Vol. 09 — Growing season 2026
Leaf & Loam is a working notebook rather than a catalogue: houseplants, small bonsai, succulents, potting mixes and the pests that find them. Every guide is written from what actually happened on a 12 m² balcony and a crowded windowsill.
Photo: Greenhouse by User:Владимир Иванов · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Indoor Plants
Species guides for plants that live under a roof
4 articles
Bonsai
Small trees, long timelines
3 articles
Succulents & Cacti
Drought-adapted plants and the ways we drown them
3 articles
Plant Care
The habits that apply to almost every pot
4 articles
Pests & Diseases
Identify it before you spray anything
3 articles
Soil & Potting
Most plant problems start below the surface
3 articles
Comparisons
Two plants enter, one goes on your shelf
4 articles
The most common question is 'how often should I water this?' — and the honest answer is that the interval changes by a factor of three between July and January. Here is how to read it instead of counting days.
Most 'low light' lists are wishful thinking — half the plants on them need a bright window to look like the photo. These nine actually hold up a few metres from the glass.
These are the two pests you are most likely to meet indoors, and the treatments barely overlap. Getting the identification right saves weeks of the wrong approach.
They sit on the same shelf at the garden centre and get sold with the same care card, but succulents and cacti want noticeably different amounts of light. Picking wrong is why one of them is stretching.
Most first bonsai die within a year, and it is almost never a styling failure. It is buying a tree that cannot live where you intend to keep it.
Every care label says 'bright indirect light' and almost nobody knows what that means in an actual room. Here are three ways to measure it without buying anything.
Both are climbing aroids with glossy green leaves, and in a nursery pot they look like the same plant at different sizes. The difference shows up two years later, when one has taken over a corner of the room.