A poinsettia bought from the grocery store in early December, still in its gold foil sleeve, usually looks fine on the way home — and then drops its leaves. The cause is often a short stop somewhere cold: even a quick errand with the plant sitting in a freezing car can be enough. It looks … Read more
Try to repot an asparagus fern that has lived in the same pot for years and there’s a good chance it won’t come out. Break or cut the pot away and there is often almost no soil left at all, just a solid mass of pale, fat, finger-sized tubers wound around each other. That root … Read more
Bring an asparagus fern in from a summer on the porch, hang it from a hook in the living room about eight feet from the nearest window, and keep watering it the way it was watered all summer, and the result is predictable: a shower of yellow needles landing on the floor within a couple … Read more
A ti plant can start life as a piece of bare stick about the length of a hand. “Ti logs” — cane sections sold at some garden centers and gift shops — can be laid on their side in a tray of damp mix, and with a little patience two tiny red shoots poke out … Read more
A ti plant picked up at the grocery store because it was red and cheap tends to follow a familiar pattern. It goes on the bathroom windowsill, it gets watered from the tap every few days because the tag says it likes moisture, and within a month nearly every leaf has a brown tip, each … Read more
A bromeliad can keep itself going across generations without ever being bought again. A pup from a pup from a guzmania that someone passed on is the third generation of the same plant: the original blooms, fades, and throws off babies, and one of those blooms a couple of years later and does the same … Read more
A grocery-store guzmania with a bright red star in the middle, bought on a whim in February because the kitchen looked gray, is perfect for about three months. Then the red starts fading to a dull orange-brown, the outer leaves go yellow at the tips, and the whole rosette slowly begins to slump. What most … Read more
A staghorn fern on a board above the bathroom door is the kind of plant guests ask about every single time. It looks like a set of green antlers growing out of the wall. It can also be watered in the shower, which is either the laziest or the smartest plant routine there is. Staghorns … Read more
A staghorn fern that comes on a little cedar plank from a garage sale can nearly be killed within a month by trying to fix something that was not broken. The flat, round frond hugging the board goes brown and papery, like a dead leaf glued to the wood. It’s easy to assume it is … Read more
Almost every areca palm in a store looks a little tired, with a few brown tips and a yellow frond or two at the bottom. There is a reason for that. They are not hard plants, exactly, but they are hungry ones, and almost every store palm has been living on whatever was in its … Read more