Hello, and welcome to danplant!

Do you like nature, houseplants, self healing and van life? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

What is this blog and why am I making it? // An Introduction

Hello! and welcome to danplant blog! I’m super excited to start this blog. This blog will be paired with my Youtube channel, as well as a Pinterest and eventually a TikTok. I will be posting 2 blog posts a week on Tuesday’s and Thursdays starting at the beginning of April. I will be posting Youtube videos every Saturday, so the blog post on Tuesdays will be related to the YouTube video that came out the Saturday before.

I am starting this blog for a few reasons,

1- Educate people about not only houseplants, but all the aspects of horticulture I’m interested in such as herbalism, plant design, indoor gardening, hydroponics, plant ID, foraging, nature, and so much more.

2- Build a community of like minded people who want to grow and heal!

3- To start making my own money online (eventually) to be able to support myself so that I can hit the road to do van life full time!

Who am I and why should you trust anything I say?

As you might have guessed, my names Daniel (dan) ! I am a horticulturist by trade currently working as a greenhouse grower. At my last job I was an Interior Plant Technician. This means I cared for about 3,000 houseplants on a weekly/biweekly basis around the city as my full time job! This job also included wholesale and exterior planter design. So I got a whole bunch of experiences is a few different plant niches there! Before that job, I went to school and got my diploma in Horticulture Technology! From this schooling I learned a lot about plant ID, hydroponics, landscaping, as well as potted plant and garden design. I have been in the horticulture industry professionally for nearly 2 years, and was a hobbyist for about a year before that.

Outside of my profession, my whole life pretty much revolves around plants. I have my own little apothecary at home and use herbs more than pharmaceuticals, I grow as much of my own food as I can in my little one bedroom apartment (with 2 cats!) and I used to have around 200 houseplants. I also am very into foraging as much of my own food as I can! Although I am more of a beginner forager.

I love to learn, crochet, play with my cats, and just be in nature! I am from Pittsburgh, PA but I currently live in Minneapolis, MN.

My dream is to be as self reliant as I can by living in a van using mostly solar energy, composting all the waste that I can, making my own dairy products, and just being able to get out on the open road whenever and wherever I want to. To be able to take all of my belongings and my cats with me everywhere I go just feels so freeing to me for some reason. Also, not having rent or a 9-5 job would also be nice.

I know that my dream can be a reality. I know that technically, I can start now. Quit my job, get a van and put a mattress in it and figure it out. But the thing is, I’m a planner. I like to put in all the hard work in the beginning so that everything else goes as smoothly as it can afterwards. The sooner I can start turning my content creation into income, the sooner I can make this dream a reality.

I’ll have an actual blog post about all that at some point soon, but for now, I leave you with my favorite quote of all time..

“I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find and impossible to forget.” – Erin Van Vuran