Did you ever wonder how businesses like offices and restaurants kept their plants so beautiful? They hire a professional! If you want to learn the inside tips and tricks of the houseplant world from someone who has had this job, keep reading! We’ll go over how to get the best deals on houseplants, getting free plants, must have products and more.
Hi! I’m Daniel, I’m a horticulturalist by trade. My first job in horticulture was an Interior Plant Technician which is the person who cares for the houseplants in businesses around the city. This job was also a houseplant and exterior plant wholesaler, so I got very familiar with a lot of plants and the signs and symptoms of an unhealthy plant. Today I’m going to lay out all the basics you need to know to have a thriving houseplant collection. I’ll go over..
- What to look out for when buying plants
- The best new plant routine for a healthy collection
- The most common pest problems
- Must have products to keep your plants happy and healthy
- Watering schedules? Are they good or bad? How they really work.
- The biggest houseplant killer
- How to find the best deals on houseplants
- FREE PLANTS??
(P.s, for those of us that learn better from listening, I have a YouTube video about this topic as well. It is linked at the bottom of the page!)
What to look out for when buying plants
Obviously, there are many places to find good deals on houseplants. Facebook groups and marketplace, local shops, garden centers, local greenhouses and plant shops, etc. But do you know how to spot a good plant vs a bad plant in these places? Do you know how to avoid bringing home and spreading pests and disease? Continue reading to find out.
When you are looking to get a new plant, it’s important to look out for these 9 things,
- Is the plant sitting in a bunch of water?
- Is the soil super dry?
- Are there any yellow or brown leaves?
- Does the plant smell like rotten eggs?
- Are there any white fuzzy things on the plant (mealy bug)
- Are there any spider webs on the plant?
- Are there any black, brown, yellow, orange, etc. spots or lines on any of the leaves?
- Can you see veins on the leaves of the plant?
- Do any plants around this plant have any of these symptoms?
If the answer is no to all of these things, then you have the best chance of bringing home a healthy plant.
The best new plant routine for a healthy collection
When you bring home your new plant, regardless of if it’s the most healthy looking plant in the world or not, it’s still important to take precaution before introducing your new plants to your existing collection. Follow these steps to ensure a smooth and healthy transition for your plant collection and you will be safe from pests and disease!
- When you bring the plant home, give it a bubble bath.. Seriously! I prefer peppermint soap but if that’s not available, then blue dawn dish soap is the next best option! Or, you could be extra and use insecticidal soap.
- Keep your new plants separate from your old plants. Even if you are sure you saw no pest or disease issues, it’s better safe than sorry. Quarantine your plants for at least one month before introducing them to their new plant family.
The most common pest problems for houseplants
There are thousands pests in the world of plants, but for houseplants thankfully we have narrowed these pests down to only needing to really worry about these 6.
- Mealy bugs
- Spider mites
- Thrips
- Scale
- Fungal spots
- Fungus gnats
I will have a blog post dedicated to each of these pests, so you can click on each of them to be instantly redirected to their blog post to learn more.
Must have products to keep your plants happy and healthy
It can be hard in the world of consumerism to find out what you really need to keep your plants happy. From fertilizers to soil alternatives, here are my favorite things that I make sure to always have on hand for my houseplants
(p.s: you can find all of these products on my amazon storefront here)
- Pesticides (I recommend using peppermint soap, just because it can also be used for other things like cleaning yourself. Insecticidal soaps are only good for plants. Also, for fungus gnats it is best to use the yellow sticky traps. Another helpful tool is diatomaceous earth. This works by cutting through exoskeletons of insects and killing them. So this would be helpful on things like mealybug and scale. You’ll just put as much of the powder as you can directly on the plant. Be sure not to wet the diatomaceous earth as that will cause it to not work until it is dry again. All of these products can be found in my amazon store.)
- Media (you can either use soil, leca, or just keep your plants growing in water! But remember, if your plants are staying in water they will need some oxygen so be sure to add a bubbler to the water. For soil, I highly recommend fox farms. Their soil comes with slow release fertilizer pellets, which means all you have to do is water it in and you won’t have to worry about fertilizing for at least 6 months!)
- Fertilizer (There are THOUSANDS of fertilizer brands out there. What ones are good? What ones are bad? What do these 10-20-10, or 20-20-20 numbers on the front mean? For these questions, feel free to check out my other blog post here about how to read fertilizer labels and what it all means. However, for the best fertilizer brand for houseplants I highly recommend Jacks fertilizer. Find it in my amazon store!)
- Watering supplies (a simple watering can will do, however if you have a huge collection of plants, a long hose that you can connect to your sink and bring around your house with you can really save a lot of time and energy. Ontop of this, for things like propagation jars and tiny plants, you can also use a curved squirt bottle. Find all of these items linked in my amazon store!)
Watering schedules? Are they good are they bad? How they really work.
Theres a huge debate on watering schedules in the plant world. Are they good? Are they bad? How do they work? Well, as a former professional interior plant technician, I’m here to set the record straight and give you some insider tips that I’ve NEVER heard other people in the houseplant communities talk about.
Watering schedules are great and SUPER useful, but not in the way that you’re thinking..
As a professional tech, I would come to my accounts either once a week or once every other week. So you might think that means I am watering these plants every time I come?
Wrong. Well, sometimes.
A watering schedule is set for you to CHECK your plants at that time. Typically, you should be checking the plants water levels at least once a week. You can do this by using a soil probe (linked in my amazon store) or you can get a wooden skewer, push it into the soil the whole way and back out. If there is soil stuck to the stick, you should be good to wait a bit longer before watering. If the stick is completely dry, it’s time to water.
To use the soil probe, you will push it in the whole way, take it out, and pinch the soil in the 2 lower divots. A soil probe works by taking a sample from each level of the soil. Your plants will always be more dry at the top than the bottom, but it’s important to remember that your soil will need to dry out a lot more than just the first inch or so before the plant actually needs watered again.
Another way of testing when you need to water your plant again is by weight. When you water your plant, pick it up before and after watering to see the weight difference. You will start to learn just by picking up the plant if it is ready for watering or not.
There is so much that goes into watering plants that I can’t possibly put it all on this blog post. Feel free to check out my post all about watering here!
The biggest houseplant killer
This might shock you, but the absolute biggest killer of houseplants is overwatering.
To put it simply, roots need oxygen. When you over water, you’re not allowing the roots to get the oxygen that they need to survive. Something that might seem even MORE confusing about this, is the fact that overwatering is more about the frequency of watering and not the amount of water your plant gets at one time.
Watering plants is an art. It’s more-so an art of allowing the plant to dry down to a specific point before watering again, as well as giving the plant enough water (because underwatering is still very stressful to the plant. While you’re less likely to kill a plant from underwatering, you can still severely stress the plant out. Plus if the plant is not watered for too long, then it will still die.)
All plants have their own specifics on watering practices. Some of them like to stay moist while others prefer to almost completely dry out between waterings. Do your research on each individual plant weather that’s through my blog and YouTube videos or other websites (but keep in mind… I have found LOTS of misinformation on big popular websites like the spruce. Try to focus your search more on the horticultural and professional side of things. I will have blog posts featuring specific plants soon so be on the look out for those! Feel free to join my emailing list to be notified when I have a new blog post or YouTube video, as well as exclusive offers for my upcoming projects!)
How to find the best deals on plants
It seems like since covid there are millions of places to get houseplants. You can shop online, you can go to Home Depot or Lowes, or you can even go to the multiple small plant shops that are probably in your area!
My suggestion if you’re able to is to shop from these small shops in your area. I’ve noticed shopping small not only supports a small business instead of a corporation which is always a plus, but they care about their plants more. At Home Depot and Lowes, the people caring for their plants normally don’t actually know what they’re doing. I know this because I have applied for that job before, interviewed for it, and was denied. Even though I had more than enough knowledge and experience to care for the plants and make them thrive. They don’t care about that. They would rather have someone that will run through the plants quickly and give them all a whole bunch of water so they can go perform other tasks for the store. It’s all about making money.. They do not care about the plants.
Plus, when stores like Home Depot and Lowes get their shipments of plants, not only do these shipments from wholesalers normally come pre-infested with almost all types of pests that you can think of, but ontop of this retailers DO NOT PAY FOR THESE PLANTS! When you buy a plant, the money you spend goes directly towards the wholesaler the plant came from and not the retailer it is sold at. Knowing this is just further proof that these big stores do not care about these plants, it doesn’t really affect them much either way.
With small locally owned plant shops, I have seen the opposite. Sure their plants might be more expensive, and there might sometimes be some pest issues. However, you have way more of a chance of bringing home healthy plants from a small locally owned shop run by owners who truly care about these plants rather than a retailer chain. Sure it’s possible to have a bad apple here and there who really does not care about the plants, but overall small plant shops are the way to go to get the best overall deal on houseplants.
Think about it.. If you got a plant from home Depot for half the price of what the local shop is charging, sure it might seem like a better deal to go with the cheaper plant, but once you bring it home and discover the pest issues and that it needs fertilized, you will be spending more time and money getting these supplies and fixing the problems than you would have needed to spend if you had gone with the more expensive smaller business.
FREE PLANTS??
Lastly, what you’ve probably all been waiting for, how to get free plants??
I have gotten well over 200 plants for free in my life. While this is an extreme example because a lot of them came from my work, I have still figured out a few other ways of getting free plants.
Please note that free plants usually mean project plants. 9/10x you will not bring home a beautiful new looking no issue plant for free. Sometimes you might get lucky, but normally that is not get the case. Your free plants will cost you time of rehab care, and money on materials if you don’t have them already.
So let’s start with the easiest way of getting the most free plants on a consistent basis..
- Work somewhere with plants: This could be a garden center, a wholesaler, a locally owned plant shop, or a greenhouse. I would be cautious of this though because some places will NOT allow free plants (like my current job) You can ask the store’s policy on taking home “garbage plants” when you interview. This usually will not be a weird question, and honestly could encourage some people to give you the job! Wanting the garbage plants just confirms to them how passionate you are about plants. The more passionate someone is, the better work they will do.
- Facebook marketplace and local facebook plant groups: This is the next best way of getting free plants! People will get sick of their (sometimes completely healthy) plants and just post them for free on facebook to get them out ASAP. You can go on your facebook and set up for you to be notified whenever things are posted with certain key words. So you can put in key words like “free plants” “free plant” “plant rehoming” “plants need gone ASAP” “free cuttings” etc. If you live in a metro area, you’ll be surprised at how often these are listed.
- Lastly, just finding very sad plants at stores and asking if you can rescue it for free. Depending on the store and how sad the plant is, a lot of them will say yes. Some store owners would rather take the loss with someone taking the plant home rather than take the loss and just let the plant die and go nowhere.
Thanks for reading!
Thank you so much for visiting my blog page today! I hope you can see now why the Lion’s Mane mushroom is pretty much a super food and why it deserves all the hype it gets! To get information like this sent to your email every single week, feel free to sign up for my e-mailing list below! I hope to see you around soon.
The End
I’m Daniel, a professional horticulturist and the creator of danplant. This blog aims to educate people about a variety of things from nature to spirituality. Think of it as a blog for the person who loves the crunchy lifestyle, and is especially fascinated with the planty side of things! With a heavy focus on plant ID and information for both houseplants and wild plants, you can find it all here!
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