Tips for Beginner Houseplant Parents!

You brought home this beautiful new plant, but have no idea how to take care of it. What do you do now as a beginner houseplant parent? 

With any plant, it is extremely important to do your research before purchasing a plant so that you know you can provide adequate care for it. Many different houseplants require different levels of care, ranging from their humidity to their soil, so it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. Below are just some general care tips that I’ve learned throughout my plant journey, that I’d love to share with you!

Lighting

If you're a beginner, the amount of lighting for each plant can be a little tricky to understand sometimes. But once you get a hang of it, and look at what the plants are telling you, then it’s pretty easy! 

In general, the more variegation a plant has, the more sunlight it will need to maintain the variegation. If you want the variegation to show up more prominently on your leaves, give it more sunlight! Plants tend to lean towards the direction of the sun and so sometimes you can end up with a crooked plant with the leaves all facing the same direction (as you can see from the photo). To help your plant grow more evenly,  rotate your plants once in a while. I usually give my plant a quarter turn every time I water it so that I don’t forget.

Most plants tropical houseplants can't take any direct sunlight, this can cause damage to their leaves. Keep most houseplants away from direct contact with the sun's rays! Ways you can do this is putting a sheer curtain in front of your window, or putting the plant a few feet from a very bright window! 

Watering

Watering is a very important thing to nail in order to keep your plants healthy. It can be hard at first to gauge when your plant needs water, but once you get to know your plants and how they tell you they need water, it can become very easy. I’ve heard many times that over-watering is one of the top reasons why beginner houseplant owners kill their plants. That was definitely me a year ago! It’s hard not to give your plants an extra amount of love when you first bring them home, but extra water is not always what they need. 

My advice to you is that if you know you tend to be either an over-waterer or an under-waterer, there are different plants out there that may better suit you! If you tend to be an over-waterer, you should consider getting more thirsty plants like ferns, palms or dumb cane plants. These plants will appreciate the extra water you give them. If you tend to neglect your plants and forget to water them, I recommend getting any succulents or cacti plants, or any snake plants. These types of plants are very hardy, and don't mind some neglect.

To check whether your plant needs water, I usually just stick my finger in the soil, a couple inches down and see whether the soil is dry or not. Moisture meters are great for any plant owner to get a good idea as to when your plant needs watering. However, I wouldn’t rely only on this tool to decide when to water plants as a lot of plants will show you if they need watering with droopy or wrinkly leaves. It's also good to use your own judgement to know when to water your plants, in case your moisture meter is a little faulty.

In the winter time, make sure you cut back on the watering, as most plants are dormant during this season and don't require as much water.

Humidity

Some houseplants can do fine with normal household humidity, but bumping the humidity will definitely help most houseplants grow! Some houseplants like calatheas really thrive in high humidity environments, so for these plants, increasing the humidity is necessary! There are many ways that you can increase the humidity in your home, one of the obvious one is with a humidifier. However, if you don't want to spend that much, you can also mist your plants a couple times a day. In addition, you can fill a tray with pebbles and water, and place your plant on top, as shown in the picture. The pebbles helps hold the pot up so the bottom of the pot isn't sitting in the water, which is bad for the plant. When the water evaporates around the plant, it increases the humidity. Lastly, you can also place your plants in more humid areas in your home like the kitchen or the washroom.

Soil 

Different plants can thrive better in different types of soil mixes, depending on the origin of the plant. However, if you're lazy like me, then you don't want to spend lots of time and money buying and mixing different soil materials together for each plant. For the most part, you only need two different things to create a good potting mix for your plants, which are perlite and any general potting mix. If you are extra lazy, you can just pick up any potting mix that your local store has and use that. But, I find that mixing perlite into the soil helps drain the water better so that your plant is sitting in wet soil for too long.

Leaves 

Make sure you wipe down the leaves of all your plants to get the dust off of them with a damp cloth. Plants breathe through their leaves, so doing this will help your plant thrive!

Thank you for stopping by!

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