Plants in my house make me happy! Mental well-being through rewilding the house

I got up this morning, put the coffee on the stove and looked out the window and saw the sun was struggling to shine through the clouds.  Another grey morning, I thought.  la sigh.  

Then I looked at my coffee plants next to the window.  And suddenly, my heart filled with sunshine.  It's only five more years until I might be able to brew my own homegrown cup of caffeine!  

I got some new coffee plants on sale at the shop yesterday.  20 plants for less than a bag of ground beans.  And the ZZ plant is shooting up for some reason.  I moved it near the fire for a photo shoot and within a day it told me how much it loves it there.  It's happy.  I'm happy.

The scale on the lime tree is getting less terrible.  I want to brew up some new soap spray, especially for that plant but still, I need to find a better recipe.  I feel like a mad scientist experimenting with different concoctions to give my plant friends the best life possible.  

And there we are.  My mind and spirit got a lift before the coffee even finished brewing.  

It's only been a few years since I was the person who killed every potted plant that came into the house, now I'm planning a plant screen to replace the ugly curtains in my front window.  Later today I'll be saving lemon seeds while I cut up the fruit for more pickles.  Maybe in a few years, I can use my own homegrown lemons for making pickles.  

Rewilding the house by filling it with potted plants lifts my spirit by surrounding home with life even in the darkest winter days.  Some plants don't make it but others do.  Eventually, I'll find a balance and until then, I'm enjoying the journey.

Beautiful writing!

"Mental well-being through rewilding the house"

Yep. I used to get a bit depressed at springtime.. Something about everything and everyone except me starting to wake up and bloom.. And then I met someone awesome who showed me how to grow stuff. I bought a Homebox Vista growtent and filled it to the brim. The feeling when the first thing in the morning I opened the tent, the moist air and the smell hit me and then I saw the growth that had happened overnight in small plants.. It really did wonders for my mental health.
I was on a sick leave at the time and couldn't really manage much so the days were very similar, one after another, sunday, monday, it didn't matter. The plants showed me how time went forward as they grew. It was a big deal. As the plants got bigger the more I had stuff to do, and it was so good for me. Once it was time to move the plants outside, they were big. Two meter long tomato plants. How fun was it to carry them one by one from the second floor! The neighbours prolly looked at it a bit weirded but I was so happy. We had a small yard that was our little paradise filled with plants. We even spinned a few tomato plant around a pine tree. It was fabulous.

And when I got to taste the first tomato... Magic.

How exiting it is that you might be able to brew homegrown coffee! It maybe takes five years but journey there will be magnificent! I'm already thinking about the apples and pears I'm going to get to eat, although I havent even planted the seeds yet..

Thank you for making this thread. It made me happy thinking back and to the future.


Edit: Oh and the chicken is awesome! At the time I bought tiny dinosaur figurines that wondered around the plants! At one point one of them had a note in their mouth saying "Broken stem! Be careful!"

I enjoy knowing my home isn’t toxic.  Plants freshen the air in the house, creating oxygen from carbon dioxide.

I like the give and take I share with my plants.  We keep each other alive, truly symbiotic!

Years ago I had a bougainvillea plant indoors for the winter.  It’s bracts were a paler color indoors than their brilliant full sun show.  A visiting friend noticed how much I enjoyed the beauty of that plant.  She commented that as much as I loved that plant, the plant loved me.  Somehow that idea stayed with me.

Some plants remove more pollutants than others but, other than dracenea and philodendron, I can’t think what else is on the list.  

Speaking of philodendron, I used to have one with very large leaves.  I always enjoyed the process of a new leaf poking up out of the soil and then unrolling… 20 square inches of brand new leaf taking shape in just a few days.

My absolute favorite is growing tulsi indoors.  The fragrance defies description, but I’ll tell you, there’s a reason it’s called “Holy” basil.  Even its botanical name is “Ocimum sanctum”.

In every instance, when I pause to notice a plant, for what it does, or how we are interconnected, or its beauty or its fragrance, the pause itself is a gift, a venue to another awareness.  I truly love my plants, and to experience love is life giving.

And, you see how it circles back around ag sand again?  The plants center me on love, which enhances my health, and for that I feel gratitude, which is another contribution to my well being.  

Blessed be.

I agree! I love my relationship with my plants and how they make my living space, well... Alive!

I also like to decorate my home with natural things i found outside: shells and rocks from this trip to the sea, a weird looking twig from my favorite tree, a guirland of pine needles I collected or a bouquet of wild flowers, etc. Having nature in many forms around the house makes me feel connected to the outside world. It makes me feel happy and grounded!

Less appalling scale is appearing on the lime tree. I need to discover a better formula before I can make any fresh soap spray, especially for that plant. As I experiment with various mixtures to provide my plant buddies with the greatest life possible, I feel like a crazy scientist.

I'm struggling with scale this winter too.  Here's what we've learned so far https://permies.com/t/209228/Death-scale-bugs-brew-organic

If that's what you call 'rewilding your house', then my house is very wild! Especially the half of the living room closest to the window is almost a jungle. But also in the 'guest room / crafts studio' the windowsil is full. Those are my 'double plants', the cuttings and 'pups' of the plants in the living room.

There are even some plants I grew from seed. This photo I also shared in the topic on Avocado trees. My indoor avocado is about 7 years old.

Ah, yes!  The  mention of the 7 year old avocado reminds me of another plant of mine.

A good many years ago a woman I had never met did a very nice thing for me.  I wanted to grow cold tolerant pomegranates.  And made mention of my desire here on permies, and Rebecca Norman contacted me.  She got some pomegranates grown in Kashmir, processed the fruit off the seeds, and found a way to get the seeds to me in Colorado, where I planted many individual plants.

I had to sell up and move after those seedling pomegranates had survived (with mulching) several Colorado winters .  

I dug up one clump of about 6 trees, not quite 3 feet tall at the time.

They have spent full sun summers and leafless dormant winters since 2017.  I am still seeking my , and their forever home.

Since I received the seeds, a lot has changed in the pomegranate world, including cultivars of cold tolerant pomegranates.

I keep my seedlings as a reminder of the kindness, and generosity I received, and they are the continuation of a dream.

That set of plants remind me of dreams of a much younger woman, kindness of strangers, and what kind of world I want to live in, and various ways I can contribute.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Some plants remove more pollutants than others but, other than dracenea and philodendron, I can’t think what else is on the list.

Pothos is supposed to be really good, also spider plant.  Someone actually bioengineered a variety of pothos to clean VOCs from the air!  Don't know if that one's currently available, but I'd be leery of anything altered in that way around my other plants...

I grow tropical dwarf fruit trees in large pots outdoors in the summer, and bring them indoors over the winter.  My living room is now quite crowded, as is the dining room.  I REALLY need a big 4-season greenhouse!!  Scale is an issue for me too with some of the plants.  All the citrus, my poor little jiaogulan vines, and a little variegated cotton plant I thought I'd try this year all got infested with it about two months after bringing everyone indoors.  Luckily the scale doesn't like several of my fruiting dwarf trees.  (I always used to wonder how on earth the scales got from one potted plant to another, then I learned that the males can fly!)

Spider mites are another thing that gets going a few months after coming indoors.  Fungus gnats too, but they seem more like an annoyance to me than to the plants!

I too just love to sit among the bright green leaves and bask in their aliveness on dreary winter days.  

I heard having healthy soil does a huge help to clean the air.

I use this to justify all my plant choices.

I don't know if this is really permaculture ... but maybe with house plants it is needed to use some chemicals against the tiny bugs. I had many of those annoying tiny flies called 'fungus gnats' in English ('rouwvarenvliegjes' in Dutch). And all of my plants had these spider webs which might be 'spider mite' (probably not, I think it was from ordinary spiders).
I searched for something to use against bugs on houseplants and found: spray with a solution of soap and methylated spirit in water. I have a bottle of a product used to clean windows, containing both those ingredients. So I put a teaspoon of that product in the water of my plant sprayer. After two times spraying with this solution now I have much less fungus gnats flying around me!

Hi!

New here, but not new to houseplant keeping. My house looks like a jungle and I'm very happy with it. There are several scientific studies about the happy times that plants bring to people, and that makes sense on so many levels. I do forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku in Japanese) every day - because even tough my house looks like a forest it lacks the sun and fresh air and all the wildlife that is encountered in the forest. The only way for me to be even happier is if I had some plot of land of my own, but I don't. :c

Anyway, the fungus gnats. I am a student, I don't have the money or the patience to go around shopping for fungicides and herbicides, I actually prefer to learn what I'm doing wrong (even if that takes more time) and trying to solve it at home at the lowest cost possible - even if it means the plant will die.

So, I had many gnats in the past and the best thing you can do is repot the infected plant (or plants), and in my case I used that soil to put in my plants that are outside, because the gnats hate the fresh air. Then you give a thorough clean both to the plant and the pot it was in, put the new soil. Here comes the most important information, which actually serves for any other plant problem in any context: you have to take good care of your plant to prevent problems like these. It's easier, less expensive (both in work and financial terms) to do this instead of having to solve the problems later. In the case of fungus gnats, the best you can do is re-learn how to water the plant. Fungus gnats usually form when you are giving too much water to your plant. They feed off the fungi that thrive on the excess moisture. While you're still learning how much water your plant needs, you can top up the soil with some sand. The sand lets the water pass through more easily, so the top of the soil will be drier and less prone to egg-laying from the gnats.

The other options: cooking the soil at a low temperature in the oven or sticky traps (more info on that here https://www.almanac.com/pest/fungus-gnats) or just throwing away the soil (last case scenario, never used it because I hate waste). I used traps but they are inefficient on a huge infestation, which was my case. So try to take good care of your plants first, you won't have to worry much about gnats, fungi or diseases if you do that. Try the App Planta to help you schedule watering of your plants. After some time, you'll become a pro!

Good luck.
Darya

It is so friendly having plants around the house.

My sunny windows get pretty jungly waiting for spring to warm up.

my aloe plant seems to have a weird growth.
:)

Either it's very happy or angry.  

r ranson wrote:my aloe plant seems to have a weird growth.
:)
Either it's very happy or angry.

The Aloe on this photo looks happy to me. It has a healthy green colour. And a flower coming.

Wow! I have never seen an aloe flower before! It must be very, very happy!

https://www.sciencealert.com/our-relationships-with-indoor-plants-come-in-4-types-study-finds

... People keep indoor plants inside for a variety of reasons, including as decoration, to clean the air and for stress relief. But my colleagues and I wanted to delve further. What sort of relationships do people have with indoor plants? And what can this tell us about ties between humans and nature?

We surveyed indoor plant owners in Australia, and found many of us form highly meaningful connections with our leafy companions. Some people even consider their plants as family, get anxious about their health and mourn a plant when it dies....

The four types in the article are

1. Highly connected (14% of respondents)
These people typically described a deep personal connection to their plants.

2. Engaged (42% of respondents)
These people enjoyed and tended to their plants, but without deep emotional attachment.

3. Limited engagement (23%)
These respondents enjoyed having indoor plants but spent minimal time caring for them and reported minimal emotional connections to them.

And
4. No relationship (12%)
Participants who did not have a relationship with their indoor plants

And some other results they discarded from the total percentage.


Anyway, cute article and a good excuse to bumpity this thread.

r ranson wrote:https://www.sciencealert.com/our-relationships-with-indoor-plants-come-in-4-types-study-finds

... ... many of us form highly meaningful connections with our leafy companions. Some people even consider their plants as family, get anxious about their health and mourn a plant when it dies....

...

Thank you for 'bumping' this!
I think I feel 'highly connected' to plants in general, and most of all my houseplants.
I do my very best to keep them in best condition possible and I talk to them.
F.e. there's an avocado plant I grew from a seed and it lives here for over 8 years. It is a somewhat fussy plant, susceptible to diseases and pests. If it wasn't for the extra care I give it, it would have died years ago.
There are also some plants I inherited (when my mother died) and some I already have for 'as long as I remember' (decades).
For me plants are living creatures. A plant that dies feels almost like a pet that dies.

Avocado plant and two of the plants that live with me for decades.


Some of the other houseplants (the one on the right had some difficulties too ...)

Hello!

First of all, cool plants! I see that some of them are slow growers who probably have many years. Good job on keeping them alive! Also I see you've installed some kind of irrigation system for the avocado, which by your account is more fussy. I think not only you love your plants, but the plants love you!

What is the one on the right you say is struggling more? Maybe we can help! I have several orchids, begonias and all kinds of easy to hard to maintain plants, and I sometimes work as a "plant doctor", so maybe I could check it out by the pictures to try and find what the plant needs to really thrive.

Keep on growing!

Darya Sevastópolska wrote:Hello!

First of all, cool plants! I see that some of them are slow growers who probably have many years. Good job on keeping them alive! Also I see you've installed some kind of irrigation system for the avocado, which by your account is more fussy. I think not only you love your plants, but the plants love you!

What is the one on the right you say is struggling more? Maybe we can help! I have several orchids, begonias and all kinds of easy to hard to maintain plants, and I sometimes work as a "plant doctor", so maybe I could check it out by the pictures to try and find what the plant needs to really thrive.

Keep on growing!

Hi Darya. Yes, as you noticed there's a 'kind of irrigation system', a so-called Olla.

The plant that was struggling, as far as I know, is a Columnea. But of course there are several different Columnea species and I don't know which one it is. I saw in English it's called 'Goldfish plant'. I understand that name, the flowers look like (very red) goldfish, or (my opinion) like dragons with their mouth wide open.