This week Erik Helland from Landscape Garden Centers shares information about indoor plants. There are many excellent choices for the home or office with a variety of light demands. Keeping house plants is the only hobby that you can start at any time. Vegetables, must be started in the spring. Bear root plants, you can only plant those for about a month out of the whole year.
There's so many different varieties and colors and textures. House plants are like a Dr. Seuss book. There's a big one, there's a tall one, there's a short one, there's a round one. There's a house plant for every situation. And what we're going to show you a low-light situation, and three really great plants to use, a medium-light situation and then also a high-light situation.
In a high-light office environment, with a south facing window, Jade, Hoya, and a Dracaena. These are all plants that are great for a high-light office. As you can see, as they're very small right now, but these plants can continue to grow and get bigger. So this is another case where you could move them up into different pots.
A medium-light setting is that east, south, southeast exposure. It isn’t a ton of light, though it is not on the west side. It’s still just really good light. You have a lot of opportunities here, including Spider plants, Monstera and Chinese evergreen plants.
In an office setting where it's low-light, there's no windows. There are plants that will still grow here. So, these are all plants that you can use in an office setting that's low-light, or even in a house setting low-light. These plants do not require a lot of care. What does that mean? Not as much water, maybe once every two weeks. Make sure when you water a plant like this, you're going to take it out of its pot, thoroughly water it. Then, let it drain out of there, and put it back in. Do not let it sit in the water for long, extended periods of time, it will rot the bottom roots off.
House plants are very, very simple. Don't be coddling them, and don't be watering them every week. Once that top inch of soil is dry, then that's when you want to water it, and give it a thorough watering. Don't give just a little dribble. Make sure you do a thorough watering, that the water goes all the way through the plant and ends up in the tray in the bottom.
You will notice that plants that are in a house or an office setting do not need to be moved around. In fact, they hate it. Once you find a place for that plant and it's prospering or thriving, or just even just living, just leave it alone because it needs to establish itself in that area. It needs to acclimate itself.
People ask, "When do I need to transplant my house plant from the existing pot into a larger pot?" Ironically, most houseplants, or green plants, like to be grown and in a constricted environment. And then that's when they will actually put a lot of growth on. When it is time, different varieties, different types of different species of plants, you'll want to jump that plant up only by only two finger widths, or two inches. It's like shoes. When your kids' feet are growing, you don't say, “Well, you know they're going be a size 12, when they're 15 years old, and they're only four years old.” Just go up one more size. Then that's where the containers really can add a lot of splash and flash. That's where you want to make sure that the container you're using has a hole, or it can drain. Somehow you can drain the water out, so it's never sitting in water. The other awesome thing about house plants right now is houseplants are being brought outside in the spring and the summer, and they're being used in containers. They can live in containers with your annual flowering plants. At the end of the summer, you bring them back in.
So, this is an awesome way of bringing the inside out. And then in the fall, bringing it right back inside. It's just one of those times an opportunity, and the benefit of having plants in your house, and in your office throughout 12 months out of the year.