Avoid Houseplant Heartbreak

Being a well-informed plant buyer and plant parent can save you from frustrating mistakes that may not be your fault. But if you buy the wrong plant, for whatever the reason, you can just be throwing your money away on a plant that I can virtually guarantee will die. Some in weeks, and some will have a longer and more tortuous demise.

If you read last week’s column, hopefully you noticed a picture of a small potted plant with pink polka dots. Aptly called the Pink Polka Dot plant, it can also be found with white spots instead of the pink ones. You can find them as lovely, well branched but tight plants in 4- or 6-inch pots. However, this is one of the plants that will drive you crazy if you don’t know what to expect.

This plant is an annual, and it’s probably been treated (sprayed) with a growth inhibitor to keep it short and compact. That’s not how it wants to be though, as in nature it’s just a weed. Even worse, it’s an annual, though tropical, weed. This means that in a matter of weeks, possibly a few months, it will get leggy, flower and — as annuals do once they flower — die, having completed its genetically programmed role of producing seeds for the next generation.

We’ve all done it. Buy a plant that we know little about then wonder what went wrong. But even reading the label on the Pink Polka Dot Plant won’t tell you that it’s an annual. In this case we are at the mercy of the grower and retailer. Unless of course you’re reading this now.

But before we get deeper into what plants make great houseplants, let’s look at the options for where we buy them. Keep in mind also that this is really the best time of the year to buy houseplants because retailers want the space for holiday plants and displays, and most can’t keep the tropicals in outdoor displays for much longer. Once our nighttime temps drop below 50 consistently, the tropical plants begin to suffer when kept outdoors.

The best place to buy your houseplants is at a full-service garden center or greenhouse where the plants are kept in a greenhouse. One of the best examples I know of locally is Fowler’s in Southampton. There is usually a salesperson there who knows their houseplants, and most are kept in one of two small greenhouses that are always well stocked with the plants well cared for. There’s always a selection of many plants of varied sizes including smaller potted tropicals in 2- and 4-inch pots. For beginners I always recommend starting with the small specimens as they are less expensive and often more forgiving than their older and larger relatives.

Fowler’s also has a selection of orchids, which are very popular around Thanksgiving. If there’s an orchid you fancy now is the time to find one. They sell out fast before the holidays. Several varieties, including the fairly easy Cattleyas, are available. You don’t need a greenhouse to grow orchids, but you do need to choose wisely and have the right conditions in your home. However, orchids can be so inexpensive these days that some consider them disposable when they stop flowering.

And what are the right conditions in your home for tropicals? You don’t need a sunroom or a greenhouse but you will need a spot with good light (not necessarily sun since we’re growing mostly foliage and not flowering plants) and humidity at or over 50 percent, unless you’re growing cacti or other succulents. Temperatures should range from 60 degrees at night to 70 or higher during the day. But how do you manage the humidity when most homes struggle to stay around 45 to 50 percent humidity in the colder months? There are ways.

One thing you don’t want to do is constantly mist your plants. This is a very temporary solution that gets the foliage wet but as the water evaporates it lowers the temperature around the plant. Not great. One easy solution is to find hard rubber or plastic trays that are about 2 inches deep. Fill these trays with pea gravel or bluestone gravel then add about an inch of water to the tray — but just an inch. The water will slowly evaporate and create enough humidity around the plants to raise the moisture level in the air around them to a plant-comfortable level.

This only works as long as you remember to keep that 1 inch of water at the bottom of the tray, covering the first inch of stone. The second inch of stone is a buffer that keeps the pot (preferably clay) from coming into contact with the water and wicking it up. The trays will be heavy and hard to move around so you may want to double them up.

While this works for 2- and 4-inch pots it’s not a great solution for taller plants in larger pots. This is where a small humidifier comes in handy. You don’t need a large and noisy humidifier, nor do you need one that produces steam or a “warm mist,” as running these can be costly. All you need is a small wick-type humidifier that holds a quart or so of water. A fan draws room air over the wet wick and gently pushes moistened air out the top. You may have to fill this small humidifier daily, but it will put out enough moisture to make several large houseplants in the area very, very happy.

But I digress. As there are great places to buy houseplants there are also bad places as well. These include supermarkets, big box stores and shops that sell plants outside in front of the store when it’s 30 degrees outside. As opposed to your local plant shop or garden center you have no idea how long these plants have been around, what kind of care they’ve gotten and yes, there’s a very good reason they are inexpensive. They’ve been grown on a slim budget and that can mean you and the plant as well as its prepurchase care will be minimal.

The other important buying tip is to buy small and learn how to grow with your plants. In all likelihood you’ll do better with a jade plant purchased in a 4-inch pot that you repot every six months or so than a jade plant in a 15-inch pot that’s 18 inches tall. Start small and grow with your plants. And if you start small you can buy more and get more experience with different plants.

There is one important thing to keep in mind at this point though. Plants grow. Unless you are getting into bonsai, every plant you buy will get larger, need larger pots and expand into vertical and horizontal space. Fine if you are establishing a collection, but you don’t want to be one of those houseplant parents who is calling friends and neighbors trying to find a home for that tall and wide Schefflera you bought in a 6-inch pot that’s now in a 15-inch pot and pushing against the ceiling.

And we haven’t even looked at flowering houseplants, which have additional needs. The most common are the citrus plants like the Meyers lemon. Yes, these can be magnificent plants, and when in bloom they’ll fill your house with their magnificent citrus scents. And yes, as long as you provide them with a 10-degree nighttime temperature drop and enough light you will get fruit, and that fruit will be quite delicious, but it takes time. Though once you’ve mastered the first blooming season chances are your Meyer’s lemon will flower and fruit every year after.

Some plants to be wary of because they can easily be problematic are: Schefflera because it easily gets out of hand and too big. Fatsia japonica because it’s very sensitive to sudden temperature changes and can drop leaves easily. And while I love the thin, long leaves on the tall stems of the Aralia elegantissima, it too will drop all its leaves on the night your furnace goes down and the house gets cold. There are a few night-blooming cacti that are easy to grow but on that one night that it blooms you may find the scent of the flower so overwhelming that its perfume can be an issue.

As for plants that I can and do recommend here are a few, but again, read up on them and know what they like and don’t. Virtually all the Philodendrons and their relatives are great and accommodating houseplants. Some like to climb, and others, like the Philodendron selloum, tend to form a mound and make great plants but can still take up a great deal of space. The P. selloum tend to be large and prefer a pot at least 2 feet wide when mature. They’re easy, exotic and will take up space if you’ve got it.

Ficus also make great houseplants, be it the types with long elliptical leaves in green, near black or multicolored or the smaller-leaved Ficus benjimina with its smaller leaves on a well-branched tree-like structure. Don’t freak out when this plant drops leaves. It’s a deciduous plant and will continually drop leaves and replace them. The fiddle-leaf Ficus has become very popular in the last decade, and while a taller plant, it’s very easy to care for and tolerates lower light levels.

Peperomias are another group of smaller plants that do well in homes as are the viny Pothos, Calatheas and Stromanthe. And don’t forget the orchids. Also keep in mind that you can always add water to a plant. But — and this is important — it’s nearly impossible to get a plant to recover from being overwatered.

So go forth and buy. Experiment with smaller and less expensive plants then work up to larger or more challenging varieties. Make sure you have the space and don’t have more than one person do the watering. It’s one of the few things with plants that you can’t undo. Keep growing.