Gardening : Finding Plants That Are Genuine ‘Houseplants’ : Potted Plants: How to select and care for species, including cacti and succulents, that would rather live indoors.
With the ascension of indoor gardening to America’s No. 1 leisure time activity, there has come, naturally, a proliferation of places where one can buy plants purporting to be “indoor plants.”
There are also dozens of books available on “houseplant” care. Alas, many of the plants available for purchase as houseplants and many more of those listed in the books won’t live in your house for more than a few weeks at best--unless you live in a greenhouse.
Through long years of trial and error I have defined about 125 plants as being genuine houseplants and included among them are various foliage plants, cacti and succulents, bromeliads and certain flowering plants.
I can’t list them all in this space, so to get you successfully started down the indoor garden path, I’ve set down a few general guidelines to help you choose the plants that have the best possible chance to succeed in your house or apartment.
The first and perhaps the most important step is buying the proper plants for you, plants that suit your tastes, the environment in which you live and your particular life style.
There are several ways to choose the right plant or plants.
You may be looking for a plant to fit in a specific location: a tree for that bare corner, a hanging plant to block an unsightly view, a plant that flowers to liven up your windowsill.
No matter why you want a plant, ask yourself whether you’ll be able to give it the proper care. Do you have enough light to raise the plant you’d like to buy? You’ll need to consult a plant book or your plant salesperson to find out.
Do you go out of town on weekends, or do you travel a lot on business? If so, you’re almost sure to have problems with some of the more exotic plants, especially flowering plants and ferns. Frequent fliers should stick to low-maintenance, hassle-free plants like philodendron, arrowhead, Sanseveiria, or Chinese evergreen.
Another important consideration is that some plants, like fuschia, dwarf citrus, azaleas and geraniums, for example, really need a couple of months outside in the shade during the late spring and summer to do their very best.
If you live in an apartment or a house where you can’t give your plants an outdoor vacation sheltered from sun and rain, you should avoid those plants and move on to a coffee plant, a Norfolk Island pine, or some other plant that doesn’t require time outdoors.
What is an indoor plant? Simply stated, an indoor plant is a plant that out of the hundreds of thousands of species and varieties that make up the plant kingdom, has demonstrated over the years that it can adapt to living indoors in a pot.
It’s a plant that will accept the relatively constant conditions of an indoor environment, as opposed to the unfettered room for root growth and the changes of season that plants get outdoors.
How can you tell an indoor plant from an outdoor plant? Basically, all indoor plants will be displayed inside, either in greenhouses or stores, and will be potted in plastic or terra-cotta containers.
If you find a plant that is displayed outside in a nursery, a garden center or a parking lot, and it’s planted in a metal container or a rubber tub, consider it an outdoor plant and move on.
You’ll find houseplants for sale everywhere, in supermarkets, on street corners, at garage sales, flea markets, you name it. I’ve seen lots of terrific plants for sale in these kinds of places, but I’ve also seen quite a few that were on their last legs--or is that last leaves?
Unless you’re an expert at detecting diseased or failing plants, and here is perhaps the most critical factor in buying a houseplant, you’re better off buying your plants at a plant shop, nursery or garden center.
How to choose a plant shop or garden center? If the establishment has been in business for more than two years, if the staff can answer specific questions about the care of specific plants and if there is a large selection of lush, healthy plants, you can probably assume that you’re in good hands.
Although we are blessed with many good nurseries in Southern California, my two personal favorites are Rolling Greens Wholesale Nursery in Culver City, which is open to the public but requires a $100 minimum purchase, and St. Marie’s Garden in West Los Angeles. Of the thousands of retail plant shops I’ve visited across the United States, it is by far the most impressive.
How can you tell if a plant is healthy? Give the plant a close examination before you buy it. The foliage should be bushy, shiny and lustrous and it should have the maximum foliage for its species because there’s sure to be some leaf drop when you bring it home.
The plant should be free of brown or yellow spots and there should be few, if any brown tips on the ends of the leaves. Most important, it should be free of pests. Look carefully for any signs of mealybugs, mites, aphids and other insects.
One of the problems you’ll have buying plants outside of plant stores, nurseries or garden centers is that there’s no way you can be sure that a plant hasn’t been exposed to extremes of heat or cold.
They will weaken its root system and diminish its chances of surviving in your house or apartment. And you can’t tell if a plant has been tended properly while awaiting sale. If it fails, you probably won’t get any satisfaction.
The plants on sale at reputable plant purveyors have been shipped directly from a reputable grower and most surely will have been properly cared for while waiting for someone to buy them.
If you develop a relationship with your plant seller, he or she will almost always “make good” on the occasional plant that fails within a week to 10 days after purchase. Yes, this does happen.
Sometimes, despite everybody’s precautions--from the grower to the plant store to you--a plant will simply expire when brought into a house or apartment. You have not committed planticide and should not be saddled with either the guilt or the financial loss.
A big part of the reward of growing indoor plants is finding unusual specimens and varieties. You average florist, garden center, plant store or nursery will always have a large selection of staples, plants like Spathiphyllum, Philodendron, palms, Dieffenbachia, arrowhead, perhaps an African violet or two.
But if you’re looking for exotic and unusual plants like bromeliads, a snow rose, a panda plant, you’re probably going to have to track down nurseries where those more unusual plants are grown.
One approach is to check the Yellow Pages and call to ask about specific plants. On the other hand, nothing is more fun for a plant lover than taking a day to travel from nursery to nursery searching for that perfect specimen or a really rare plant.
I still clearly remember the day I found, in the little town of New Hope, Pa., the most beautiful Irish lace fern I’ve ever seen.
A good plant store or garden center will also have the plant supplies you’re going to need to cultivate your new plants: terra-cotta pots, saucers, potting mix, plant food, pebbles, spray bottles and moss.
Try to buy everything you’ll need while you’re at the store. If your plants are suddenly attacked by mealybugs or whiteflies, for example, you’ll be able to nip them in the bud if you’ve got some insecticide soap on hand. And how many times have you let a plant that needed repotting sit for weeks, even months, because you didn’t have time to get back to the plant store?
