Greenwitching 101: Houseplants (The Basics)
My intention with this series is to write about growing houseplants specifically for the green witch looking to start growing plants at home. Obviously, anybody, green witch or not, can benefit from this information. These are the basic tips that I think help the beginning indoor gardener to understand houseplants.
Know Your Conditions - Houseplants are plants we grow indoors, but they are also native to certain parts of the world. Most houseplants are from tropical or subtropical regions because our warm homes are best suited to them. But even within that general zone category, there are many differences in the conditions needed to successfully grow a particular plant.
Rather than choosing a plant because you like how it looks and hoping it will work in your environment, it is better to choose one that will grow in your space. This saves the heartache of watching a plant slowly die. In order to do this, you need to understand the conditions of your home: how warm does your house get, how much sunlight does it get, and what is the general humidity?
These answers can vary widely across different zones in your house; it is best to understand the conditions where you intend to grow your plant friend. I will talk a bit more about each of these below, but you can better understand heat and humidity by buying a hygrometer. They are relatively inexpensive and will help you to continually monitor the conditions in your house.
Plants Need More Light Than You Think They Do - This is the biggest mistake I made early in my houseplant journey, and it's one many people make. Plants need light to survive and thrive, but our human eyes are very bad at judging the amount of light that is adequate for a plant. This is because we evolved out of forest-dwelling ancestors; humans have eyes that are designed to see relatively well in low-light situations.
What feels like "low light" to us (that dark corner of a room or windowless bathroom) is no light for a plant that needs to photosynthesize to survive. Likewise, what is "low light" for a plant feels bright to us, and what is "high light' for a plant is often too strong for our eyes altogether.
Your plant probably needs to be directly next to a window or under a grow light, since most houses are built to minimize sunlight (small windows, shades, curtains, etc.).
Plants Need Less Light Than You Think They Do - What, WHAT? Yes, I contradict myself. You listened to me and put your houseplant in front of a South-facing window where it gets direct sunlight for 8 hours every day, and now it's fried to a crisp. Most tropical and subtropical houseplants want bright, indirect light. That means both East and West facing windows are (usually) the best places to put a houseplant. There's a compass app on your phone; use it now to see which direction the windows in your house face.
It's important to understand that direction alone might not tell the whole story. I have a couple of East-facing windows in my house that have a giant black locust tree in front of them. When the tree has leaves, it fully shades those windows. Plants in those windows get bright indirect light with about an hour of direct sunlight in the early spring and late autumn, but get medium light during the summer. An obstructed South-facing window (in the Northern hemisphere, obvs) will act more like a West-facing window, an obstructed West-facing window will act more like an East-facing window, and an obstructed East-facing window will act more like a North-facing window. An obstructed north-facing window is useless for growing houseplants.
There is No Such Thing as a "Low Light" Houseplant - Yes, you will see that on plant tags, and it is incredibly misleading. That tag means low light FOR A HOUSEPLANT, not low light for a human. There are plants that can tolerate lower light, but generally, that just means they won't grow well and will slowly decline until they finally die. We are green witches, and we are trying to grow plants, not kill them.
You Will Get the Lighting Wrong (And That is Okay) - Every time you bring a new plant into your home, it's an adjustment period. You can guess as to what care that plant will need, and sometimes you will get it wrong. That's okay, make adjustments. This can mean moving plants closer or farther from light sources, or changing what room they grow in altogether.
If you are blessed with sunlight, you may find that your plants are bleaching or even burning. This is a sign to pull your plants away from the windows or add a sheer curtain to diffuse the light. For the rest of us, if your plants aren't growing or are stretching out towards the light, chances are they need more light. In many houses, plants need grow lights year-round to thrive. Even if you get decent light during the warmer months, you probably need grow lights in the winter - especially if your UV drops below a 4 from November to February. (You can look up what the average UV rating is for each month in your location online - this is important information to have)
Soil (Technically Called "Substrate" in the Houseplant World) Matters - The substrate your houseplant lives in is your houseplant's home, where its roots grow, and it matters a lot. To have healthy root systems, houseplants need water, they need trace nutrients, and they need oxygen. They get all of these things from the substrate.
Substrate needs vary to some degree depending on the type of plant, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. What you need to understand is that the soil needs to retain enough moisture while also providing sufficient aeration to maintain oxygen levels. In nature, insects burrow through soil, creating pockets of air, but our houseplants don't have that, so we need to provide aeration in other ways. In the houseplant world, aeration is most often achieved by adding larger chunks to the soil mix (perlite and orchid bark are common additives) to create air pockets.
This is why it's important to buy a houseplant mix for your houseplants; these are designed with aeration in mind and already have the additives needed to keep houseplant roots healthy. Gardening soil is not good for houseplants - choose a substrate that says it's designed for indoor growing. For most houseplants, a generic Houseplant mix will work just fine, but beware of using specific soil mixes (for example, "Aroid Substrate" or "African Violet Mix") on other types of plants until you understand what types of plants need what types of substrate.
The more aerated your houseplant soil is, the more often you will need to water your houseplant. The less aerated your houseplant soil is, the less often you will need to water your houseplant.
Put That Plant in a Pot With Drainage Holes - As I mentioned above, plants need aeration, so if a pot is holding too much water, the roots can't "breathe". When the roots can't breathe, they rot. The best way to avoid this is to plant your houseplant in a pot that has multiple drainage holes at the bottom. Use those pretty fancy pots as cover pots, and remember to remove standing water from the bottom of your cover pots after you water your plants.
That Pot is Too Big - many plant enthusiasts put their houseplants in pots that are far too big, thinking it will give the plant room to "grow". This can lead to rapid plant death as the soil retains too much moisture, leading to root rot.
The rule of thumb is that your pot should be 1 to 2 inches larger than the plant's root ball. This gives the plant's roots space to grow and to use up all of the moisture in the pot. Yes, this means fast-growing plants need to be repotted more often, but it is better than losing your plant.
Temperature and Humidity Matter - Obviously, temperature and humidity are things that are only somewhat within our control. Most houseplants will be happy at temperatures between 60-80F (15.5-26.6 °C), which are the temperatures we consider comfortable in our homes. When temperatures fall outside of these ranges, some houseplants will struggle. Likewise, most houseplants are comfortable with humidity levels between 40-60%, again average household conditions. Plants tend to thrive in conditions where temperature and humidity are at the higher end of this scale, but can adapt to the lower end as well, so long as their other needs are met appropriately.
Houseplants tend to prefer consistency, with higher daytime temperatures and slightly lower nighttime temperatures.
The higher the temperature, the more often you will need to water your houseplant as it will photosynthesize more rapidly (and the heat will cause evaporation in the pot). The lower the humidity, the more often you will need to water your plants, as this causes more rapid evaporation in the pot.
Situations with high temperatures and low humidity require the most frequent watering, while those with low temperatures and high humidity require the least frequent watering.
Watering Needs Are Complicated - Nobody else can tell you how often you need to water your plant.
How often your plant needs water is determined by: its natural water needs (some plants like more water than others), the amount of sunlight you are giving it, the temperature, the relative humidity, the type of substrate your plant is in, and how big your pot is.
This will change seasonally as the conditions in your home change.
For most houseplants, overwatering is the easiest way to cause plant death. That does not mean how much water you give the plant at one time; it refers to the frequency with which you give a plant water.
It is considered better to "underwater" a plant (going a day or two longer before giving them water if you are unsure if they are ready for more) than to overwater, but your plants should not be going so dry that they are drooping or shriveling up.
Learning how much water your plants need takes some trial and error, but you'll get it right if you pay attention to them. Some plants are very vocal about their watering needs, while others show it much less.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list of all houseplant tips and tricks, but I think that it covers the basics needed to understand the needs of beginner houseplants. I should note here that none of these are rules, and there is inevitably going to be someone somewhere growing in ways that are entirely different from this, often quite successfully. Not all of these tips will work for all plants, but they will work for your standard "beginner" plants that have been around for years on the houseplant market.
By this, I mean your pothos, vining Philodendron, African violets, standard Hoyas, peace lilies, Aglaonemas, Dracaenas, etc. This is not a care list for herbs, succulents, desert cacti, or other more exotic plants you might find in a Big Box Store these days.
I suggest starting simply if you are just getting into houseplants. With this in mind, I have a couple of posts coming up on a few "easy" houseplants and how I care for them. I'll talk about my environment and what works for me. I'll include things like their lighting and watering needs (generally, of course), as well as whether they are pet safe for those of you with furry friends.
To start with, I'll be covering the Epiprenum ("Pothos") family, Snake plants, the Hoya carnosa family, and African violets; all of which I am very confident about their care. All of these are relatively "easy" so long as you give them the right environments to thrive.
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