Things I would tell you about keeping houseplants…

… If I wasn’t afraid of hurting your feelings.

Jumping on this trend to tell you all the things that come up when I’m selling plants. So here’s my three things I wish I could tell you about keeping houseplants, not intended to hurt your feelings.

1. STOP overwatering!

Don’t worry, I get it. The symptoms of overwatering are very similar to the visual symptoms of a thirsty plant - e.g. drooping, yellowing and dropping leaves. I forgive you, but your plants won’t. Here’s the Leafy Lucy Cheat Sheet for watering your houseplants:

• Carnivorous plants: Native to boggy environments so they need to be kept moist or in water all the time, and it absolutely must be rainwater or distilled water. Tap water contains too many nasties and will harm them.

• Ferns - water once a week, religiously, or they’ll die. Really delicate ferns like maidenhair ferns might be best with a very small amount of water every day.

• Leafy plants like Calathea, Monstera etc can be watered once every 7 - 10 days during the growing season of April-September. Check the soil is dry down to 3 inches deep before watering.

• Semi-succulent plants and hard-wearing like pilea, kalanchoe, tradescantia can be left for 14 days between watering, and the soil can be allowed to dry out completely.

• Cacti and succulents like Sanseveria, jade plants etc, can be watered once a month between March and October. During the winter, water sparingly (like, when you remember).

Obviously factors such as the weather may also effect how much you need to water, so always check the soil or perform the weight test - pick up the plant and if the pot feels light, give it a good water.

2. Stop feeding your indoor plants so much.
Leafy plants in particular may get brown patches on their leaves from excess nitrogen in the soil - nitrogen burn. During the growing season (April-September), feed once a month with a seaweed food or houseplant food, and never in winter.

3. Why is everyone so obsessed with re-potting???
When you buy a plant, you don’t need to re-pot it the second you get it home! My general rule is always to leave them for about a year. If, in that time, the roots begin to protrude from the bottom of the nursery pot, or the plant becomes very top-heavy, then re-pot into the next pot size up. When you re-pot a small plant into a much larger pot, they end up in too much soil, which absorbs water and makes root-rot and fungus gnat infestation much more likely. (Trust me, you do not want fungus gnats in your space!)

Just let your plant do it’s thing.

4. Stop moving your plants around.
You bring a plant home from the lovely houseplant-specialist garden centre you bought it from and put it in a fancy glazed pot cover and set it up in the corner where it complements your curtains and … it wilts, looks sickly and maybe even drops a few leaves. Don’t panic! Some plants experience “shock” and need time to adjust to the change in environment. The Ficus family are particularly prone to this behavior - what a bunch of divas. Allow the plant to acclimatise for at least two weeks rather than repeatedly moving it around, or it will get shocked each time you move it, and it might never recover.

5. Stop prodding your Venus Fly Traps to watch them close.
This might seem weirdly specific, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Venus Fly Traps are highly evolved to wet, boggy environments with low-quality soil, and have adapted to consume insects to get their nutrients. They’re amazing. However, closing the traps is a very high-energy activity, and if it happens and there’s no nutrition to be absorbed, the plant will have expended all that vital energy for nothing. Eventually this will kill the plant.

Top VFT Tip: Don’t allow them to flower as this also uses a huge amount of energy and the plants tend to become sickly or even die after doing so. If the plant begins to grow a long, tall stalk from the centre of the leaves, cut it off before the flower can bloom and all that energy will go back into growth.

So, I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but I want your houseplants to live, thrive, and stay green and beautiful for as long as possible!