A Little About Houseplants

I love houseplants. But, I always felt that I lacked the knack of keeping them alive. Somehow, no matter how sturdier the garden center claimed a houseplant to be, sooner or later it died on me. The plant started to droop or drop all of its leaves one by one and eventually died. I was particularly bad at keeping succulents, no matter how much I tried to keep them happy and healthy – they simply died. I was baffled, to say the least.

The garden centre confidently claims that you can keep a houseplant in any corner of your house and it would do fine. But it is hardly so. When my ficus started on the path of dropping leaves I got so frustrated I was sure that I wasn’t meant to keep houseplants and a kind of resentment grew in me. What didn’t hit me that I was neglecting a huge requirement all along – sunlight. It wasn’t as if the corners I kept them in didn’t get light at all, but it was the kind of light only pothos or philodendron could survive in – not bright enough but just there – a bare minimum. And, houseplants, no matter which one, never do well without good bright light, no matter what they tell you at garden centre. And, that was quite a game changer for me. Plants need light, they need to cook food. The better the lightings, the happier and greener a plant would look, provided that it’s not absolute direct or harsh light because that’s not what houseplants need either.

If a plant gets adequate sunlight, then watering and fertilizing are next major issues. It’s important to be aware of proper watering requirements because the two houseplants sitting next to each other in your shelf may be coming from distant geographical habitat. If one plant is tropical, it would need rather frequent watering and humidity control than the other one which may be alpine and needs sparse watering. The different houseplants may be able to live in our house but may not “thrive” as they should unless all their requirements ate fulfilled in right amount. Fertilization is another matter that needs to be considered except I generally go with single rule of thumb for almost all of them: a dose of vermicompost every month. That does the trick more or less for the houseplants. I am aware the a plant may need a bit of something more, a bit of something less but to avoid the hassle of remembering everything, a top up of vermicompost is the best bet for someone like me.

And, that is how I was finally able to give my houseplants at a healthier and happier home and a sweet satisfaction to myself of having kept them so.