Can Indoor Plants Support Sustainable Living at Home?

One of my friends has houseplants of one sort or another on every window ledge in her home. Luckily she loves succulents which are fairly low maintenance as if she's away, I get pressed into service minding them. They definitely bring her joy and keep her mind active, but is it possible to rewild your indoors and have it contribute to sustainable living? What would that look like to you?

Just having green things to look at and care for seems to improve my day. However, I admit I tend not to have much patience for most of the plants people grow in their houses. Maybe if I tried, I would actually develop more patience as suggested in this thread. Maybe...

Let's be honest, I'm a strong believer in "pets with benefits" and houseplants seem to me to be a type of a pet.  So one benefit that would totally motivate me, is improved indoor air quality. In fact, the common "spider plant" is recommended for  absorbing formaldehyde which is one of the pollutants that I'm pretty sure I'm sensitive to. This thread has a whole list of plants that are recommended for air cleansing.

I'm also totally willing to start food plants indoors. In fact, there are baby beans, mustard greens, basil and pitaya on my living room window ledge right now. There might be baby parsley just getting started too. Parsley is very slow to germinate, and mine didn't self seed anywhere useful last year, so I'm hoping my window ledge will do the job.

So how do other permies use indoor plants to support the permie lifestyle?

OK, according to a study I read, some house plants not only remove chemicals like formaldehyde, they can suppress airborne pathogens, as well as pollutants. Considering how many public buildings seem to be virus transmission corridors, this is definitely I reason I would consider expanding my houseplant collection...

Experiments were performed showing the reduction of airborne pathogens by plants, as Wolverton et al. reported that indoor house plants are competent to reduce airborne microbes by 50%, compared to indoor spaces lacking plants. Their data showed that hydroponic planter system containing 15 different houseplant species were able to directly and indirectly suppress the growth of airborne microbes compared to the plant-free room, however they did not mention a specific species and no viruses were tested. The study discussed those volatile substances released by houseplants might be the main reason in controlling the airborne microbe population in plant-included environments (Wolverton and Wolverton 1996). A recent study showed that plants could significantly decrease air microbiomes when compared to plant-free sites, providing a healthier environment and reducing the exposure risk of airborne diseases (Li et al., 2021). Another study was conducted showing evidence that plants can reduce fine particles. In 2016, Stapleton evaluated 11 different household plant species, which showed a significant reduction of ultrafine particles in the indoor environment (Stapleton and Ruiz-Rudolph 2018). Table 2 summarizes different indoor plant species that were proven to reduce airborne pathogens and air pollutants.

source

Did I mention Basil? I had just decided it was warm enough for Ms Holy Basil (a rescue from the discount rack by my Daughter in Law which has been producing well all winter) to move outdoor into a hanging basket for the summer, when a long term friend said I just *had* to adopt a Great Basil she'd brought from the Interior due to a family emergency.

I guess that houseplants are going to be a part of my future!

Houseplants are great for cleaning the air, plus they just look nice and make the house feel more natural during the colder months when the trees are barren outside.  I have maybe a dozen houseplants, but I also grow tropical fruiting plants in pots indoors during winter and outside during summer.  I harvested 13 delicious mandarin oranges off my small (not even 3' tall yet) potted tree late last fall!  Unfortunately during our recent move, the furnace went out during the coldest time and the tree died back quite a bit, but it did survive and hopefully will recover enough to produce fruit again next year.  

The main problem with bringing them indoors is scale insects and spider mites.  The tropical citrus seem to attract both of those pests, which don't do much damage while the plants are outside, but once they are indoors, after a month or two they mushroom into infestations, and spraying large plants indoors is quite messy.  Of course, so are scale drippings...

The next significant problem is light levels indoors during winter.  I've had to use grow lights to keep the plants going through the winter.  In our new home, we have a small sun room off the master bedroom with 3 skylights and a south-ish facing wall of windows, which of course became my dedicated winter plant room, LOL!  The plants that survived the furnace fiasco seemed to really come back to life under the better lighting of that sun room once the days started getting longer.  I have yet to install the grow lights in the spaces between the skylights, but will hopefully get to that while the plants are outside this summer.  

I even put some of the houseplants outside for some or all of the summer, mostly in dappled shade, just to revitalize them a bit and let the rain rinse the dust off.  Most of them seem to appreciate it, although some don't care for the rain and wind and prefer to stay indoors.  Just like some people 😁.