5 lessons I learned taking care of houseplants
Or: soil, water + light
Whether you’re an experienced plant-carer, or are just getting started, these are five things I learned taking care of my plants over the past six years of experimenting (and have at least a dozen plants die on me).
One of the things I love most about Substack is fostering community, so do share your tips and your questions in the comments!
1. Put your finger in it
One of the reasons why I didn’t really care for plants until six years ago is because my mother got a severe eye infection from touching a plant (and then her eye) when I was a child. I vividly remember the redness and soreness of her eye, and I linked that experience to houseplants in general. So actually touching a houseplant myself was not something I was eager to do.
Yet my best tip for plant care is to put your finger into the soil before you water the plant. Overwatering is one of the main reasons why our houseplants die. Just by looking at a plant, you might quickly think that it needs water: the topsoil looks dry, so you add some water. The leaves are wilting, or even dropping, so you add some water.
The top of the soil doesn’t say anything about the moisture around the plant’s roots, which is where it matters. And, confusingly, wilting or dropped leaves can also be a sign of overwatering (as well as underwatering and getting too much light), so you might be actually making the problem worse by just adding more water.
Putting your finger in the soil for one or two inches (3-5 centimetres) gives you a sense of what’s actually going on with the soil. When it doubt: don’t water. And, of course, always wash your hands with soap and water afterwards.
An added benefit of this method is that it allows you to feel how compacted the soil is. If you have to push really hard to get your finger into the soil, then your plant’s roots have to do the same. Compacted soil is one of the reasons for slow plant growth, so if you notice this, it’s probably time to repot the plant with some fresh soil (and something to keep the soil from getting easily compacted, like perlite).
2. Your plant will never again look the way it did when you bought it
All of us have fallen in love with the gorgeous plant specimens that we see in stores. They are perfectly, lushly green and full, beautifully shaped without any brown edges or dead leaves. Plant perfection, in short.
You take your new plant home, take care of it and even though it’s doing well, its leaves are no longer standing up as they did in the store. It drops a leaf every now and then. Its previously carefully manicured shape is getting lost as some branches grow longer than others.
Your plant is gaining character. It’s becoming your plant, adapting itself to your house, its light and moisture characteristics.
The plants you see and buy at stores have just come from nurseries where they are grown and cared for by plant experts, in absolute ideal circumstances. How much water, light and warmth they get is often calculated and controlled by computers. They don’t have to deal with light coming just from one or two sides—as is the case in most of our homes—and grow with grow lights all around them, including above them.
Unless you really want to take your houseplant collection to the next level and mimic these conditions in your house, your plants won’t look this way. And that’s fine.
Our plants carry the history of our relationships with them. They carry the scars from the times when we didn’t understand how much or how little water they needed. They hold the experiences from things that happened around them, from the time you accidentally burnt a hole in a leaf with a candle (apologies to my mini Monstera or Rhaphidophora tetrasperma), to how they were the first plant in your new home.
3. Figure out a plant’s light requirements
Water is problem number one with many houseplants. The second is light. Most plant stores will be able to tell you how much light a plant needs: does it need lots of direct sunlight, including bright afternoon sun? Does it need lots of indirect light, and is it fine with a little bit of morning or evening sun as well? Or does it require indirect light only, preferring to be even in a more shady corner?
Plants need light. If you have a space where no light ever enters, get a fake plant for it.
I’ll write a longer post on this in the future, but one of the things to think about when you get a new plant is to remember where it grows naturally.
Most plants that we currently keep as houseplants grow naturally in tropical rainforests, underneath the canopy of large trees. This means that they tend to get dappled or filtered light most of the time. Only very few plants grow in environments where they get a lot of direct, fierce sunlight. So if you have a windowsill that gets a lot of direct, afternoon sunlight (like I do), you’re probably best off filling it only with cacti.
How do you know that your plant is getting too little or too much light?
Signs that your plant is getting too much light include:
sun burn spots on the leaves: these are round and happen when a plant is getting direct sunlight. Double-check the bottom of the leaves carefully to make sure that you’re not dealing with a pest instead.
discolouration: it’s normal for a plant to look differently in colour from when you got it in the store, but if it’s getting very pale green (and normally isn’t), it’s probably getting too much light. I can’t keep Pilea on my windowsills for that reason—when I did, their leaves turned almost white. If your plant’s leaves are getting a red hue, turning red, or even black (and they’re not supposed to), that is also a sign that it’s getting too much sunlight (see the pictures below).
your plant is not growing. This is tricky, because it can have tons of reasons, but if it’s not being overwatered, if it’s not dropping wrinkly brown leaves from underwatering, but is still not growing, your plant is likely to be receiving too much light. I have a Ficus benghalensis (also called banyan) that according to the plant store owner would be happy on my south-facing windowsill. It dropped a few leaves, and then—nothing. No new leaves, no dropping, just, nothing. After seeing how well it did away from a south-facing window in my friend’s house, I repotted it, and moved it to the north-east window where it gets early morning sunlight. It’s now thriving.
Signs that your plant is getting too little light include:
small or straggly leaves or straggly branches: this happens especially to cacti, but if you see a plant creating long branches or vines with few leaves, you might also be dealing with too little light. Make sure that you check first whether this isn’t normal behaviour for your plant: Hoyas or wax plants, for instance, are known for growing longish vines without leaves, before growing leaves at the end of the vine. For these plants, this is normal behaviour and how they climb.
loss of patterning: variegated plants—plants with patterning—are really popular. If you own one of these plants and it is no longer showing the pattern and is turning plain green instead, it’s getting too little light.
But how will I know?!?
Whenever a plant is not growing or is generally looking sad, you need to investigate what is causing it. Too much water? Too little water? A pest? If you’re not over- or underwatering, and if you don’t see any pests on the plant, light is the next thing to check out.
You can invest in a light meter, though I’ve only recently begun to experiment with one. So far, it’s fun to check in with it every now and then, but I trust my own eyes and intuition a lot more.
Instead of getting a light meter, spend some time throughout the day figuring out when the sun shines into your house. Try to imagine the light from the plant’s point of view. Is it blocked by a bigger plant or by a bookshelf? Move the plant around and keep an eye on it.
4. Just because it grows in someone else’s home doesn’t mean it will grow in yours
Years ago, I gave my mother a Pilea plant from one of my own cuttings. I have quite a lot of them in my own house, and they thrive seemingly effortlessly. Surely they would also thrive in her house?
Four years on and while the Pilea is still alive, it is not thriving. It’s making really small leaves. The leaves look healthy: they’re a beautiful deep green, and it rarely drops a leaf. We’ve refreshed the soil and checked to see if the roots were healthy. I taught her to stick her finger into the soil to prevent overwatering. We moved it closer to the window and away from it.
Every house has a unique micro-climate, and even houses that are in the same country, town or street can have a different micro-climate. My parents’ house is really well insulated, it has large windows and lots of white walls. Although it doesn’t get a lot of direct sunlight, it’s a very bright house because of the windows and the white walls. Because of the insulation and some other things influencing the climate, it’s also a fairly dry house.
Although there’s generally no need to get a humidifier for your plants, a lack of humidity can affect plants. That’s my most recent conclusion for the Pilea. I’ve asked my mother to move it to a slightly darker room, and to spray its leaves occasionally.
Bottom line: you can do everything right, and still the plant might not grow the way you’d like it to.
5. Indoor ferns are my nemesis
I love ferns. I love watching them unfurl those long leaves, I love how delicate they look and how freshly green. But I have yet to keep a single one of them alive in my house.
My inability to keep indoor ferns alive probably has to do with how light our house is (ferns like more shady places in general). I’ve also struggled with watering them, or keeping the moisture just right. I tend to be a conservative waterer, and ferns do not appreciate this.
So for now I’ve decided to give indoor ferns a pass. I’m growing ferns in my garden in a spot where they are really happy, and where they make me happy too.
If a plant dies in your care, and you know what caused it, get a new one, by all means. But sometimes, it just means throwing in the towel for this particular plant, and focusing on others instead.
Which lessons have you learned from taking care of houseplants? Or do you have any questions that I and other readers can answer? Do share in the comments!
Currently
Moving around a jade plant that is dropping leaves. I’ve repotted it in a lighter soil, moved it closer and further away from the window, and now moved it to another room entirely. It’s proof that succulents aren’t always super easy. Keeping my fingers crossed on it surviving.
Thinking about which other houseplants to propagate this summer, as I’ve potted up nearly all the cuttings from June. Any tips?
Watching my money tree (Pachira aquatica) cuttings make roots and thinking about planting + weaving them.
A few things: first of all, thank you for the first point about plant acceptance. After not buying any new plants for months and months, I finally brought home a cast-iron and spider plant from my local TJs, because they were *gorgeous* and such a steal. I hung up the spider plant and experienced a full day of plantgasm joy just looking at it. The cast-iron, which has beautiful silver and white stripes on its leaves, was looking quite dapper in its corner on the piano.
THEN, a few days later, I see some yellow-ish spotting on the cast-iron. The spider plant looks a bit wilted. Did I make a rookie mistake, *again* by putting these guys where I wanted them, instead of where they want to be?? Sometimes I really struggle with when to wait out the adjustment period versus trying 726372 solutions.
Also, I’m struggling with pests after a recent re-potting session brought in thrips and fungus gnats from my Happy Frog potting mix.
Anyway, your posts helps me remember that plants are fun. They are FUN. *promises to remember*
PS: I tried in vain to get my Boston ferns to grow in my bathroom, my room, the kitchen. Finally I plopped them outside on my shady porch, and they are thriving. Whoever manages to grow them indoors is a sorceress.
I’m new to indoor gardening and the reassurance that my plants will never look the same as when I bring them home is exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve been stressing out over every dropped leaf and brown tip.