What should I check first when my monstera has yellow leaves?

Does the yellowing start at the bottom of the plant or at the tips? Are the veins still green while the rest of the leaf fades? That points to a nutrient deficiency. Look under the leaves for tiny insects or white specks.

Monstera Leaves Turning Yellow: Causes & How to Fix It

Check these first

Does the yellowing start at the bottom of the plant or at the tips?
Are the veins still green while the rest of the leaf fades? That points to a nutrient deficiency.
Look under the leaves for tiny insects or white specks.

Most likely causes

From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.

Waterlogging Root Decay

The plant wilts even though the soil never dries, and the lower leaves yellow. Pull it up and the roots have turned brown to black with a distinctive rotten smell.

How to identify and treat: Waterlogging Root Decay

Anthracnose

Light brown to dark brown round lesions with sharp margins form on leaves and fruit, slightly sunken in the center. In wet weather salmon-pink slimy spore masses ooze out on the lesions.

How to identify and treat: Anthracnose

Rust

Small raised orange-yellow to red-brown pustules form on both leaf surfaces, then rupture and release powdery spores. Heavy infection yellows the leaves and kills them early.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Rust

Other possible causes

The three above are the causes on record for this symptom.

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what monstera leaves turning yellow is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.

Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.

Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.

Log this problem free App Store

Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.

Written byYasuGrowing vegetables and fruit in Chiba, Japan, and building Gadenin. Corrections are welcome. 15 years of growing.