Houseplants for People who can't grow houseplants!

The title says it all! My usual problem is that I get busy in the summer supporting all the outdoor vegetation, and the indoor ones get ignored. My second issue is having to take an emergency trip away and I'm so concerned about trying to insure that my animals get proper care from my cheap help, that the house plants are completely forgotten!

In other words, I need:
1.  Bullet-proof indoor plants, +/- seasonal indoor plants.  
2. Plants with benefits, because alas, beauty alone won't keep me from forgetting they have needs.

There are many people who complain that the lowly 'Spider Plant' (Chlorophytum comosum) is old school, however, I have kept mine alive for over 30 years. Why? Because it's on NASA's list of plants that help to clear the air of formaldehyde! I'm sensitive to formaldehyde which off-gasses from many things including fabric. That's all it has taken, along with them being very tough, forgiving babies!

Then there's my Aloe vera. I haven't managed to kill it yet, but I have a friend who is very good with succulents who has given it a hand up - garden dirt isn't the best option for Aloe vera, but she knew just what it would like and it's done well ever since! Nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it, especially for a plant friend! Aloe is very useful on burns, which thankfully I don't get often, but it's worth having around for if I need it.

However, my newest indoor plant babies will give me food and pleasure. I was out in one of my garden areas and spotted a little clump of Walking Onion babies that had gotten caught on some fencing. They were defiantly trying to put out roots, but alas, at 2 feet above ground, these poor little guys needed some help! Jay to their rescue!  I grabbed a pot from the shed, and some of my seed-starting mix which I make up myself, separated them carefully, and set them up in a new, temporary home on my window ledge underneath some plant lights. I added some Marigold seeds on the off-chance they'd be happy together.

Here's the little clump and the container of dirt:


There were 7 babies all jammed together, so now they've got a little more room to spread out.


They're at slightly wonky angles because what do you expect when you start off life hanging from a fence???


I'm hoping the grow lights will be enough to get them growing upright. Who says green onions can't be beautiful in their own simple way? That said, they're only temporary visitors. Come the spring, they will likely be much happier outdoors and I will either plant them, or give them to someone else to plant as they're a wonderful plant to tuck into odd corners.

So even if you're like me and think you will kill any houseplant that enters your domain, maybe think outside the box? Maybe think of plants that will teach you about  gardening, or that you'll see as "pets with benefits", or that are just plain cheap if you don't have much money to be spending on plants. You can still have some green in your home.

Jay said, "My second issue is having to take an emergency trip away and I'm so concerned...

I can do this!

Put the plants in a shower in a large roaster pan filled with water.

If I had a tub then I would place the plants in the tub with enough water to last till I could get back home.

It is just trying to grow house plants with which I fail.

I have decided it is not me but my house that is the problem.  Since the plants are in my laundry room they are "out of sight out of mind".

Maybe I need to take my own advice and up the plants in a roasting pan full of water.

Now the dilemma is I have no house plants.

Hi Jay. Here's a plant I'll recommend, a foliar one rather than a bloomer. It's a heartleaf philodendron. The one in the picture got to about this length & abundance in something like one year. I had it growing without problems for about seven years... then, mysteriously, it gave up the ghost.  I plan to get another one as I like the plant a lot. If you had it growing from a suspended container, the vines would reach the floor if you didn't prune them.

Care of these is pretty simple, just water moderately about once a week (even less frequently in winter, unless it gets a lot of light to it wherever you've placed it). You want any excess water to drain through the soil and escape at the container's bottom into a receptacle (dish/tray) underneath. I'd recommend against potting it in rich organic soil as indoors such soils, over time, can develop fungal problems.

I've known friends with clayish garden soils who have produced healthy, abundant veggie crops. But as you probably know, indoor containerized plants are a whole different deal than growing outdoors in garden plots. A lot of very accomplished indoor-pant growers recommend a coarse soil with lots of perlite mixed in to aerate it.

In my experience plants indoors fail though improper watering. Either you're like me and forget to water at all - after all it's always raining here (but not so much indoors*), or you are over keen and water too much. Apparently many houseplants are drowned by their keen owners.
My Mum suggests watering once a week, do it on the same day then you are less likely to over water. Another tip is to have a wooden stick in the compost. When you think about watering, pull it out and test whether it is damp or dry to judge whether the plant really does need a drink or not.

As far as plants that at least survive very little attention, I can suggest money plants (or jade plant crassula ovata), and cymbidium orchids. I have kept both of these alive indoors for over 15 years. Admittedly I do put the orchid outside sometimes for the summer. When it is indoors I just spray it occasionally with water (my water is natural spring water so no chemicals to worry about). The money plant keeps making babies, so I have a back up just in case!



*Just the odd drip on the window sills

Nancy Reading wrote:In my experience plants indoors fail though improper watering. Either you're like me and forget to water at all - after all it's always raining here (but not so much indoors*), or you are over keen and water too much. Apparently many houseplants are drowned by their keen owners.

This! I know my problem is forgetting to water and then overcompensating by over-watering, though maybe not the same plant.

I also feel a problem with trying to grow plants indoors is not enough light.

The only window on the south side of my house where I can keep houseplants is in my laundry room, where I forget them.

Perfect candidates for house plants would be low light required and needing very light watering.

Epiphyllums and Christmas cacti can sometimes produce fruit after flowering - really tasty, an unpriceable treat! I'd be cautious eating just any cactus fruit, Lophophora is psychoactive.

Anthony Powell wrote:Epiphyllums and Christmas cacti can sometimes produce fruit after flowering - really tasty, an unpriceable treat! I'd be cautious eating just any cactus fruit, Lophophora is psychoactive.

Do you know if they're more likely to produce fruit if it's cross-pollinated from a different colour flower?

I have a friend with multiple different colour flowers and I think her's have fruited occasionally at least. I wonder if she hand pollinated whether she'd get more fruit?

Put plant watering on your calendar weekly or however often you have to water in your area (humidity levels differ, necessitating different watering times.)  Then be sure to check your calendar!

Try tropical fruiting "houseplants" like meyer lemon, pomegranate, dwarf fig, mandarin orange, coffee, tea, dwarf banana, ginger, etc.  They will provide flowers and fruit to make them productive "pets."  

A friend gave me a start off her huge split leaf philodendron.  That was an interesting experience.  I dropped it once, and the soil all fell out.  I put it all back in, and it forgave me and continued living with me.  When I dropped it, I discovered it didn’t really have roots, it had thick tendrils under the surface, more for anchoring than gathering up nutrients, though they did absorb water, but not a fibrous root with root hairs in sight.

I had a perfect location, a shelf in a stairwell, under a tubular skylight, but I had to carry water to it, and I didn’t do that very often.  Usually the soil was completely parched before I watered, so I had to water it a few times to get the soil hold water instead of the water running through.  This seemed to be exactly perfect for that plant. Usually it would put on a new leaf or two in the week after I watered.  The new leaf began as a pointed shoot that rose up out of the soil, or emerged out of a node, then unrolled into a beautiful new leaf.  The leaves were about as big as my hand, and seemed to grow to that size out of nowhere in less than a week.  It seemed like the plant was storing up all its photosynthesis products during its dry spells, then spending it all when it had water.

I always joke that a requirement for my outdoor plants is that they have to tolerate periods of neglect.  Turns out that is probably the secret for house plants to survive living with me.

I have dozens of houseplants and no fixed watering schedule. When I see the leaves of peace Lily starting to droop I water all of them. None has died because of over or under watering so far.

i have a snake plant that gets horribly neglected, just kinda hibernates. water it when i think of it. 4 years and still happy. why not grow a nasturtium in a hanging basket. eat the leaves til spring and put it in the garden or not.

Aloe Vera - keep it out of direct sun and water it occasionally. Not need for set watering schedule.
Micro Dwarf tomatoes - needs watering often but the fruit is sooooo tasty! even better that the home grown regular cherry tomatoes.

I would recommend a scented geranium. I put mine in a huge pot, and it has survived some serious neglect. The scented leaves can be used in ices, or extracted with oil or alcohol to male a tick repellent.

No, I'm NOT someone who can't grow houseplants. I have always been a houseplant lover. Taking cuttings and other ways to multiply plants and then giving them to friends and others.
When I had my first plant, as a teenager, it was an easy succulent. I think, as with all skills, you can get better with houseplants by practice.

I really got better at it during those decades of practice. But still I love 'easy plants' most. Plants I can water on a weekly schedule and that don't need re-potting often (once a year or less).  

I have sun-loving houseplants as well as shade-loving ones. Here are some photos.


This Kalanchoe is a very easy plant. And it doesn't matter if it's in a South-facing or a North-facing window! It grows its own little ones on the sides of the leaves (from where they drop down). The other succulent (sorry, forgot the name) is easy too, but do not replace it, because then it drops many of its leaves (from which you can grow new plants ...)


These are my shade-loving plants. They are just as easy as the other ones, only they don't want to be in full sun.


And more plants. The Avocado and Aloe I showed in other threads before. The 'cat's tail cactus' (maybe called 'old man cactus' in the USA) at the left is a cutting from the very large one my mother had, for as long as I remember (and she cut it several times because it grew too long).  

And I enjoyed making illustrations (watercolours) for a book on growing plants from cuttings (for children, in Dutch) ...

Ginger can be an easy to grow useful and pretty house plant. You can put a rhizome horizontally in a pot buried shallowly.

I got my starter chunk of ginger from the grocery store.  When the greenery is doing well or after it fades you can pull the rhizome out and break off some to use and replant some of it.

A bay tree makes a very useful houseplant.  Add a leaf or two to a pot of beans or stew, and you fill the house with a wonderful fragrance while making the food taste better.   My bay tree has been living in a pot for over 30 yr.  I repot it every few years, and it is now up to about a 3 gal pot.  It goes outdoors into partial shade after frost and stays out until it gets cold in the fall.  On a few occasions, I let it get too dry, and it lost almost all its leaves.  But new ones grew back after it was outside and getting all the water it wanted.  The only issue is scale, a tiny insect that forms a waxy shell over itself and secretes honeydew.  If you let it get out of hand, the floor under the plant gets sticky.  My solution is to wash each leaf with a rag dipped in water with a drop of dish soap and a drop of cooking oil. This happens once a year in late fall/early winter.  For maintenance,  I scout for sticky spots on leaves and scrape off the scale with a fingernail.  Washing every leaf is great motivation to use lots of leaves in cooking so there are not so many leaves to wash.

I used to have a sunroom full of houseplants.  I felt like a plant-slave maintaining all of them.  Now I just have a few that tolerate getting too dry occasionally.  My 40 year old weeping figs (Ficus benjamina) add lovely greenery to the house in the winter and also clean the air of chemicals.  They do well in indirect light but not so well in a sunny window.  They also tolerate a lot of neglect, like not being re-potted or fed regularly.  If they get too dry, they will drop leaves.  Pruning keeps the size down and makes them bushier.   They used to live outdoors under the shade of large trees in the summer where they would sometimes bloom but not produce fruit.  Now I just set them outside when it is going to be warm and raining for a few days.  That cleans the leaves.  

When the soil surface looks dry, I stick a finger in the soil to see if the plant needs watering.  I like Nancy Reading's idea "Another tip is to have a wooden stick in the compost. When you think about watering, pull it out and test whether it is damp or dry to judge whether the plant really does need a drink or not."   Popsicle sticks could work really well.

I will add sansiveria aka mother in laws tongue aka snake plant aka sword plant to the list.(last 2 are semi inaccurate though as there are other plants with the same name)  Also on the list of the best air cleaner plants.  Thrives on benign neglect.  Harder to kill than aloe provided you can avoid over watering.  In this house out of direct sun will sometimes go 6 to 8 weeks at a time without water before they start to shrivel.  Since the spider plant starts showing it sooner it is my warning.  If the spider plant is dying then I need to water the aloe and the sansiveria too.

C. Letellier wrote:I will add sansiveria aka mother in laws tongue aka snake plant aka sword plant to the list.(last 2 are semi inaccurate though as there are other plants with the same name)  Also on the list of the best air cleaner plants.  Thrives on benign neglect.  Harder to kill than aloe provided you can avoid over watering.  In this house out of direct sun will sometimes go 6 to 8 weeks at a time without water before they start to shrivel.  Since the spider plant starts showing it sooner it is my warning.  If the spider plant is dying then I need to water the aloe and the sansiveria too.

Yes, that's exactly how I know it's time to water too! Look at the spider plant or at the geranium. They give the warning clearly visible. And then I can water all of my plants, even the ones who do not yet need it (like the Sansevieria, the Euphorbia and the cactus).

Somehow, I missed the Egyptian Walking Onions in the original post.

These would make a great edible houseplant.

All mine got eaten by feral hogs except the ones I had put in hanging baskets as an experiment.

They are rather forlorn looking because they are out the backdoor where I never go and the plants never get watered.

I do have the little bulbs that I can plant to try this out.

Check this out https://pin.it/4K4eAdj
You might find a few more houseplants to your liking.

The MOST bullet-proof houseplant, also known as "Cast Iron Plant" for this very reason, is the Aspidistra. People here in the Deep South tend to plant it around large trees, in a circle, or in a row along a driveway or against a fence.  NOTHING eats it, it never wilts, and nothing will kill it, except maybe full sun in a hot area.  The Victorians were nuts about this plant and also dracaena, aka "Mother in Law's Tongue", both for the same reason: they could adapt to changeable indoor conditions and didn't need either a lot of water or light.  

But you can also grow ginger and turmeric indoors without grow lights; really, anything that doesn't flower and fruit.  Ginger and turmeric both spread laterally so you should use a pot that is wide enough for that; or one with a wide top.  Turmeric has edible leaves!!!  The young ones are very nice.  Both can be harvested (rhizomes) without digging anything up; after the pot is crowded, just get a sharp kitchen knife of Size (breadknife!) and holding it vertical, cut out one or so plants where it is crowded, and pull them straight up by the stems.  You can keep this going for years if you don't mind Really Mature Ginger!!  These are really beautiful as indoor plants.

Made an error: Sanseveria, not dracaena.  

Betsy Carraway wrote:Made an error: Sanseveria, not dracaena.  

Betsy, that isn't a mistake. It seems the botanists now say Sansevieria is in fact a Dracaena ...

Jotham Bessey wrote:Aloe Vera - keep it out of direct sun and water it occasionally. Not need for set watering schedule.
Micro Dwarf tomatoes - needs watering often but the fruit is sooooo tasty! even better that the home grown regular cherry tomatoes.

Jonathan, Ever since I saw your post on micro dwarf tomatoes, I can't get them out of my mind.  I looked them up online, and there are multiple varieties available.  It seems the size of the plant is somewhat dependent on the size of the pot.  Would you please give a little more info about your tomatoes?  What variety?  What size pot?  And do they produce well on a south-facing windowsill or do they need a grow light?

Thanks.  I really have to try these.  Our tomato-growing season is so short here, and I don't like buying out of season produce.

Hello!

Glad you asked. Actually, there is a hint in your own question (at least for the first problem of the indoor plants): succulents! Aloe is one of them, so get other succulents that you like and give them the same treatment as you give your Aloe! There are pretty cool ones out there, check it out:



Start searching the internet to discover your next succulent babies! Forget to water them and they'll thrive anyway.

Now for the other "problem", you have several greenies you can plant that also have beautiful cultivars (e.g. lettuce and the kind).
Tomatoes have been mentioned, and I can approve that message - they are pretty and tasty! This year, I'm also thinking of planting peas (pretty, tasty and aromatic) and cucumbers to my apartment garden.
Strawberries are beautiful plants in my opinion and if you take care of them, they'll reward you at the end of the growing season with some fresh fruit. Also, if you find compact cultivars of berries (blueberries, raspberries, etc.) they are very good to keep around and have some delicious fruit too!

Hope this helps!

I happened to look through this thread again, and I realzed there is something useful I could add to my first post here. What I wrote included:

You want any excess water to drain through the soil and escape at the container's bottom into a receptacle (dish/tray) underneath. I'd recommend against potting it in rich organic soil as indoors such soils, over time, can develop fungal problems.

... A lot of very accomplished indoor-plant growers recommend a coarse soil with lots of perlite mixed in to aerate it.

I used to be on an online indoor-plant forum and there was a guy on there who showed examples of his glorious house plants, This guy was involved with indoor plants professionally, but what he showed were his own at-home specimens. Of course, they'd each been given the right positioning to get the amount of light, direct or indirect depending on the species. But what was memorable in what he said was how important drainage is. And he said he could grow healthy plants in marbles rather than soil!  IOW, given a hydroponic-type of watering (with nutrients in the water), the liquid flowing through the roots and draining out will feed the plant, and sufficient air will get into the root zone.

I've never gone that radical, never tried a hydroponic approach. But I learned from what he had to say how extremely important avoiding over-saturation of the contained soil is. Personally, while my wife & I use organic methods outdoors to keep our soil healthy for food crops, we've chosen to use a commercial chemical-blend plant food for our indoor plants. This, coupled with providing a well-drained soil & avoiding overdoing it with watering, has eliminated damping-off & root rotting and allows the plants to grow & mature.

For individuals struggling with houseplants like myself, I recommend hardy options like Snake Plants, ZZ Plants, Pothos, Spider Plants, Peace Lilies, Chinese Evergreens.  These plants tolerate neglect, low light, and infrequent watering. At most some light and occasional watering is necessary to keep them alive .

Here's a video by a container-plant expert showing a way to solve one common problem faced by indoor plant growers. I realize that this method may seem extreme to some people, or rather "advanced" and not for beginners. But this information seems to me quite worth knowing and comsidering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBhy5RH8hs

Joel Bercardin wrote:Here's a video by a container-plant expert showing a way to solve one common problem faced by indoor plant growers. I realize that this method may seem extreme to some people, or rather "advanced" and not for beginners. But this information seems to me quite worth knowing and comsidering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBhy5RH8hs

Yes, you can cut the roots to make room for more (new) potting soil. I do it a little less drastically, I don't cut with a knife, but I break parts from roots with my hands. Maybe that's more 'beginner-friendly'?