Been diving deep into lawn care recently. There's a TON, literally hundreds, of products you can spread on your lawn. There's 250 days of the growing season to apply those hundreds of products on. And does it work? Well, this internet comment written by so and so says it does, and their lawn is beautiful, but which of the 15 things they're doing are most pivotal? Or is it multivariate and all the parameters matter and affect and interact with each other?<p>Unfortunately, I believe it's the latter complex case. pH matters a lot, that affects fertilization uptake, but so does soil bacteria and organic matter, lack of bugs and diseases, proper moisture, and the physical act of cutting the grass is an art and skill, not a mere chore.<p>Oof, plants need a lot of variables to be in the right ranges, and with soil and watering and weather, it's a lot of fluctuation on top of it all.
Caring for a houseplant is like caring for a baby. There are things that work, and things that don't, but not necessarily for <i>your</i> baby. You won't really know what's going on unless you pay close attention to it. And if it seems unhappy, you won't really know how to make it happy until you try a few things out.<p>Baby advice and houseplant advice isn't "bad", it's just subjective.<p>also: my houseplants don't get big because I don't take care of them! the ones I left outside "to die" have grown substantially... i even left a bunch of succulents outside, that were sitting in pots with no drainage, overflowing with water for 6 months.... they're fine. they "should" be dead as doornails. <i>shrug</i>
The Aussie national public broadcaster, the ABC, has the fantastic Gardening Australia show that has been going for 32 years (in its current format). It's not too pretentious and is full of great technical pragmatic tips from knowledgeable professional horticulturalists and experienced amateurs. You might like this series on indoor plants as we call houseplants. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/the-great-indoors--containers-and-potting-mixes/12920438" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/the-great-indoors--containe...</a>
Caring for houseplants is quite hard. I have 8 and my friend recently gave up his job to grow Bonsai trees full time. The amount I learned from him was quite interesting, I almost felt dumb by the end. My plants do fine, but they could've been doing way better.<p>For my Bonsais, I didn't know that they should be given filtered water. The Bay area has particularly nasty water, so immediately my plants were getting spots. Second, when you repot in the summers, the soil should be aligned to <i>where</i> you're growing. Third, East facing windows that cliff the sun at the hottest part of the day are imperative. I then asked him, "Wait, I can't leave them in the same spot all year?" and his immediate reply was, "Hell no, not unless you plan to layer shades in front of them, but I bet that's not why you put them where you did." For watering guidance, he said, "Stick your finger into the soil down to the knuckle, if it's dry, water them. If it's still wet, let it dry out."<p>Keeping plants alive is relatively easy; helping them thrive is another matter entirely.
I have, and have had, numerous thriving houseplants. My largest plants right now are about five feet tall. I also have three orchids that do wonderfully, a selection of cacti, etc. I do still kill plants from time to time but it's rare. In any case, I don't really agree with much of the advice in this thread. In order, the most important things IMHO are:<p>1) Caring: you actually have to care about the plants. This requires that you notice how they are doing and if they aren't "happy", taking action to try and improve their environment.<p>2) Light: if the light is bad, you're screwed. People keep talking about overwatering but not providing plants with enough light is just as bad and probably worse. Plants indoor get far less light than they do outdoors. If you have a very sunny room, in most cases the only way plants will do poorly is by totally neglecting to water them.<p>3) Water: not particularly difficult. With most plants you only need to water when the soil is completely dry. What I would especially suggest you do if you are starting out with houseplants is to purchase plants that show, by virtue of their foliage drooping, if they don't have enough water. The leaves of a peace lily will droop. The leaves of devil's ivy will start looking floppy. I've noticed that my spider plant's leaves seem to become paler. Some plants (e.g. ones that look like palm trees) will lose their foliage, starting at the bottom.<p>In any case, if you have a plant like this, it is visibly telling you it needs water, so it's not hard to comply. It can also serve as a sort of canary in the coal mine for your other plants.<p>That's honestly about it. I repot the occasional plant, and sometimes I do a little light fertilizing. But if you have a plant that is doing poorly, my advice in almost all cases is simple: ensure it gets more light, and don't water it until it's totally dried out.
> To get an even better answer, ask a better question: ‘I water my sansevieria (snake plant) about once a week, and it’s not in direct sun. I’ve had it for six months and it was nice when I got it. But now the tips are brown, what am I doing wrong?’<p>Hmm where have i seen that before... oh, here:<p><a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html</a>
I agree with the author that we need to see more examples of larger, older plants to get an idea of what our lil plant bbs could be someday. Fortunately there are some great Facebook groups for different genera, and of course there’s <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/matureplants/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/matureplants/</a>
Biggest problem for indoor plants is lack of light. Get a cheap photometer and check. Eyes are terrible at judging light intensity.. if the plant never gets light sufficient for basic metabolism, it will die sooner or later. Bare minimum full shade is like 10000 lux.. indoor lighting often doesn't get above 1000.
What's that you say? Off topic? Yea I agree, but...<p>As a systems and network administrator I know that the vast majority of outages are human initiated. Maintenance gone bad. Simple mistakes such as unplugging the wrong cable. Stupid stuff. Sometimes thresholds such as disk usage or other resources get exceeded or a part just wears out and breaks, but usually it's us stupid humans fucking something up with our own hands where it would have been just fine if you had left it alone.<p>So there's your servers are houseplants advice. Stop touching them. Stop doing stuff. Leave it alone.<p>Of course that's impossible. We have to get new plants installed and have to find that equilibrium they like to thrive.<p>But when you find it, leave them the fuck alone and don't break it.
Tl;dr: Lots of houseplants die. The end.<p>Anyway, since you are here: You may kill your plants with tap water. Plants evolved to get demineralized rainwater. The salts of tap water will build up in the soil, slowly poisoning the plant. Additionally the pot is also the plant’s potty: It disposes excess minerals and waste through the roots, and expects the rain to flush it away.<p>It’s best to water your plants with demineralized water, but you can also use (old) boiled and cooled down water, which lost at least some CO2 and consequently fell out calcium. In any case, if you water your plant, do so thoroughly, until water comes out at the bottom. Let it collect for a few minutes and then dispose it. Do not let it reabsorb! This will help the plant getting rid of salts and also helps not getting the soil soaking wet.<p>Btw. this is also why irrigation is a problem for food security. Using straight underground water for crops in hot regions will only work for a few years, until the soil is dead for good….<p>Edit: Oh yeah, and IIRC the snake plants leaf tips are crucial for growth. They may be hurt from handling in the store and will consequently not grow in length anymore. Not sure it has anything to do with watering at all. My snake plant got “store leaves”, which haven’t changed at all over the years, got brown just at the very end, and new leaves, which are almost double the length and totally healthy. Maybe a brown tip is just the normal display of a leaf without a head (cell).<p>Fun fact: Did you know snake plants store “sun energy” at daylight, and then do the rest of photosynthesis at night? So they do not lose water due to evaporation as much, when opening their pores for gas exchange! Pretty cool, eh?!
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about plants is: they only need water (and light).<p>Yes plants need water, but they can't grow on water alone. They need all kinds of minerals that are in the soil. When those are gone the plant will die.
When you repot plants you add fresh soil so you also add minerals. But when you don't repot you need to add those minerals once in a while.<p>Tip for aquarium owners: a lot of plants benefit from the 'dirt' in dirty aquarium water.<p>An also lesser known fact is that there is a huge symbiosis between bacteria, fungi and the roots. So in fact you also need to keep them alive.
I've read the part about roots several times and don't understand it. Is there some intermediate level of actionable advice between "water once a week" and this? If anyone can explain it to me in a way that makes sense to a programmer it would be much appreciated. I do have multi-year surviving house plants but worry about their roots.<p>> This comes about by having the roots well distributed in free-draining soil so that water and oxygen can feed the plant. From this you can infer there might be a problem If water runs right through the pot, and/or you squeeze the pot at its base and it’s rock solid. If so, take the pot off and have a look. From this you can also infer that, repotting into a much larger pot will just leave the roots buried in a mound of cold, wet soil, far from any roots. You might also see that a root-bound plant might not even need to be repotted, or can be repotted back into the same pot.
The most bewildering tip I always see and often hear recited is that a plant likes it to be moved/rotated. Like wtf, which plant gets rotated in nature???<p>Generally, some people like to think they know better what the plant needs than itself.<p>I went from being talked in to overcaring to the probable most careless approach. My plants get water when the soil is dry. That's it.<p>Gladly, I also ended up stopping to interfere with e.g. how they grow and I've now noticed that they started to look "wild" and healthy.<p>Done right, it's a beautiful display of nature.
My 2 huge plants (ficus benjamina, 15 years old, grown from 1 tiny branch, and aglaonema, ~40 years old and survived one freezing): <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FC7tsGGWEAkInx1?format=jpg" rel="nofollow">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FC7tsGGWEAkInx1?format=jpg</a>
This fellow cuts through a lot of the bullshit on his blog/newsletter.<p><a href="https://www.gardenmyths.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gardenmyths.com/</a><p>Unfortunately, there’s often a lack of good evidence except from industrial agriculture.
When it comes to houseplants you just have to ask my mom and you will know everything that’s to be known. If there is a problem she needs maybe 10 seconds to take a look and give you the solution.
house plant care is not that hard to automate (talking about water/feeding)... of course if you are doing bonsai culture, you will have to manually trim it (but I grew bonsai pepper plants with minimal care... no fruits yet though)