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Let's talk about house plants

Clair De Lune said:
Money plants, spider plants and fiddle leaf figs can go a few weeks without watering ...these I recommend to friends who are a lil absent minded with watering :D
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I grow spider plants in hanging baskets and bring them indoors for the winter after giving them a good soak - I have hooks on the ceiling for them.
They get crazily potbound though and are dry and dead-looking come the spring ...
After a couple of years I've had to start again - luckily I had some plants waiting in the wings.
I couldn't bring myself to ditch anything that seemed potentially alive - so I tore apart the original plants and potted them up and potentially have thousands of babies to give away if they root successfully in the trays of damp grit ...

Spider plants being variegated absolutely want light to thrive. I tried one on the east-facing windowsill at work behind tinted glass and it hated it.
 
iona said:
Zamioculcas zamiifolia? Those are another good option for not needing watering too often (though the rhizomes will rot without adequate drainage), and they're not too fussy about light levels.
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Yes. It seems to be thriving on not much attention.
 
For some horrendous reason, I cannot keep a single houseplant alive. Anything indoors is destined to die a horrible, slow death. I simply don't understand how even cactii and succulents are all miserable fails while I can, and do, grow hundreds of tricksy, miffy and demanding outdoor plants with only a modicum of murder, yet even a dracaena is doomed to lingering hell under my roof.
 
My working life definitely put me off house plants - so many of them not looked after and just eating themselves.
Going back to work summer 2020 after lockdown was quite distressing ...

As a contrast, after months of "neglect", there were orchids near my office :)
 
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I re-homed my houseplants when I moved 20 years ago (think mum-tat still has one or two of them)

Did get a houseplant as a house warming present when I moved here, but it expired. For various reasons I've never quite got round to having more here - I've been here 20 years now and it's never really felt permanent...
 
I suspect when I move to a place with a much bigger garden and conservatory / atrium, I will be able to rotate plants in and out of the house ...
 
gentlegreen said:
My working life definitely put me off house plants - so many of them not looked after and just eating themselves.
Going back to work summer 2020 after lockdown was quite distressing ...

As a contrast, after months of "neglect", there were orchids near my office :)
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I‘m like this gentlegreen . It pains me almost physically to see plants suffering and struggling indoors.
 
MrCurry said:
Spider plants and cactuses are the only ones I have success with.
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My mother loved the idea of house plants, but she had no luck with them, for whatever reason. The only thing she couldn't kill was mother in law's tongue.

I went away for a year. Someone had given her a spider plant. When I came back, the place was a jungle.

I have inherited my mother's black thumb, but have no particular desire to have plants indoors, which just seems odd. But then so much is.
 
I have an avocado that is about 60 years old. It was an indoor plant but now lives outdoors. It’s in an old metal dustbin so it’s kinda bonsai’d. My Dad grew it from a stone and then gave it to me as a housewarming present at my first house. He a,so gave me an aspidistra that’s about 40 years old. He also gave me a papyrus in an aluminium bucket that he’d brought back from Egypt. After about 10 years indoors I planted it out in the pond where I lived. I tried to bring a cutting with me but it didn’t take, and the new owners of the house got rid of the pond and thus the papyrus.

I’ve got a cactus that’s about 30 years old that started out as one of those weeny little ones people give as gifts.

I used to have loads of houseplants that were long lived old friends but for various reasons over the years they’ve died or gone to live elsewhere.

I’ve also got a bunch of plants that live outdoors in the summer and come indoors for the winter.
 
Does anyone here have lithops? I'd like to get some but I'm worried about winter temperatures indoors. We don't use the heating too much and I wonder if 10 degrees for example would do for them?

Thanks
 
story said:
I have an avocado that is about 60 years old. It was an indoor plant but now lives outdoors. It’s in an old metal dustbin so it’s kinda bonsai’d. My Dad grew it from a stone and then gave it to me as a housewarming present at my first house. He a,so gave me an aspidistra that’s about 40 years old. He also gave me a papyrus in an aluminium bucket that he’d brought back from Egypt. After about 10 years indoors I planted it out in the pond where I lived. I tried to bring a cutting with me but it didn’t take, and the new owners of the house got rid of the pond and thus the papyrus.

I’ve got a cactus that’s about 30 years old that started out as one of those weeny little ones people give as gifts.

I used to have loads of houseplants that were long lived old friends but for various reasons over the years they’ve died or gone to live elsewhere.

I’ve also got a bunch of plants that live outdoors in the summer and come indoors for the winter.
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Can we see the avocado tree? :cool:

I’ve got loadsa plants, and one really old one too! A cactus I’ve had since I was 19, it’s now nearly as tall as me.

contadino that’s some serious thought your giving to getting a living stone :D I usually just get plants, subject them to the harsh natural selection that is living in the environment of my house with its intermittent watering regime, and the winners survive!

I have a living stone, it looks really unwell and has done for years, but refuses to die :hmm:
 
Pots are generally dirt cheap if you just go for the small ones, it’s only the massive plastic ones that get pricey.

Tiger sells very cheap pots as do most shops like that

As a potter I’ll make you a nice pot but it’ll cost because it takes 2-3 hours work to make a good one by hand, which reminds me I was going to get one made for my cayenne plant
 
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Edie said:
Can we see the avocado tree? :cool:

I’ve got loadsa plants, and one really old one too! A cactus I’ve had since I was 19, it’s now nearly as tall as me.

contadino that’s some serious thought your giving to getting a living stone :D I usually just get plants, subject them to the harsh natural selection that is living in the environment of my house with its intermittent watering regime, and the winners survive!

I have a living stone, it looks really unwell and has done for years, but refuses to die :hmm:
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The avocado isn‘t looking it’s best just now to be honest. It’s evergreen, dropping leaves when they’re old and in need of replacing, but the winter and spring windstorms we had this year damaged all the leaves, so it’s hanging onto all of them while building new ones, I can see new growth coming through but it‘ll be a few more weeks before it’s fit for being seen in glory. It’s had some food and will have some more, then when the new growth pings out I’ll give it a good haircut, remove the old leaves to encourage more speedy growth of the new ones and maybe prune some branches too.

All this makes it sound like either a huge big creature that needs hours of ladder work, or a teeny little bonsai that needs to be coddled. It’s neither, it’s about 10 foot including the bin It lives in.

I’ll try to remember to take a photo when she’s ready for her close up.
 
Do school plants count?

I started with a couple of spider plants. In September with my new class, I show them how to replant the babies. For the last 4 years, we've managed to grow 30+ spider plants by the following March so each child can take home a plant for mother's day.

20220609_124455.jpg20220609_124822.jpg20220609_124635.jpg

We've also got Spikey Mike the cactus who had an unfortunate incident with Kyle a few years ago. He's grown back but I fear he's going to break soon. Any ideas how I can help him out?

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Then there's Snappy Sid the flytrap who did really well but had been looking a bit sorry for himself. Maybe needs some nutrients or something? Like a fly I guess.

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There's also a money tree and a succulent - which is like one of yours I think iona ?

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There's also chillis but I just chucked the seeds in a pot so I think there are too many in there. They're starting to flower though.

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And finally there's Bob the Big. One of the kids brought him to my class a few years ago looking very sad (child and plant). He'd found it abandoned in the street so we rescued it and it's done really well. It was a couple of feet tall and brown when we got it.

20220609_124809.jpg
 
miss direct said:
Can we talk about pots? Why are they so expensive? Where can I get some nice pots that don't cost ££££? I bought some online (sturdy plastic yellow ones) and they didn't have drainage holes, so that was a palaver trying to put some in.
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Those expensive pots without drainage holes are decorative pot covers, you'd generally put a standard cheap plastic pot (which will come with drainage holes) inside one of the fancy ones.
 
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