How To Keep an Indoor Plant Alive

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Do plants wilt at the sight of you? With these tips, anyone can keep a houseplant alive -- even you!

To complete this How-To you will need:

A plant
Knowledge of its native environment
Water
Fertilizer
A soothing voice or a radio

Step 1: Pick a plant that's tough to kill. Hardy varieties include spider, rubber, and snake plants, and pothos, aloe vera, and peace lilies.

Step 2: Choose a good location. Plants do best in the light and temperature of their native environment. For instance, tropical plants like their surroundings bright and humid, while cacti need sunlight but very little water.

Tip: Put houseplants that thrive on humidity in the bathroom -- the dampest room in the house.

Step 3: Find out your plant's foot-candle requirement, which is how many candles it would take to light the plant from one foot away. A plant that needs 250 or fewer candles is a low-light plant; one that needs more than 1,000 requires very bright light. If your plant didn't come with this information, search for it online.

Step 4: Poke the soil with your finger before watering. If it's moist, leave it alone. Overwatering is the no. 1 killer of houseplants.

Step 5: Fertilize a few times between the spring and fall. Low-light plants only require fertilization once or twice a year. Slow-growing plants need less fertilizer, while faster growing varieties need more. Choose a fertilizer that contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Water the soil before fertilizing to prevent fertilizer burn.

Tip: Watering your plants with the water in which you boiled vegetables or water from your fish tank gives them nutrients that help them grow.

Step 6: Talk or sing to your plants. Some research has indicated this can help them thrive, as does playing certain kinds of music. Indian sitar music works best, followed by classical music. Stay away from heavy metal: Plants exposed to loud rock music died after a few weeks in one famous experiment.

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Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• HomeFamily
• house
• home
• garden
• gardening
• houseplants
• indoor
• keeping
• alive
• taking
• care

[TheAlmighyShia]

Plants don't respond to voice, they respond to the CO2 you give off while breathing. So technically, talking to them will help.

The air vibrations caused by heavy metal might cause plants to die by wilting them and destroying cells...

[shanepryde]

Hell yeah for talking and singing to your plants! Seemed to help mine out. At the very least, you can tell them anything, because they're not gonna be judgmental. But, even if they end up being judgmental, it'll most likely be that they won't say anything back. Plants are kind like that. : )

[0987654321libra]

Oh dear, oh dear....Prince Charles talks to his plants. Only someone outside of the UK could be impressed by the utterings of an overprivileged, self-indulgent, self-important waste of space such as he. A man who was quite at ease allowing his valet to hold a specimen bottle while he urinated into it. Royalty are not special, just parasites. They have good PR, so are portrayed as virtuous, honourable people. Put any one of them in the street and they would be hard put to earn a living.

[SuperWestworld]

I remember that experiment, it was done in the early '70s and they bombarded the plant with loud Black Sabbath music continually. But I thought it was just a hoax at the time.

[MrMMABoy]

hahaha xD

[runescrule]

@MrMMABoy they kinda like, but not fully, you need some classic bethowen lol

[MrMMABoy]

R.I.P.

[MrMMABoy]

haha hey can you ask you mom for me if plants like reggae music like bob marley :)

[runescrule]

but they feel! my mom likes to grow plants and she knows about everything, talk to plants and look at them and play classic music, thats how my mom grows the plants up :) it even works with food plants, try it!

[Sasha80012]

lol we are always listening and jamming rock and heavy metal and out 10 house plants are FINE! XD

[RavishingRedheadd]

aww i love plants some of those nice ones look like mine! i have tons of plants!