You know that feeling when you look at your orchid and it’s doing well – green leaves, strong roots, everything looking perfect – but it hasn’t given you a single bloom? Yeah, that’s no fun. And I know how you’re feeling. My first Phalaenopsis sat on my kitchen windowsill for eighteen months without flowering. I …
A leggy pothos is something that can creep up on you. One day you have a beautiful trailing plant and the next it’s looking a bit like green spaghetti with a few leaves leftover. I’ve had it happen with my pothos a few times and it’s annoying as hell. But a leggy pothos isn’t some …
Peace Lilies are one of those plants that everyone thinks they understand until they try to keep one alive for more than six months. Then they realize it’s not quite as easy as they thought. I had mine in a dark corner of my bedroom for almost a year before I figured out why it …
Every spring I make the same mistake. The first properly warm day arrives, you know the one – a bright, still morning in late February or early March where the light is different and the air smells like something is happening – and I go outside full of energy and start doing things in the …
Like most of us I’ve killed some plants over the years. Pothos being no exception. But I’ve also managed to grow some that took over my living room they grew so big. And I did that by learning what pothos need, not what I thought they needed. If you get the conditions right then pothos …
Getting a peace lily to bloom can be harder than you first think. I’ve had mine sit there for months looking healthy with it’s green leaves but no blooms whatsoever. And then one day I changed the fertilizer I was using and very quickly saw new blooms. In order to give your plant the best …
When I first started growing pothos I imagined long and bushy trailing vines. Instead I got a sad and leggy looking plant with leaves spaced so far apart you could drive a car between them. It was disappointing. I wanted a pothos that was full AND trailing. That I could let grow down my bookshelf. …
Orchids can make you want to tear your hair out. You give them the perfect light, water them on schedule, maybe even talk to them (no judgement here) and yet they still take ages to give you any new growth. I’ve stood around in my kitchen staring at my Phalaenopsis orchid just thinking to myself …
The first flower bed I ever planted was a disaster. Not the kind of disaster where things gradually go wrong – it was clearly wrong almost the moment everything went in the ground. The tall dahlias I’d planted at the front completely blocked the shorter plants behind them. Half the bed got maybe two hours …
Watering plants is something everyone thinks they know how to do. It couldn’t be easier, could it? You fill up a watering can or jug, pour it on the soil, job done. Except it’s not that simple and the proof is in the statistics. Overwatering is the main killer of houseplants. It’s responsible for more …