How To Take Care Of Indoor Plants

Getting a houseplant is like giving your home a life. You will need to nurture it with love and care. So it becomes important to see and understand the set-up and environment of your space before you bring home a plant. It is important to ensure that the environment at your home/office or any other space matches the requirements of the plant.

All plants need food, water and sunlight to survive. But different plants require different amounts of each.

1. Water – Water your plants as per their needs. Plants need water, but not too much or too little. Most plants like having their roots consistently moist, but not wet. You need to provide your plant with consistent water. Most of our indoor plants have coco peat as a base. Best way to check if you need to water the plant or not is to check the coco peat and see how dry it is and water accordingly. If the coco peat is turning light brown and looks dry, you need to water the plant. But at the same time, you need to ensure that there is no clogging of water at the bottom. The best way to check this is to but your finger in the coco peat and check whether it is dry or moist from inside.

2. Light – The next most important thing is light. Some plants require proper sunlight; on the other hand some might easily live without natural light or dim light.

For example- a lucky bamboo plant can do with moderate levels of indirect light. But a Bonsai needs at least 3-4 hours of sunlight on daily bases. Most foliage plants can do with little or no sunlight. You need to understand the light requirement of your plant and then find the best suitable place for the plant in your home or office. Another critical factor here is to avoid temperature shocks for the plant.

3. Preventing pest problems – Dirt clogs on the pores of the plant which makes it difficult to respire. You must wash the leaves of your plant several times a month. Easy way to do this is use a water spray. So every now and then you can supply spray water on the leaves.

4. Pruning of yellow leaves – Leaves can turn yellow for a couple of reasons. One of the main reasons why leaves start turning yellow and then brown is dryness. If the plant is dry it will tend to wilt and the leaves will start turning yellow. The second reason why this happens is that some disease is affecting the plant or there is fungal activity. It is important to understand the reason for yellowing the leaves, take care of that reason and also prune the yellow leaves so that they do not affect the rest of the plant. An easy way to prune yellow leaves is to use a pair of pruning shears or a simple scissors for foliage plants.

5. Food – Food plays an important role in nurturing of plants. An important food for plants other than water is NPK, which you must add to the plant base once in 4-6 months. You can add this powder in water and add this mixture to the plants. It is a must for Foliage plants and bonsais, but not needed in lucky bamboo plants.

These are a few very basic things that you need to take care of for a healthy lush green plant.

Plants need proper care.

Kumar Shridharan