purpose but that’s just because it was the easiest for me to find when I was looking for plant food, so I don’t have any special connection with that.

Propagating

When it comes to propagating nerve plants, it’s actually not that difficult. All you have to do is take a stem with about four or five leaves on it and cut it with a nice sharp knife or scissors and you stick that end into some general all-purpose soil. Once you put it in soil, then you give it a nice water, and you keep it in a nice warm, humid location, and it’ll root.

In order to keep your new cuttings nice and warm and humid, you can put a bag over it. A nice clear bag kind of creates a mini greenhouse that keeps in the warmth and the moisture of the plant and really gives it the ideal location to thrive and survive. But you don’t have to do that as long as you keep it in a warm and humid environment, give it some mists, and make sure it’s not too drafty.

Your propagation should be fine. So that’s it! That’s all you need to know in order to take care of your very own Fittonia or nerve plant. Like I said, it can be a little bit finicky, a little bit of a drama queen, but as long as you give your nerve plant the right care, they will thrive.