Let’s beginner with a note I wrote AFTER having written this article. It was meant to be a beginner-friendly, Buzzfeed style listicle and ended up a 2000-word behemoth.
I TRIED.
I’m gonna do a tl;dr that you won’t like, but is, alas, true:
Houseplant care is easy if the light is right. Get the light right, add some water, and you’re golden. All the soil and fertiliser stuff is extra stuff that you only need to care about if you want to.
DIY fertilisers cause gnats. Gnats will make you hate your plants.
This is for beginners. I’m trying to keep it easy whilst dispelling the vast quantities of nonsense that’s spread across the internet.
The actual article starts here:
I’ve recently got back into Pinterest and the one thing that stuck out for immediately when searching ‘house plants’ (houseplants is one word IRL, but two on Pinterest) is how 90% of the top pins relating to houseplant are all articles that are telling people what they want to hear and they are NOT accurate.
In order to show you what I mean I searched ‘houseplant’ in an incognito window and what actually showed up was this:
A load of AI dross. Great.
Let’s try again.
Ok, I tried with different searches and it’s more of the same. Sigh.
You’re just going to have to trust me that there are THOUSANDS of websites out there claiming that they know the top 10 plants that can THRIVE in ZERO light and it’s all, not to put too fine a point on it, bollocks.
If you are a total beginner to houseplants, read the tips below.
These tips are great for people that want to get really into houseplant care, but they’re also for people that want a single statement plant that will be relatively low maintenance.
1. Light is everything
We all know that plants need light to survive, but it’s so much more than that.
Sure, a sad pothos will survive in a dark corner but it’ll look sad and awful, won’t grow (any new growth will be stunted and runty) and will be a MAGNET for pests.
Great light makes up for a multitude of sins. A plant in awesome light will forgive underwatering, overwatering, crap soil, no fertiliser, etc etc etc. If it snaps or something, it’ll grow back quickly, probably better than before because it has a waaaay bigger rootball than it needs.
You can’t make up for bad light.
No amount of watering, perfect soil, or fertiliser will replace light. Sorry.
If you don’t have good light, get a grow light.
I have grow lights that I use and will happily recommend but if you want to get serious you need to find the weed people. They know what they’re talking about.
This article about grow lights for Monstera links out to a houseplant expert showing his grow light set up and explains really well why his setup works (tl;dr – you want a very strong light quite far away for best results).
But what even is good light?
Within one metre of an unobscured window.
That is literally the only thing I can say that will apply to most people.
My plants get good light 6 metres from a south-facing upstairs window. Due to the angle of the sun, the same position one floor down is medium light.
I live in the UK, so the whole ‘bright, indirect light’ thing is…not a thing. Well, it is, but only for MAX three days a year. Many of my plants live in a BIG south-facing french window and they don’t burn. Not even my variegated Monstera.
My calathea and ZZ plants, famous low light plants, thrive about four feet away from that same window.
Plants can adapt to too much light far easier than they can not enough.
2. Watering is the next most important thing
There is no easy way to explain how often to water houseplants. A lot of people recommend the whole ‘stick a finger in the soil and water when it’s dry’ which is fine BUT if you have a massive pot you can easily overwater.
My preferred method is to have a benchmark plant (I use a maranta). When that plant needs watering, I water all the others.
If you’re worried about watering and don’t have any plants yet, buy a syngonium or peace lily and keep it in it’s plastic nursery pot.
It’ll droop when it’s thirsty.
When this happens, pick up the pot and note how much it weighs. Then water it thoroughly, wait an hour, and pick it up again (don’t worry if it hasn’t perked up yet).
You can actually weigh it on scales but chances are you’ll be surprised at the difference in weight. In a surprisingly short space of time you’ll start to notice that plants that need watering just…feel light.
It might be weekly, it might be fortnightly. The frequency will depend on a myriad of issues you can read about here.
Don’t get bogged down in the water quality debate. If you can drink your tap water, use that. The only commonly available plants that are exceptions to this are carnivorous plants, which I recommend beginners avoid – they are…not easy.
I hate to bang on about light, but if you give your plants plenty if light then they are far more forgiving of bad watering practices. This is especially true for overwaterers, because plants use WAY more water in good light – they use it to grow and it’ll evaporate from the soil faster
3. Temperature is also pretty important
Houseplants are unlikely to be too bothered by inside temperature changes BUT warm temps will really give them a boost and make them MUCH better at warding off pests and they’ll grow bigger and faster.
In one of my newsletters I told a long and boring story (it’s this one, but don’t say I didn’t warn you)about my new radiators.
The tl;dr is that my bedroom remains weirdly hot a lot of the time and my plants are doing really well despite the MAX eight hours of light they get in the UK winter.
It’s definitely not a light replacement, but it helps maintain condition during the winter.
I know this seems obvious, because houseplants are tropical, I suppose I was just suprised at how much of a positive difference it had.
4. Soil type is weirdly not important
Don’t sweat about fancy soil. It’s not a gimmick but it’s not…not a gimmick.
Buying fancy Monstera soil for your Monstera will not help it grow any better by itself.
HOWEVER
If you’re an overwaterer, a Monstera soil will keep water away from the roots (because it tends to be heavy on the bark and perlite).
If you’re an underwaterer, it may cause the roots to dry up a bit faster.
So what soil do beginners buy?
Any houseplant potting mix you can find. They’re all largely the same. If you tend to underwater, or prefer moisture loving plants like ferns, then stick to using that neat. If you overwater, buy some orchid bark, leca or perlite (whichever is easiest for you to get) and mix a bit in.
Mix 1 part of the bark/perlite/leca to three parts potting mix.
If your plant is in good light the soil really doesn’t matter at all.
(But don’t use compost because you’ll get fungus gnats, which aren’t harmful but are annoying).
5. Pests are inevitable
It’s not if, it’s when.
Pest management is a huge pita and there are, sadly, no good one and done methods.
If you’re a diligent person that will remember to patiently clean leaves down every three days for months, then good news! You don’t need anything fancy – just buy some castille soap like Dr Bronners and wash your plants with warm soapy water regularly for a few weeks.
A lot of people swear by systemic pesticides but they’re banned in UK. There are avenues to get them but I’m sure they’re banned for good reason so I don’t mess with them.
I like to use predatory bugs for pest management but there are two issues:
- They don’t survive in the UK winter
- There is no ‘one pest eats all’. my main gripe is thrips, and the pest that eats adult thrips also eats the mite that eats thrips larvae (you’d think they’d be friends! They have so much in common!) so I buy the one that eats the larvae and do a common of squishing the adults myself and hoping that the adults leave of their own accord because they don’t want to live with a monster that keeps eating their babies.
Yeah, I’m gonna harp on about light again.
Plants with pests can fend them of pretty well if they’re in good light and are relatively well cared for. Trust me, I have a lot of thrips experience.
The exception here is mealybugs, that thrive in good weather. I’ve not tried the mealybug predator (it looks like a big, fast mealybug though, so may do this summer) – instead I soak my hoya (it’s always hoya) in warm water for a few hours and, er, hope they drown. It works medium well. It doesn’t get rid of them 100% but it reduces numbers well.
6. Don’t mist, but do consider humidity
I have a whole article on misting here.
It’s unnecessary, but likely harmless in a healthy plant.
What it does NOT do is increase humidity.
Most houseplants have been bred to live perfectly happily in average household ambient humidity, so around 40%. However, if you want to quickly increase the leaf size of, say, a pothos, increasing the humidity to 60% can help do that.
Humidity is something that is more important to some plants than others, BUT it also seems to be something that can be easily ‘bred out’ of them. For example, when I first got into houseplants, Monstera obliqua were SO RARE and needed SO MUCH humidity. Now they’re pretty common and just chill out in the open in the garden centre. See exhibit A, below:
7. Fertiliser – also weirdly unimportant and DO NOT DIY it
I’ve done various experiments on fertilising frequently and it has weirdly little effect. I used to fertilise monthly, and my plants were fine. I tried fertilising every time I watered for about a year and my plants were fine, maybe grew a bit bigger.
Then I didn’t fertilise at all and my plants were equally fine.
Soil nutrition can have an impact, but I only repot when I can’t see the soil for roots anymore.
It isn’t that plants don’t need fertiliser, it’s that houseplants aren’t a big enough industry to warrant the research. The houseplant market’s whole schtick that you keep buying replacement plants. There’s no money in keeping them alive.
The exception here is orchids, because they have a been a LOT of people’s hyperfixation for a LONG time (see also cacti) so hobbyists have developed fertilisers that work for them.
We’re yet to see any meaningful work on aroid fertilisers because aroids won’t work in the way we want them to with regards to fertiliser. Case in point: Monstera fruit are DELICIOUS but they simply won’t produce fruit on mass. Half of the plants won’t fruit for reasons botanists can’t fathom.
Ok, this was supposed to be a beginner friendly post. Let’s move one.
Pinterest is awash with DIY fertiliser recipes. They work great, but they cause gnats.
They are incredibly annoying and they don’t leave. Don’t do it. Honestly, no fertiliser at all will be fine. Add some worm castings to the soil if you’re worried.
8. Repotting is another ‘not a big deal’ thing
Some people repot immediately as soon as they bring a plant home. This is fine.
Some people don’t repot until the last possible minute. This is also fine.
Unless you’re repotting so frequently it overstresses the plant, it doesn’t matter.
Plants don’t like to be repotted because it’s not something they’d experience in the wild unless something bad happens. But they’re mostly fine with it.
I repot when necessary. For some plants, like succulents, that’s never. For others, like ZZ plants, that’s all the freaking time.
There’s no trick to it other than try to keep as much the same as possible (soil type, don’t fuck with the roots, don’t move it after etc etc).
9. Don’t know what plant to start with? Pothos are always good
Pothos are popular for a reason – they’re the everything plant.
- They’ll survive most light types (but they look sad in low light)
- They stay small if you let them trail
- They grow BIG if you grow them big
- They tolerate both under and over watering
- They’re cheap and easily available
- They come in a variety of colours
- They get splits in the leaves when they mature
- They’re the whole package
10. Take any information on toxicity with a pinch of salt
There is next to no information on the actual toxicity levels of most houseplants.
Cut flower lilies are fatal to cats but peace lilies are not. They are completely different plants.
Some houseplants, like Hoya are non-toxic.
Other houseplants (like most aroids, including monstera, pothos, and peace lilies) are toxic but they’re NOT fatal. They’ve developed methods to stop being eaten, and that method is the production of raphides in the leaves which cause drooling and mouth pain. They aren’t designed to be fatal – they designed so that something takes a bite and then is like ‘oh, this hurts, I shall desist’.
I’m not saying this so you can go out and buy a Monstera and allow your cat to eat it. That’s pretty cruel. I’m saying it so that if your cat happens to nibble on a pothos leaf, you don’t panic. Your cat/dog/kid will likely be fine. Keep a close eye on them and call a medical professional if you’re worried.
In conclusion
This wasn’t meant to be 2000 words long. Oops.
Let’s end by dispelling a few myths:
- No plant will have any meaningful impact on air quality
- No plant will have any meaningful impact on mold growth, damp, or similar
- Even 100+ plants won’t have a significant impact on the above
- Bathrooms are cold and damp, but don’t stay humid for long. Put your chill plants in there – I’m talking pothos, peace lily, syngonium.
