A Beginner's Guide to Houseplants | Hacker News Reader

A Beginner's Guide to Houseplants

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In the 1970s, a Canadian composer named Mort Garson composed a full electronic album meant to be played to house plants. It's called Mother Earth's Plantasia, because it was primarily distributed at plant boutique in L.A. named "Mother Earth".

My dad had a copy lying about that I used to listen to in high school when I'd be studying. It turns out its become a cult classic online, as a sort of pioneering electronic work [1][2]

Anyways, included with the original album is a wee book suggesting that plants benefit hugely from listening to music. Whether that claim has any basis in reality aside, Garson also names 15 hassle-free plants for the home. I can attest to the fact that they are easy to take care of as a relatively new indoor gardener.

They include:

Chinese Evergreen, Sansevieria, Spathiphyllum, Palm, Nephthytis, Philodendron, Boston Fern, Piggyback, Maranta, Dracaena, Dieffen-bachia, Aspidistra, Pothos, Ficus and Grape Ivy.

[1] https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/collections/mort-garson

[2] https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/44931/1/mort-gars...

Just last week, a song from this album popped on my Spotify discover weekly and I really liked it. Until I read your comment right now, I didn’t understand the context of the album. When I checked the screen to see what I was listening to I first thought it was done in parody or in a mocking fashion or something. I had a mental note to go back and research it a bit more to figure out what it really was, and now I know. And I’m suddenly excited to go back and listen to the entire album. Thanks!

I have always wanted the room in which I work to resemble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NwD7VjxZ_A but never had the time or green thumb.

This simple 1 page guide is a good way to start a new year resolution to making the room more green.

An astute family member got me some ferns for Christmas, I feel it is the start of something similar!

She’s delightful but how on earth is her apartment not filled to the brim with bugs?

Fly traps?

Information about toxicity to pets would be useful as well. If you have pets this it's something you should know about, as many common house plants can seriously harm or kill pets if they ingest the leaves, which can happen when you're away from the house, for example.

Yes, Lilies are exceedingly toxic to cats...if you have cats, do not allow them near lilies.

Definitely the Dracaena trifasciata (snake plant, mother-in-law-tongue). The only way to kill it is with over watering. Once a month is plenty. They have been discovered in closets still thriving after months in the dark. Green, alive and near zero maintenance. This is your plant...

What’s the hardiest edible plant? I love the whole indoor plant idea but want to be practical too.

I suspect Basil is at least in the running, everyone I know who starts growing Basil at home ends up cloning it endlessly and gifting them for lack of space. Aloe is another I've seen follow a similar pattern.

Sold! I love basil. Thank you.

My rosemary has survived wanton neglect that many other herbs etc have died from. It just keeps on growing.

Fantastic, thanks

Mint is pretty resilient too, I accidentally left a (large) pot of it on the balcony over the winter in Helsinki. It spent a couple of months at -10, and was covered in ice/snow too.

When some came around again in March this year it was still alive, much to my surprise.

Great call. Mint is almost like a weed here in the PNW. there’s a minor possibility that even I could handle that

A Pakistani coworker told me once that mint was a very common houseplant in her country, because it repels pests.

Also, they apparently love being root-bound. No need to keep repotting them to larger and larger vessels. They are essentially the tailor-made plant for every black thumb...

I get why these houseplants are popular recommendations, there's a bunch of various talks that reference these as good for helping with air quality. That said, I wonder if it's really good advice to buy exotic indoor plants - there's plenty of native plant salvage[0]/restoration groups that could probably help you find something you can nurse indoors and plant outside later, may help one learn about things native to your area too. These groups usually do a couple sales a year so just get on their mailing lists and be ready to pounce.

[0] example of one group in central WA: https://www.nativeplantsalvage.org/

Water X times a week is generally not good advice, as many factors such as humidity and light can affect soil moisture. You will pretty much always need to get your hands in the top 1”-1 1/2” of soil to evaluate moisture.

Another school of thought is that plants aren't generally damaged by casual overwatering, but that many houseplants aren't thriving because of poor-draining soil mixtures or being left with wet feet.

If you fix the poor soil, you don't need to worry as much about overwatering because they aren't suffocating every time they're watered, creating a perched water table in the container.

Peat-heavy mixes also have a nasty habit of going hydrophobic when they dry completely - it can be a difficult problem to fix.

A bonzai grower called Tapla wrote a fantastic series of posts on the Gardenweb forums about the importance of drainage in container soils. I'd encourage anyone interested in this stuff to check them out - they've been instrumental in keeping my indoor trees alive.

Here's a tip I learned from taking care of house plants for the last year and half.

'Note that when you buy a plant, it usually comes in a "potter's pot" which is a small plastic container meant for temporary use. Ideally, you'd buy new pots (terracotta or ceramic) and re-pot your plant with additional soil.'

Instead of repotting into a new pot, keep the plants in the "potter's pot" and sit that in a nice decorative pot. As house plants grow they will need to be moved to larger pots or even require root maintenance. Getting plants out of a fancy ceramic pot is a lot hard than the thin plastic "potter's pots", and appearance wise they look just as good.

Why is it harder to remove them from ceramic pots?

You can cut a potter's pot with a pair of scissors.

Ceramic pots are heavier, especially at larger sizes, and can be difficult to lift, upturn, generally handle for some people. Also the thin plastic pots have a bit of give allowing one to squeeze them, loosening the soil and root ball, which can make it easier to remove the plant. Otherwise tools might be needed, like a scoop, that can damage to roots.

On the other hand they'll never grow if kept in the potter's pot, which is probably desirable in a houseplant, but personally I would rather watch the plant grow.

I was gifted a monstera adansonii in a fairly small (12cm diameter iirc) pot and it remained more or less the same size for a year or so, but since repotting it a couple of months ago into a 25cm pot and providing a new trellis structure it's grown nearly 30cm and sprouted many more leaves (although it has been all vertical growth so far, I'm hoping it will fill out horizontally once it reaches the top of the trellis). Obviously it would be impractical letting it get to maximum height indoors (around three metres, if I recall correctly), so we probably won't provide it a bigger pot once it reaches the limits of the current one, but seeing it grow has been quite nice.

I attribute part of its success to keeping the plant in the bathroom such that the steam from the shower provides a more tropical climate than the rest of the house and helps moderate its water requirements. I'd like to move it outdoors at some point and let it get to maximum size, but I don't think it would do well in the harsh Australian summer.

I kept a Japanese Peace Lily on my bathroom windowsill in Scotland for a few years. Never watered it once. It thrived, and survived entirely on shower-steam (presumably condensing on the leaves/pot/soil).

They're pretty resilient plants to keep, the way the leaves start to droop when they need watering makes it really easy to take care of them, even for people without particular plant-skills.

Ceramics have different properties than plastic — terra cotta, for instance, wicks more moisture. I don’t disagree with you but it is a point to consider.

Plants from the nursery are often on the verge of being root-bound (if they aren't already) and getting nasty J-roots and the like.

Up-potting is important for overall plant health, regardless of what kind of pots one chooses to use.

Personally, I can't imagine needing to worry about having appropriate inner pots to go along with everything.

+1 for Pothos. They're pretty much impossible to mess up, and they're also easy to propagate from cuttings! So you can eventually turn one plant into many.

I like to grow herbs from the ridiculously priced ones they sell at the grocery store. Put a sprig or two in a jar of water for a few weeks or whenever roots begin to sprout, then transplant them to a pot. I'm no green thumb but I've found this is pretty easy to do. Many of them grow well outdoors too.

the key to growing a green thumb is finding a plant that actually interests you. For me that plant was Cannabis. Doing my own micro grow in a 22x38x64 [cm] box forced me to learn about all sorts of things of relevance to a plant:

- light intensitiy, spectrum, sources

- fertilizers

- soil types

- watering patterns and methods

- vermins and how to deal with them

- plant physiology and developmental phases

- water quality, pH levels

also I think that it's worth starting from seed. this makes it more personal.

another interesting plant is cactus (in my case San Pedros to be specific). though, they are much less of a hassle compared to Cannabis. but that led me to asking about how cactusses anatomically relate to regular plants, needed to learn yet another watering pattern, looking forward to grafting.

vegetables are also cool. I personally don't find much interest in plants which are just standing around, serving no purpose - pretty much exactly what I'd get from those suggested in the article.

Seconded! I'm very early into a first grow and it's so exciting seeing your first baby leaves growing.

It finally feels like I'm putting my college physics to use and building on it. You're trying to control the environment, with many different factors, as perfectly as you can. To do it well, you have to understand the principles behind each different factor.

E.g.: In controlling temps and humidity which is important for plant respiration, why does a lower temperature hold less moisture? Heat is kinetic energy, and a higher temp (more heat) means more molecules on avg have enough energy to become a gas.

I'm interested in growing potted plants indoors that yield food. I think my apartment is perfect for it: corner apartment with larger windows facing east, south, and west.

Does anyone have a good resource for growing food indoors?

Herbs are great to grow indoors year round - search for articles on them and many will refer to other things you can keep indoors. An aunt had a miniature lemon tree she pruned and grew indoors year round. She pollinated the flowers with a model paint brush - always amused me.

Dischidia aka String of Nickels/Button Orchids are great if you don't have a green thumb. Mine have outlived even my Tilandsia (both of these are hardy soil-less plants)

$10 per month for that Planta app is a bit much. It's been a while I didn't see any useful app with like, a $5 one-time purchase price.

Man does Notion chug on large header images... it's not only me, right?

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