Houseplants

I’ve been pretty busy, or at least my recovering-from-autistic-burnout brain thinks I have.

Which has meant a slump of low motivation, passion, and energy. Unfortunately that means my houseplant collection has been rather neglected. I kept saying “I’ll do it tomorrow”; tomorrow turned into a month.

I tend to get stuck, thinking I have to do everything at once which leaves me with a sore back and an overwhelming mess. (An example of my autistic black and white thinking perhaps?)

This time, I’m going to take it slow and try not to create a mess tornado in my bedroom and bathroom.

Day 1

First, everything needs to be watered. I also need to deal with the spider mites and thrips that have made themselves at home on my stressed plants.

I started by taking 3 plants at a time to the bathroom, drowning them in the sink, then spraying them with diluted rubbing alcohol in the shower. I left them there for about 30 minutes while I did other tasks or took a break. I picked one side of my window and slowly worked my way over.

Today I threw out 2 plants (I had healthier duplicates) and watered and sprayed 12 others.

Day 2

Now that I’m thinking of it, I should be using a box to carry the plants to the bathroom in groups; less work.

I watered and sprayed 24 plants today (I have more in another room)

I also took down my hanging plants, while they look amazing it’s harder to take care of them up there.

Day 3

After watering and spraying my last 3 plants (for a total of 39), I started pruning.

I focused on removing damaged leaves to help remove thrip larvae.

The tradescantia plants needed a hard prune to keep them bushy.

I pruned 25 plants.

Day 4

I bought some fertilizer, epiphyte fertilizer, yellow sticky fly traps, and a new air plant to replace one that died (Tillandsia capittata peach)

Day 5

I’ve never fertilized my air plants beyond soaking them in my aquarium. I grabbed an empty 4 liter bottle, labeled it, and mixed the fertilizer in it. I soaked the air plants and put the leftovers in my watering can for later.

I was trying to make an air plant wreath, but I kept forgetting it existed. So now I’m keeping them in a tray in my window.

Day 6

Lastly I have some cuttings to pot up. Most are being put back into the mother plant pots, but a couple are for making new plants. I also topped up a couple pots low on soil. I used a crochet hook to poke the cuttings in.

My plant window now looks really nice and satisfying and I’m getting that itch to buy more plant things again…

Notes to self:

Use a container, box, or tray to move plants in groups
You don’t have to do everything at once!
You can never have enough plants

I’ve had this happen 3 times now; I thought my plant was dead, put it somewhere else, and voila! Now it’s thriving.

I’ve read countless forum posts where people banish their “dead” drama queen plant to the back porch and it comes back and thrives, seemingly just to spite them.

In my case, it has been with ferns. A maiden’s hair fern, rabbit’s foot fern, and a Pteris fern to be precise.

My main problems have been with light and watering. I have 2 places I can put plants in my house; a south and a west facing window. At the south window, depending on where you position the plant, it either gets blasted with light or near complete shade. The west has privacy glass that filters the light, but the light varies a lot depending on the time of year.

I started with the ferns on a shelf just below the south window, where they were behind and underneath some other plants. That was WAY too much light still. Plus, there is a heat vent right above there and they were drying out faster then I could keep up with.

I tried putting them in the full shade spot, but that wasn’t enough light.

So now they had dead or damaged leaves, and at one point I thought each of them might be dead.

Some people banish their “mostly dead” plants the back porch, I banish mine to my laundry room with the west window.

And they ALL came back! And are the happiest I’ve seen them. I honesty wasn’t sure what was going on with the Pteris fern, because it was getting covered in little black spots and the new growth looked awful. Turns out it was also too much light.

I’m definitely leaving them there for now. I’m curious to see if they will like it all year round there, as I think they will get a loss less light in the winter.

My rabbit’s foot fern and Pteris when I bought them, verses now on the right.

Should have moved them sooner, but I honestly forgot that window existed. I just banish my plants there because that’s where I keep all my gardening supplies.

My Neurospicy Soup

Houseplant Collection Reset

If You Think Your Plant is Dead, Try Moving It!