Your houseplants and gardens - Yellow leaf means underwatered AND overwatered?! What a country!

[NoReturn]

Post your houseplants or the types of houseplants, ask questions, and share dumb memes here.

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My houseplants

I've got a bunch of them, but let me tell you about one of my favorites. It's a mutant asparagus fern I grew from a seed and grows as fast as bamboo. During growing season I can leave it alone for a few hours and find an extra inch of growth. It's awesome. That said though, asparagus ferns are supposed to look like this:

And mine looks like this:

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Questions

• Why my onions no grow? They're stuck as little sprout babies.
• Why my aloe no grow? They're not dead, they're just staying the same size.

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Bonus: Check out this autist I found. He's pretty cool.

Spoiler: More from him

 

[DumbDude42]

all my plants are in the back yard and i will not post pics of it because that would get too close to self doxing

regarding your questions: onions only start growing large bulbs in summer when days are long and nights are short. april is too early.
about the aloe i have no idea, dont know anything about the plant.

 

[Fialovy]

Nice thread! I have a ZZ Plant I had since college that is going to be turning seven years old this May! It currently lives at my parent's since I wasn't expecting it to live this long and it is poisonous to cats. About two year ago I transferred it to a bigger pot and it had a hard time adjusting to the pot, but now it is doing alright.

As for outside plants, the daffodils are out right now which is nice. I might try to start an herb garden this year maybe

My brother and his girlfriend gave me a basket of succulents as a wedding gift not realizing how dark and shaded our place is, I will say they survived longer than we expected, but yeah, protip: if you are going to be giving people plants as gifts, know how much sunlight and shade their house and the yard get, otherwise you are setting up plants to suffer.

 

[Krystal]

Second succulent doing just fine. First one died and no idea why but oh well.

 

[NoReturn]

Second succulent doing just fine. First one died and no idea why but oh well.

How dead is it? If there's still an alive-looking leaf you can pick off that leaf and throw it in the other one's pot and it might regrow.

 

[Krystal]

How dead is it? If there's still an alive-looking leaf you can pick off that leaf and throw it in the other one's pot and it might regrow.

Don't remember as it was a while ago and a family member told me. I think it was losing color as it wasn't that good when I got it IIRC. I should also mention that both are tiny succulents for a terrarium.

 

[AbyssStarer]

I over watered a succulent once but now I have a lucky bamboo that does well and I have added a snake plant because I read in Birds & Blooms magazine that they're indestructible and good for air.
I get B&B for the birds, but their stuff on gardening is nice.

Last year I saved my grandmother's old RD Illustrated Guide to Gardening book from the dumpster, I intend to use it a lot in the future.

 

[Bugaboo]

I have two venus flytraps and a sarracenia. They came out of dormancy like a month ago and I have to trim off the dead traps from last year and then they will look good enough to show photos of. I've had them for like a year now, they live on the porch

 

[Freshly Baked Socks]

Last fall I bought a bunch of tulip bulbs, but didn't have any place in the ground to put them in. So I layered moss and dirt in a couple plastic beer coolers, put the lid on them with the drains open and left them outside. When the snow disappeared, I found water had leaked into one and made a solid icedirtcube. Those tulips still look dormant when I dig them up - but the other cooler has shoots poking out of the moss.

 

[NoReturn]

Last fall I bought a bunch of tulip bulbs, but didn't have any place in the ground to put them in. So I layered moss and dirt in a couple plastic beer coolers, put the lid on them with the drains open and left them outside. When the snow disappeared, I found water had leaked into one and made a solid icedirtcube. Those tulips still look dormant when I dig them up - but the other cooler has shoots poking out of the moss.

 

[Alligator Alcatraz]

Strawberry sprouts, cucumber sprouts, and a pepper plant. Sitting indoors under an Aerogarden light with reservoir removed. Using a dollar store car sun shade to (hopefully) reflect wasted light back onto the plants.

I'm not using the aerogarden's hydroponics reservoir because the pepper plant was recently transplanted from there. The aerogarden is only functioning as a grow light at the moment.

Plants I grow always die from some bacterial illness or disease if I use store-bought soil. I have decided to stop buying store soil because I feel like they're the reason my plants keep getting sick. Even the sealed soil that's inside the store caused black leaf spot illness on last year's tomatoes.

 

[Coffee Druid]

My garden is a bunch of potted plants on my porch. I have a variety of peppers and tomatoes, like 16 herbs, and some edible flowers. Basically I like growing anything I can eat. I've bought most as started plants from different stores. Growing from seed is hit or miss for me so far. It kind of feels like a "gotta catch em all" when I come across an herb I don't have yet. I bought some unlabeled spice jars to experiment with drying them to last awhile.

My porch is pretty big and lets in enough light. It also protects against deer. I'd love to build a little deer-proof enclosure in my yard for them eventually. Something I can go and sit in the middle of my plants and zen. The soil is pretty poor and shallow here so planting in ground would require a lot of enriching/spending money on raised beds.

Besides the aforementioned failure for some seeds to get past the sprout stage for me, I've been mostly successful with their health. Tomatoes and peppers are easy in my climate, and I've got a better handle on which herbs need more water or less. I killed two tarragon and a lavender last year though, probably from overerwatering. So far my lavender is hanging on, but has some dead parts. I'm really proud of my echinacea. I moved it inside to a spot that gets sun when we had a freeze. Then I stopped watering it for a couple months (bad plant mom, yeah). I brought it back out with its 3 tiny remaining leaves this spring and now it's exploded in growth.

 

[Nonconsentual Pronouns]

Put a few mildly-loadbearing hooks and a shitload of thin, light hooks in your ceiling and get you some pothos and philodendrons. Put those cute little heart-leafed suckers in some bottom-watering hanging pots you can get for cheap at Walmart and watch them refuse to stop growing. Every time a vine gets long enough to be even remotely in the way, you can just lift it up and rest it in one of the light hooks as your ceiling gradually gets covered in a beautiful web of greenery. By far my favorite décor I've ever set up in my life; it's fantastic for air quality and blood pressure levels. Keeping plants on the ceiling is also a great solution if you have any little ones who can't be trusted not to get too adventurous with them.

In the hanging pots I use, the main pot with the soil and plant has slots and a weird shape in the bottom, so the soil only absorbs the water as it dries out. Top that bottom-watering compartment off on a regular basis, maybe sprinkle in some nutrient and call it good. The bottom-watering pots are really important if you're worried about overwatering, and I recommend this method in whatever form works best for you regardless of where you keep them. I water my shelf plants by pouring water into the dishes underneath them that most people just use as a safety measure for the excess water they put into the soil. Just get one that's over an inch deep and it will do fine. This method also prevents fruit flies and gnats from infesting your house, as I guess they breed in overly wet topsoil, but not in water.

 

[CharcoalChkn]

I live in a small apartment with a cat so I can't have too many plants unless I want cat vomit everywhere. But I do have a monstera, various small succulents and a ctenanthe on my balcony.

I just repotted them over the weekend because, like an idiot, I overwatered my ctenanthe and it got root rot. I'm hoping I can still save it, we shall see how it goes.

 

[With My Dick]

[G]et you some pothos and philodendrons.

We have a philodendron that we bought over a dozen years ago because as a littl'un, it had such beautiful glossy green leaves. Just the healthiest little plant I've ever seen in my life. That one's been through some shit - left in hot cars during moves, put in rooms that get basically zero natural light, rootball left in nutrient-depleted soil. Nothing killed it. It would get sick-looking and we'd try to do something for it, and it always recovered, like a starving kitten that got a saucer of milk.

It's still not in the greatest of places in the house, because there are no great places in the house for a houseplant. The sunny places ae people places or thing places; not plant places. The plant places are outside. But it's in a better place, in a bigger pot, with better soil and watering schedule, and it is once again growing out with the same beautiful, glossy green leaves.

 

[Bassomatic]

Get this off girl board REEEEE plants are unisex and based. We finally broke out frost warning and dropping my herbs in pots.

Did all my mulch and fuck me that's tiring. I'm going to do a potato box this year just to try out. Today was perfect low 70s (F) sunny and I fought the invasive honey suckle that clearly wanted to make friends with the wild rose. I look like I tried to MMA fight a cat. But that shit is plant cancer really gotta pull it.

 

[NoReturn]

I live in a small apartment with a cat so I can't have too many plants unless I want cat vomit everywhere. But I do have a monstera, various small succulents and a ctenanthe on my balcony.

Do you grow cat grass? That stuff is so easy to grow its a menace. Just throw some seeds in a mug and they grow, sometimes you don't even need soil.

I just repotted them over the weekend because, like an idiot, I overwatered my ctenanthe and it got root rot. I'm hoping I can still save it, we shall see how it goes.

Dunk that bitch in hydrogen peroxide! I wish I'd known about it earlier because I've lost plants to root rot before, too.

We have a philodendron that we bought over a dozen years ago because as a littl'un, it had such beautiful glossy green leaves. Just the healthiest little plant I've ever seen in my life. That one's been through some shit - left in hot cars during moves, put in rooms that get basically zero natural light, rootball left in nutrient-depleted soil. Nothing killed it. It would get sick-looking and we'd try to do something for it, and it always recovered, like a starving kitten that got a saucer of milk.

It's still not in the greatest of places in the house, because there are no great places in the house for a houseplant. The sunny places ae people places or thing places; not plant places. The plant places are outside. But it's in a better place, in a bigger pot, with better soil and watering schedule, and it is once again growing out with the same beautiful, glossy green leaves.

Have you ever propagated it? A friend of mine took a snip of my pothos and it was psyched. Started growing new leaves everywhere near the cut.

 

[Nonconsentual Pronouns]

The sunny places ae people places or thing places; not plant places.

Careful about direct natural light with those fellas. Mine have gotten some absolutely burned leaves from forgetting to close my blinds again before the time of day when the window next to them gets a shitload of direct sunlight.

 

[CharcoalChkn]

Do you grow cat grass? That stuff is so easy to grow its a menace. Just throw some seeds in a mug and they grow, sometimes you don't even need soil.

I have a small pot with nothing in it currently that might be perfect for it, I'll grab some from the hardware store on the weekend, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Fialovy]

Speaking of growing stuff in mugs, it is pretty easy to make unconventional flower pots out of ceramic containers from the thrift store. You just need a drill with the right drill bit to drill a drain hill. There are a few tutorials to do it online. I have thought of doing something like that before.

Does anyone know of any good shade houseplants that aren't poisonous to cats? Ideally ones you can hang in your kitchen? I have heard spider plants aren't poisonous to pets, but I am not sure if they would do well or not.