Pruning an orchid makes a lot of people nervous. Orchids feel delicate and like you could make a costly mistake. Plus the advice available online is usually not that helpful, even contradicting itself at times – cut the spike back, do not cut the spike back, cut to a node, cut to the base, leave …
A few months ago I noticed a friends amazing monstera was looking awful. It had been the envy of many of our group for years and now it had yellow, drooping leaves and a nasty smell in the air around it. When I lifted the pot it also felt suspiciously light for something that should …
When I first tried to get my pothos to climb I just shoved a moss pole in the soil with it and hoped for the best. You’ll be shocked to learn it didn’t work. The vines just sort of hung there, looking at me like I was an idiot. And you know what? They were …
For longer than I care to admit when I got my first monstera I didn’t fertilize it. Not once. I figured it was growing fine and adding fertilizer was just one more thing to remember and probably something I’d mess up. Then I met someone who had a monstera that was over three times the …
When I bought my first monstera it had three leaves and fit perfectly on my desk. That was quite a few ago years ago. Now it’s surprisingly tall, has leaves the size of dinner plates and lives in the corner of my living room where its taken up a lot of space I’m not complaining! …
When plants are struggling or unhappy they are very good at communicating it. Yellow leaves, brown tips, wilting stems, spots on the foliage – every symptom is the plant telling you something. The problem is that a lot of those symptoms look similar on the surface. And the wrong diagnosis will result in the wrong …
When I got my first fiddle leaf fig I killed it in about three months. That wasn’t because I forgot to water it, nor because I didn’t care for it the right way or enough. It was because I put it in what I thought was ‘bright indirect light’ and it turned out I had …
When you first get a spider plant they can either look amazing or, well, a little bit sad and scraggly. The first spider plant I ever had was easy to keep alive. But it also spent the first year looking like it had about seven leaves in total and all of those were stretching out …
Quite a few years ago my living room only had a few plants in it. They were small, tidy and carefully arranged so they didn’t take up much space or draw too much attention. The room was nice enough but it felt a bit sterile and cold. Like it could do with some else to …
Starting a garden can be pretty intimidating if you’ve never done it before. Some plants and flowers seem like they want to die no matter what you do. But not all flowers are like this. Some will still grow happily even if you’re new to gardening. I remember my first attempt at growing flowers years …