Not-killing houseplants. Aloe seems brown thumb friendly. What else?

Hahaha! I feel at home now

I've murdered so many aloe plants, I should be on a list for plants to watch out for! That said, the current aloe plant in have is a few years old now and I did manage to separate them. I don't think it had pups as much as the tiny pot it came in was getting quite crowded. I'll say it has been much happier being ignored, than me "trying to make it happy."

I've got a spider plant from an old job I had for gosh... getting to be years now too. I tend to plant some babies then gift away the big mama plant. Of course I dunno why it's so happy now. I've never seen mine have this many babies. Guess it likes being close to the ceiling.

Wandering Jew! I got mine from a hippie shop in my mid 20s with some other trailing plants in a "fancy" pot set up. All the other things in the pot died eventually. I did manage to get them to propagate a few times. I don't remember what was the last straw for the others, but the wandering Jew is still alive and well!!! She likes the neglect too. I've been selling some cuttings at the farmer's market. Easy keeper and it's purple!

Grabbed a chunk of a jade plant from a discarded trash pile at a home Depot type store. It's alive, not happy, but alive!

Pathos too are easy. The don't want water until they get droopy. Then I stick the whole pot in a few inches of water overnight. It gets water heavy again and back to ignoring it.

Oh! Big plant tip here. At the end of the season clearance plants. The ones that are barely alive for 2 or 3 bucks, esp the ferns. Those are the survivors! I've had Ferny now for.... almost 20yrs now

Well, I'm starting to be a plant mum.

I even ordered plants on the internet.  

Sansevieria cylindrica rooted cutting and monstera deliciosa cutting (with air root).  (I need to find out the english words for these soon).

Now they look very small in the photo, but I'm not sure if I'm up for these or not.  

The crazy thing is, the price of houseplants is through the roof right now.  I'm still looking for my aspidistra (it's on my bucket list to own one).  I found one this winter for $275.  It was looking like it was dying which is not a good sign on the one kind of plant that is nearly impossible to kill.  I keep on looking.

Not killing plants is addictive, I hope I can keep it up.  

Pineapple.  

We live in South-western Ontario, Canada, Zone 5b outside.

Inside, we deal often with flea beetles and other houseplant pests, have a west facing window, and have three pineapple plants in 3 gallon containers.

They are tall, sharp, serrated BEASTS, but the bugs don't seem to affect them, they tolerate neglect/drought well, and well - here's the thing - every two-ish years our one 'mother' plant has grown a pineapple for us to eat.  


I water them on a "oh snap -riiiiight!" schedule.  Sometimes I can tell when their leaves wither a bit they'd probably want more water, but mostly they're just there, sitting in the window.   Because pineapple *ARE* drought plants, they do seem to thrive on neglect and the occasional litre of water you douse them with because you don't know when you last watered them, nor when you will water them in the future.
They're insectivores, too, which helps them feed themselves.  Every once in a while you just add more soil to the pot, because they keep producing 2.5' spears and admire them from afar.  

Cats don't seem to bother with them.  I wouldn't trust tinier children with them - I'm not kidding when I say they can flay you alive.  I've had run ins with my three plants wherein I got a good patch of skin removed from me.  
The ripe pineapple harvested from your own living room though?  Divine.  It takes a while for the flower to grow to a mini pineapple fruit, then ripen.
In the last three weeks just before it turns yellow, you have this rich pineapple scent that wafts and teases.  

When we harvested the first pineapple off our plant, we were just agog.  How the heck?  Fully formed, medium sized pineapple that just melted in our mouths.  
If it hadn't happened to us, I'd call the person telling this tale a fantastic liar.
Like, really, I kill plants.  I can keep a snake plant / sansevarius alive, and the golden pothos, the peace lily, and these freaking pineapple plants alive, that's it.  

I don't grow these beasts for their fruit - that's just a bonus.  They're pretty, they're striking, and they mean business if you get too close to them.
If you have a couple of adults in your home though - they really can't be beat.  Bet they'd be even more fruitful/scarier bushes if you threw them in a south-facing window.  

This is how I got started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1klxRnjZOI

Since then, I've started about ten plants, and each have 'taken'.   My friends think that I'm magic.  And no, I'm not.  I think if anyone wants something HUGE, SHOWY, and SPIKY, one should maybe try for one of these beauties.

Avoid putting plants next to the router, if they are sensitive, young or small, I have noticed how the smallest/youngest die after a while, but in other places they grow really well.

r ranson wrote:...The crazy thing is, the price of houseplants is through the roof right now.  I'm still looking for my aspidistra (it's on my bucket list to own one).  I found one this winter for $275.  It was looking like it was dying which is not a good sign on the one kind of plant that is nearly impossible to kill.  I keep on looking.
...

Sorry, I can't help you find an aspidistra.
How I 'find' houseplants: at plant swap days (like the one we organise once a year at the Community Graden) and I make more of the same by cutting and dividing the plants I already have (works very well with sansevieria and aloe). Maybe someone you know has an aspidistra and can divide it?

I've killed aloe and cactus a few times, probably from overwatering.  But I do pretty good with just about everything else.  I even overwintered geraniums, coleus, Persian shield and impatiens last winter and took cuttings from them early in spring to fill my containers.  I have to agree about Wandering Jew being tough.  I've had plants almost brown with neglect and give them a good soaking and they perk back up.  I did pick up two reduced aloe plants last week and hope that at least one will survive.

Just letting you know my aloe is still alive.

And it's poking me in the eye most days.  I need some way to keep it alive without it being so big.  Can I cut off the bottom leaves then put it in a deeper pot?  Or will it hate me?

My mother used to have the most glorious maidenhair fern but I keep killing mine, I forget to water it all the time.

I have managed to grow most of the bullet proof plants already mentioned - epiphyllums, aloe vera, snake plant, moth orchids, schlumbergera, jade plant etc but the one that no one's mentioned is the yucca.

I was given two huge cuttings four or five years ago and chopped them near the base of the trunk and replanted the tops. The trunk will usually sprout new shoots withing two months and once they have grown a bit, I cut all but one of the shoots off and replant the shoots individually.

Yuccas are incredibly forgiving of neglect, I forget to water them for weeks on end and only notice when the tips of the leaves start to go yellow. Incidentally, the tips are vicious so worth the effort of cutting the points off each of the lower leaves, especially any at eye level.

Have just been given another yucca that had been growing in an office lobby and was touching the ceiling. They didn't want to chop and replant the tops so I now have three more pots of yucca!  

There's one pot with a bare trunk, two of the tops with leaves in another pot and the third has a section of trunk that is already resprouting with multiple new shoots.

r ranson wrote:Just letting you know my aloe is still alive.

And it's poking me in the eye most days.  I need some way to keep it alive without it being so big.  Can I cut off the bottom leaves then put it in a deeper pot?  Or will it hate me?

I love my Aloes. I think they love me too ... but to prevent them from poking me in the eyes I put their pots on the floor. Now they only poke me in my legs ...

Most people who use aloe will cut off the bottom leaves. it will make the plant look "taller" but I wouldn't repot it (it has "deepish" roots, it won't put down new roots from the stem above where the leaf was cut off, i'm pretty sure).
When aloe is happy it will send out little pups that you can plant to get new plants. Aloe enjoys a crowded, dry pot and being rootbound in not particularly great soil (I finally planted some aloe vera in the garden, and it's not happy-- too much water). You can't really "top" it to get it to bush out, but it will be just fine if you take off bottom leaves.

r ranson wrote:Any other suggestions for Brown-thumb friendly house plants?

Christmas cactus.  Can’t go wrong.  I neglect it and it still performs and blooms.  My longest living houseplant ever!

Hi r ranson. A hot topic right now (I posted about this recently). This is my heartleaf philodendron. I seem to remember it got to about this length & abundance in something like one year. If it had been growing from a suspended container, the vines would've reach the floor, but I pruned it.

Care of this plant 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). I believe this is one of the key points. And you want any excess water to be able to drain through the soil and escape at the container's bottom into a receptacle (dish/tray) underneath.

In my experience, indoor containerized plants are a whole different pursuit than growing outdoors in garden plots. Outdoor planting is done in a natural, fairly spacious soil system. I'm an organic grower outside, but I realize many houseplants don't do well in a rich organic soil. I learned not to use compost in indoor containers. Over time, organically rich soil can develop fungal problems. Especially so if coupled with watering too much or too frequently... you can easily end up with root rot which kills the plant. On one indoor-plant forum I was on, a pro said he can grow glorious indoor plants in marbles using hydroponic nutrients flowing down over the roots and draining well! I don't go that radical, but I plant in a coarse soil with lots of perlite mixed in to aerate it the total root zone. You can put a little liquid "plant food" into the watering water, either synthetic type or derived & refined from natural sources.

Good luck.

r ranson wrote:Just letting you know my aloe is still alive.

And it's poking me in the eye most days.  I need some way to keep it alive without it being so big.  Can I cut off the bottom leaves then put it in a deeper pot?  Or will it hate me?

Um ...I'd snip the eye pokers off first. I still have the same aloes and I should have just put them all in the same pot, but it was stressful for forever repotting it since I had been murdering them...

I love houseplants!! Usually I love them to death including aloes and air plants.The last 2-3 years though, I have kept more alive than I’ve killed. Yay! Overwatering is a big culprit, but some also die from drying out. I have a hard time with my house fluctuating between being cold then really hot and dry with the wood stove.

Some of the plants that are super resistant to me killing them are:
       -Peace Lily- this plant likes low light and regular water (1x week) and it will flower. If more neglected it will stop flowering. When really thirsty it will droop, but as soon as you water, it will perk right back just fine. Very forgiving and communicative plant.
       -Wondering Jew- this plant is a survivor. It just wants to grow and grow. Also doesn’t care what kind of light it’s in. I think the more you water the more it grows. It will grow even in totality dry soil and will start to look sad, but will bounce right back. Grows super fast and long and roots from any node, so cut the ends 6”, remove lower leaves from cutting and stick in water until rooted. New plants!! Also great way to start your own.
         -Dracaen-(corn plant) another low light powerhouse that I can overwater or underwater and seems just fine. This plant has gotten huge really quickly and doesn’t seem to care about its pot size.

These plants are a bit more finicky about too much water but can survive low light and under watering quite well.

        -Pothos- are low light tolerant and forgiving. They like to suck up air moisture and my mother has one in her bathroom, with a window, that only lives on shower steam. Mine gets the dry wood stove heat and does just fine with occasional water. It will wilt when it needs more water and bounces back nicely.
         - Christmas Cactus- does great with low light and neglect! Will get droopy when dry, doesn’t like a lot of water but I still haven’t killed it yet. Mine put on a beautiful pink show for Thanksgiving.

I have several other plants, not sure how easy they’d be, however they are surviving me so far… I don’t know everyone’s names though.

Some final thoughts are to give each plant a size appropriate dish/bowl/pie plate under its pot and make sure the pot has a way for water to drain out the bottom. I find a lot of my plants like to completely dry out before watering and the soil doesn’t hold onto any of the water when dry, so the dish allows some water to stay and seep back into the pot.

I wanted houseplants so badly but big ones are really expensive. I got a few of the plants that I liked that were babies in little 2”-4” pots. Waaaay cheaper. I took them home and potted them up into way bigger pots and in a year they were the size of the expensive plants, so don’t pay for the big boys, your plants will get big fast if you give them more room.

I was also given a basket (no drainage) crowded with 7-10 plants. I individually potted up each one. I lost a couple but I have a lot of plants from that, if you can find something similar at a good price it might be worth it.

After I got going with a few, I wanted more, so I started looking around and I found on Etsy there are several people who will send you a box with a bunch of different plant cuttings. You have to get them established and pot them up yourself, but very inexpensive way to get several plants. Full disclosure, I didn’t order any…yet.

So the takeaway is plants are resilient and want to grow… even houseplants! Most propagate easily so with a little time, patience, and forgiveness of our own human shortcomings we can soon have many little plant friends. Then we get to share them with others! (Can you smell the side hustle!)

I am very grateful to my houseplants for bringing such joy with something growing inside when outside is wrapped in winter and we long for our gardens.

I wish you good health with your plant friends Raven!