Growing indoor plants comes with a plethora of benefits and is really easy - so long as you have a basic understanding of how to keep them healthy. Common concerns new or struggling plant owners have pertained to watering, lighting, temperature and fertilizing. In this article, we’re going to address these concerns and talk about how do you take care of plants for beginners by going over the 4 main areas of plant care: type of plants, growing space, environmental factors (such as temperature, humidity, and light), and daily care. Hopefully, after reading this article, you’ll have a complete understanding of what goes into keeping your plant pals perpetually healthy and happy.
Before you grow, know your plant - that isn’t to say you need to go and get a bachelor’s degree in Botany just to make some plant purchases. Gardening and keeping indoor plants has become a very common hobby and it’s super easy to find informative, concise, and beginner-friendly plant guides online.
You can start figuring out which plants are right for you by checking out our guide to indoor plants right here.
Regardless of what types of plants you are thinking of getting, you will need to consider a few key things about yourself and your home.
Aesthetic: Are you looking to compliment your home’s design with a few subtle but stylish Snake plant variants, or are you seeking to junglefy your place with lush and verdant Monsteras and Ivys? Make sure that you have a clear idea of the aesthetic you want and how plants can contribute to it before doing your plant shopping. Again, there is an abundance of resources online for you to get ideas for plant varieties and design arrangements for your home.
Benefits: One of the coolest things about growing plants indoors is that you can benefit a lot from them in many different ways. For instance, did you know that keeping and caring for plants is highly therapeutic and an excellent way to reduce stress and maintain good mental health? A study conducted by Dr. Drahmad Hassan at Sichuan Agricultural University discovered that just being in the presence of multiple plants can help to minimize mental stress and anxiety.
Furthermore, certain types of plants such as lavender, jasmine, and peppermint have even greater calming effects as they produce aromatics that have been shown to ease muscle tension and induce relaxation. What’s more, several species of houseplants, like succulents, peace lilies, and calathea help to improve the overall air quality in your home by purifying it of toxins and releasing a lot of oxygen.
It’s definitely worthwhile to look into the potential benefits of common indoor plants, so make sure you do a little research on that before selecting your new plant pals.
Pet-friendly plants: Unfortunately, not all house plants are safe for your pets. This is due to the fact that a lot of our common houseplants originate in competitive biomes, like tropical rainforests, and have developed toxins which can prove harmful – or even fatal - to animals and humans. That’s not usually a problem for us people because we typically don’t get the urge to gnaw on random plant leaves, but cats and dogs are another story. So, before you make your plant purchases, be sure to check that you won’t risk harming your furry friends.
Some examples of common house plants that are poisonous to dogs and cats are: lilies, tulips, devil’s ivy, Chinese evergreen, asparagus fern, aloe vera, and rubber tree plant. Best to avoid these varieties if your pets are nibbley.
Commitment: The final factor for determining which plants you should get is your commitment to the health of the plants. If you just want some casual, low-maintenance plants for decoration and air purification, you should look into getting low-requirement plants such as Spider plants, Snake plants, or Cast-iron plants. There are many, many more low-requirement plants that just need occasional watering and do very well with limited sunlight.
On the other hand, if you want a unique plant that stands out, like the eye-catching False Shamrock plant, you’ll need to ensure that you keep up with the plant’s lighting, watering, and nutritional needs.
So, rather than pick up whatever plant looks interesting to you at the flower market, make sure you ask a staff member what sort of care the plant requires and if you are able to provide that care on a consistent basis.
Now that you have a better idea about what factors you need to be aware of before buying indoor plants, it’s time to discuss what kinds of spaces are best suited to growing your healthy vegetal buddies.
For the vast majority of indoor flora, the bare requirements for space are ones with ample room to breathe and grow. Plants not only require light, water, and fertilizer to survive, but they also need access to fresh air. Some plant varieties grow better than others in cramped spaces, but for the most part, plants like to have room to breathe as well as to grow. The corners of your living room, the shelf on a wall, or a window sill are all excellent places for your indoor plants.
Avoid keeping plants in spaces like basements or bathrooms; although it can be done, it is considerably more difficult to ensure the good health of your plants because these spaces tend to have limited access to natural light and have fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels.
If you are really committed to having plants in these hard-to-grow spaces, consider getting your hands on something that can help out in the lighting department, like a plant lamp.
With that said, you may be wondering what the right temperature and lighting conditions for indoor plants are exactly. Let’s take a closer look.
Indoor plants of all varieties have their own unique preferences, but generally speaking, indoor plants require 4-6 hours of bright indirect sunlight every day and typically do well in temperatures ranging from 18°-24°C (65°-75°F).
Now, that leads to a very important question, do indoor plants need sunlight? The short answer is yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they need direct sunlight. Some plants actually don’t like direct sunlight at all. As previously stated, indoor plants typically require 4-6 hours of indirect sunlight per day. That means that they just need to be in a room with windows that can provide bright natural light for about a fifth to a quarter of the day.
The reason why a lot of house plants don’t need direct sunlight is because the majority of them have tropical origins, as mentioned earlier. Although there is abundant sunshine in the tropics, there are thousands of species of plants that thrive underneath the canopy and have evolved to survive off of indirect sunlight due to the high competition for the sun’s attention. It is for this reason that these plants were eventually selected and propagated for the indoor plant market as the interior of our homes typically can’t supply adequate sunlight all-year round.
For most people, it’s easy to supply enough indirect sunlight given the placement of their windows; however, it can be more difficult in the winter months, but don’t be tempted to move your plants closer to the window where they might get some direct sunlight. Direct sunlight, even in the winter time, will actually be more detrimental to your plant’s health. Instead, consider investing in a full-spectrum LED plant lamp which can provide a couple of hours of nourishing light to your plant pals during the long and dark winter months.
But maybe you want to decorate the exterior of your house with plants that are typically kept indoors, and you might be wondering, can indoor plants go outside? Of course they can! So long as their preferred environmental needs are met. For example, Snake plants can be kept outside if they are kept in a more shady spot and don’t receive too much direct sunlight or rain, that said, they are an impressively resilient plant and would probably be fine if your outdoor garden can’t provide these conditions. Consider keeping them on the non-south facing sides of your house, close to a wall and under the eaves.
Many varieties of houseplants do great outdoors and will grow to a much bigger size than they ever could in your living room. For instance, if Cinnamon ferns are provided with enough space and a few hours of direct sunlight each day, they can grow up to 4 feet as opposed to 1-2 feet indoors.
Another reason why you might want to put your indoor plants outside could be if the inside of your house doesn’t get sufficient sunlight, whether direct or indirect. If this is the case, it would certainly benefit your plants’ health to let them sit outside for a few hours, so long as they are not placed in direct sunlight for too long and the temperature is suitable. If you’re nervous about harming your plant friends by taking them outside, just remember that houseplants are typically very hardy, but if you want some reassurance, just do a quick Google search to see what your plants can handle.
Given the vast diversity of indoor plants and plant-owners' individual home environments, it would be ill-advised to apply a general “daily care” routine to indoor plants. Despite this; however, we can still apply some general guidelines and tips for when you should water, trim, or fertilize your plants.
How often do indoor plants need to be watered? As a general rule of thumb, you only need to water your indoor plants when you can see and feel that the soil is dry on the surface and a few millimeters below.
How often should indoor plants be watered? Depends on the variety. For hardier houseplants like spider plants, rubber plants, or Chinese evergreen, you will likely only need to water them once every week or so. Other varieties, like African violets, like to have consistently moist soil, so you’ll need to check them more often. Do not soak any variety of plants all the way through as they will develop root rot and die quickly.
Should I cut the brown tips off my plant? Yes. Cut off the brown tips and remove any browning/yellowing leaves of your houseplants to avoid the risk of the plant getting diseased. Trimming the brown tips will also ensure that your plant is putting its energy into growing healthy and green leaves.
Do indoor plants need fertilizer? Yes. You should fertilize your houseplants once or twice a year. Even though the lighting and watering requirements for your plants may be relatively low, they will still require nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to remain healthy.
When should I fertilize my indoor plants? You should fertilize your indoor plants during the growing months which occur from spring to summer. You don’t need to fertilize your plants during the fall and winter months. For most house plants, you should only need to fertilize once or twice in a growing season.
How much fertilizer should I give to my houseplants? The amount of fertilizer you give to your plants depends on the particular brand and make of the fertilizer you purchased. Carefully read the instructions on the package or visit their website to understand how much to give your plants and avoid over-fertilizing and potentially killing your plants.
Can artificial light replace sunlight for plants? Yes. Although the majority of plants will always prefer natural sunlight, you can still easily grow plants with artificial light sources like LED or Fluorescent light bulbs. The advantages to artificial light for growing plants are that you can provide adequate light to your plants during the winter months and they allow you to place your plants virtually anywhere you want in your house, especially if you get a clip-on plant lamp.
Those are our 4 tips for growing healthy indoor plants. Hopefully you have a clear understanding of what the water, lighting, nutritional, and general care requirements of indoor plants are. A final word of advice would be to actually care less about your plants. A lot of the time, when indoor plants show signs of stress or poor health it’s because they are getting too much care. Make sure you aren’t giving them too much direct sunlight, water, and fertilizer. For the majority of indoor plants, their needs are really basic and require much, much less attention than outdoor plants. And with that final piece of advice, we wrap up this week’s blog. For more information about caring for indoor plants check out some of our other blogs on the topic.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
