The archive
Everything published so far, newest first.
56 articles · page 5 of 7
Schlumbergera is not a desert plant and treating it like one is why yours has never bloomed. It is a jungle epiphyte, and its flowering is triggered by darkness and cool nights.
Putting stones in the bottom of a pot is the most widely repeated piece of plant advice there is. It has been known to be counterproductive since the 1950s, and the physics is not complicated.
Most plants drink tap water for years without complaint. A specific handful react badly to fluoride, chloramine and hard water — and they happen to be some of the most commonly owned plants there are.
Desert cacti are among the easiest plants to keep alive and among the hardest to make bloom in a centrally heated flat — because the trigger is a winter that most homes never deliver.
Wiring sets a branch's direction. Pruning is what turns that branch into the dense twiggy structure that makes a small tree read as an old one — and it works by exploiting one hormone gradient over and over.
They have a reputation for crisping up no matter what you do. Almost all of it comes down to three things — water quality, humidity and root temperature — and two of them are cheap to fix.
Both are Ficus, both grow into indoor trees, and both are sold as the centrepiece for a corner. One of them is considerably easier than the other, and it is not the fashionable one.
The advice to go up one pot size sounds like fussiness. It is physics: a pot holds a saturated layer at its base regardless of what you fill it with, and a pot too large for its plant keeps that layer wet for weeks.
Fungal problems on houseplants are less common than people assume and more preventable than they expect. Almost all of it comes down to still air, wet leaves and a plant kept in the dark.