House Plant Hacks

The only reason you wouldn't know that I am way into my house plants is if you're new here. (If you are new here then HI I'm Amy and I'm a house plant addict and I hope that doesn't put you off coming back). Although I have a lot of plants in my house and post them so frequently on Instagram you'd think they're my children, I've always dodged the comments asking me how I keep them alive and whether I have any house plant tips. Why is this you may ask? Well, as with pretty much any other topic I cover on here, I simply don't feel qualified to actually give any advice. However, as with most other topics that I don't feel qualified to give advice on, I'm going to give it a good go anyway. So, if you haven't been put off by my lack of confidence or completely unnecessarily long introduction to this post, here are my plant lady hacks.

R E S E A R C H  |  When I bought my first plants, I went to IKEA, picked ones that looked nice, sat them on my windowsill and wondered why on earth they were dying even though they had light and I was watering them. Well, what do you know, turns out that different plants need different amounts of light and water and you should really find out what kind of plant you have and how much of each it needs, rather than simply guessing and hoping for the best. If you don't know what kind of plants you have (which was pretty much my problem), it's easy enough to find out if you google common house plants and look at some pictures.

P L A N T S  T O  S U I T  Y O U  | Following on from doing your research, choose plants that suit your lifestyle and mentality. If you don't have much spare time or tend to be a little forgetful, cacti and succulents are your best friends. If you have pets, you need to look into which plants are toxic to them (I've spent far too much time in the garden centre on my phone googling which plants I can actually buy). If you live in a basement flat you need to choose plants that are happy with indirect light. The plant chooses the wizard remember...

D O N ' T  O V E R W A T E R  |  Generally, I've found that when it comes to watering, too little is better than too much. Once you've overwatered there's not much going back, but you can always add more. You can usually tell whether a plant has enough water or not by how dry the soil looks and by how heavy it is, but if you're worried about overwatering I'm a big fan of the pots that come with saucers that you can just fill those up with water for the plant to take as and when it needs.

G R O O M  T H E M  | OK, so that may sound odd, but just as you would brush the old moulting fur off your pet, you need to get rid of any old, dead leaves and twigs from your plants so they can grow new ones. I don't know if this at all helps your plants to thrive, but I also clean the leaves whenever they're looking a little dusty...#crazyplantlady

D R A I N A G E  |  Something else I wasn't aware of when I first began my plant lady journey was the need for drainage (so any excess water has somewhere to go until the plant needs it), which is why plants are so often kept in two pots. If you don't like that look or if you want to plant up smaller ones together, I've found that a layer of pebbles works just as well for drainage purposes.

And I'm all out of hacks! How do you look after your house plants?

Amy x