5 Tips For a New Plant Parent
I’ve now reached the point where I have 40+ house plants and counting, ha! I’ve always loved plants, my dads parents owned greenhouses and a floral shop when I was young and my stepdad has his own landscaping business, so plants have always been a thing in my family. I started out with succulents because they were “easy” to take care of and we didn’t have a lot of room in our tiny 750 sq ft apartment to put much else in. Side note, I have literally killed every succulent I’ve ever owned. That’s why I said, “easy” (insert face palm here). But once we moved into our house I knew I wanted to fill it with plants! I actually told my husband that it was a dream to feel like I was living in a jungle, probably won’t go that far… I’ve learned a lot about plants in the last year, #quarantine, and wanted to share a few tips with the new plant parents.
PICTURED: N’joy Pothos
LOW LIGHT PLANTS. Scratch that, They’re low light TOLERANT. Just because a plant can survive in low light doesn’t necessarily mean you should always have them in low light. If you keep your plants in low light 24/7 you’ll start to see a few thing happening:
1. They might lose color. The plant might be fine, but the color of its leaves will start to diminish.
2. They will probably stop growing, or start growing very slowly. For instance, I’ve had a n’joy pothos for now two years and it’s produced maybe five new leaves in that time. Why? It’s because I’ve kept it in an area of my kitchen where light really doesn’t touch it.
3. The plant might not be as perky. Back to my n’joy, it was in low light and its leaves were always droopy. It was well watered and fine, however it had no light to GROW to. I’ve since moved the little guy to a bright indirect sunlight spot and his leaver are getting BIGGER and he’s very perky! Moral of all this, low light plants aren’t a thing, they’re just low light tolerant.
4. Your plant could start getting leggy. If you keep your plant in low light long enough, it could start growing UP instead of OUT and full. You’ll start to notice them just reaching toward the sunlight and putting all of their energy on growing towards the light instead of growing leaves and becoming full. If your plant looks like a long stem with a few leaves on top, it’s because it’s not getting enough light.
And yes, I’m speaking out all of this from experience. Try not to make my mistakes..
REPOTTING. I started out thinking that when I brought a new plant home I had to immediately repot it in a new, cute, bigger pot. Wrong. You don’t. Personally, I don’t think you should. Unless you buy a plant that’s roots are completely breaking out of the pot or wrapped around a million times strangling each other, just leave it in the nursery pot and buy a cover! This will help with a few things:
1. When you bring home a new plant they can go into shock. Have you ever brought a plant home and started noticing it loosing leaves? Shock. It’s because you’ve removed it from its happy growing area in a greenhouse to a house with no greenhouse effect, ha! So then on top of that you remove it from it’s pot that it’s been happily growing in and has its roots perfectly in place to a new bigger pot where now it has to focus all it’s energy on reestablishing it’s roots and that takes away the plants energy from actually growing up top.
2. Leaving it in a nursery pot can help with drainage. Nursery pots usually have large holes all around the bottom for water to drain out of. When you repot it you might have one hole at the very bottom of the pot for the water to drain through and that’s not always enough. Keeping them in the nursery pot and putting them in a cover pot allows you to know that the water is draining well and it’s not just sitting in a puddle causing root rot, which leads to bugs, and the plants demise...
3. When it is time to repot a plant because its roots are growing out of the nursery pot, don’t break all the dirt off around them and put totally new dirt in! Unless the dirt in your plant is infected with bugs, or has root rot, just let them have their old soil and fill in the rest with new! This helps to make sure that the plant isn’t spending energy reestablishing it’s roots AND makes sure that you’re not breaking off any roots, you don’t want to do that.
4. When repotting make sure that the new pot isn’t overly large. What I mean, don’t put a small tiny plant in a huge pot! One that will look odd and two, a plant grows new leaves or stems when it is feeling like it can’t go anywhere at the bottom, so it starts focusing all its energy on top to produce new leaves and becomes larger. When you put a small plant in a large pot it doesn’t feel the pressure to grow up, because it has plenty of room down below!
PICTURED: Monstera Deliciosa, Ficus Lyrata, Marble Queen Pothos, Sansevieria Trifasciata
“BEGINNER PLANTS”. My favorite thing to read about online is what other people think are “beginner” plants. They say, “here are the best plants for beginners!” False. You might think they’re best for beginners, but don’t go telling me that a Calathea Ornata is an easy beginner plant. Killed two. Just be cautious when someone says “easy” “beginner” plant. The person telling you that might live in Florida or Texas where there’s great humidity and weather, etc for that plant to grow, but you could be like me and live in Washington where that’s non existent, and it can be more difficult to grow certain “beginner” plants. Now, with the Calathea Ornate I figured out on try three that they LOVE water. You cannot let that soil get dry. One spot of dry dirt and it’s over, at least it was for me. You just need to look the plant up and read all of the care instructions BEFORE bringing it home. I’ve done the same with a Croton. They’re super fun looking plants, marked “beginner” and now for me it is a beginner, but that was after the plant dropped every leaf and me cutting off the top and letting it regrow, ha! It happens, but I just took the “beginner” phrase and didn’t do more research into it. All in all, no plant is a beginner plant, because they all require maintenance and care in different areas that you aren’t aware of yet. Just do research on a plant prior to buying and don’t always listen to the person that says, “Oh, they’re so easy!” that person has probably had plants for ten years and knows them like the back of their hand so of course it’s easy, for them.
PICTURED: Monstera Deliciosa, White Birds of Paradise, Sansevieria 'Laurentii', Green Maranta, Heart Leaf Philodendron, Ficus Lyrata
MOVING YOUR PLANTS. Have you ever had that plant and it’s doing great in one spot, growing large, so you think, “I’m now going to move it here to fill in the space!”, think twice! Moving a plant from an area that they’re established in and happy can be just like bringing it home for the first time, shocking to it. For instance, I had a Ficus Lyrata that was just GROWING, I mean he was doing great. He grew five, FIVE, new leaves within four months (three of which were grow in the off season) and was just loving life in his corner, until I moved him... I thought, I’ll move him here which gets basically the same amount of light and looks better to ME. Wrong. It stopped growing. I shocked it by moving it out of it’s happy little growing spot. It even started leaning because it wasn’t getting the same sun it was needing. I kept thinking, it’ll be ok and it will grow, but it didn’t. SO I moved it back! Now I’m hoping he’ll grow like he was and be fine, but I for sure stunted it by moving it. All in all, if you’re plant is happy where it’s at, just leave it. Go buy a new plant to put in the spot you want to fill in!
BUYING PLANTS. When you’re purchasing a new plant always, ALWAYS, check for bugs. Give the plant a little shake, did gnats come out? Do you see webs inside the leaves or around the plant? What about little white specks, aka mealybugs. If I see a plant that I want to buy and give it a shake, and gnats come out, I’m putting it back. Because the thing is, most plants that already have bugs or issues, probably are going to continue to have issues. PLUS, you don’t want to bring it home to infest your other plants! Which note, I always isolate my new plants once I bring them home for a week or so to make sure that there are no bugs or issues that will infect my other plants. You might think, well I can just get rid of gnats or spider mites, which sure you can, but I guarantee that plant will have more and more bugs throughout its lifespan. For example, my friend bought a birds of paradise that already had spider mites when purchased, she just didn’t notice. When she found them she wrote the plant off and gave it to me. I got rid of the spider mites, those were an easy fix, but then I got mealybugs..THEN the plant got scale..THEN the mealybugs came back.. It’s like a never ending cycle with that plant. I’ve repotted it, I’ve sprayed it with neem oil, I took off leaves that the mealybug destroyed, I’ve cleaned it with dish soap, I’ve done everything, but the plant is now just prone to bugs. And thankfully I never once let that plant go near another plant of mine. Just leave the bug infested plants at the store.
I hope these tips have helped you and maybe you have a plant currently that one of these topics helped solved. All in all, happy planting!