What is Reddit's opinion of The House Plant Expert?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

AC really effects humidity in the house. I've had the hardest time with house plants because of AC. I got a cheap humidity sensor off Amazon. My humidity is 45% and that's terrible for a lot of house plants. While outside humidity is usually much higher. In all my 70s house plant books they always spoke of using pebble trays with water in them for the plants to sit on and misting the plants a couple times a day.

The most fool proof house plant is a Snake Plant (Sansevieria). There are many types, my favorite is the dwarf ones, they're super cute. They barely ever need watering, almost any level of light. Another good one for indoors that doesn't care about drafts or humidity or super high light is a ZZ plant or Zanzibar Gem (Zamioculcas). Let dry between watering, I barely ever water mine.

Plants I have trouble with inside I usually just stick on my patio and if they do well then so be it. I then try to look for plants that don't care too much about humidity/ drafts and so on. This is my favorite book on houseplants. It explains a ton, very easy read too.

I like The House Plant Expert by Dr. D.G. Hessayon. It’s out of print but you can find a nice used copy on eBay or Amazon. Each page contains full color photos with tons of advice.

Then I often do a search on this sub using the name of the plant and find a good thread (like this one).

The Houseplant Expert by D.G. Hessayon is a great start. It's older (the one I have is published in 1991) but is an excellent reference to have on hand. It covers general care (understanding the different types of light in your home) and has an A-to-Z guide for different types of houseplants with care advice. It might be hard to find a new copy, but cheap, used copies are relatively easy to find (I bought mine on Amazon here).

We tend to change things too quickly for plants to be able to adjust.

Calathea and Maranta like to be evenly damp. They cannot be sitting in water.

A very common scenario is you take a plant home (which causes stress, with environmental change) you do fine with keeping up watering until it starts to look a little sad and then water it a whole bunch and now the plant that was stressed by the under watering is now drowning. Changing all these things at once just puts it that much more under stress, making the plant more susceptible to pest, disease and so on.

A lot of plants need special conditions too. Most house plants won’t put up with a huge draft or a fan on them constantly, they need humidity. They will dry out too quickly. If you partially cover a plant with plastic after getting it you can slowly introduce it into another environment and with time many plants can adjust to less than ideal conditions, however many are less forgiving.

It’s hard to keep up with plants with our busy lives, best rule of thumb is to check the soil before watering, use a wooden/bamboo skewer or a decent water meter or even your finger, stick it into the soil, the top of the soil is not a good representation of the over all soil conditions.

Use Reverse Osmosis, Spring, Rain or Distilled water for house plants as they collect/buildup a lot of minerals and what not in their pots.

Here’s my favorite book on House plants, seriously indispensable information in this book. The House Plant Expert.

Even as a horticulturist I’ve killed many plants (probably far more than the average person lol), the important thing is learning each time.

I'd recommend reading through this book.

I'd also look around to see if there's a city owned greenhouse or a botanical garden you can volunteer at. If you have a university or community college around you could see if they offer any plant ID classes if you're very interested.

I recently went through <em>The House Plant Expert</em>. It has a chart like that for common house plants. The other "expert" books in this series probably have similar charts. Or I'm sure there are similar things on the internet.

One of he biggest killer of plants is over watering. (Yes, a lot of people pay too much attention to the plant and kill it)

When indoors you're completely changing a plants environment. There is so much that can affect a plant in how it - takes up nutrients, water and light.

When you have a plant that in its native habitat gets a lot of light and a lot of warmth and you have it indoors with considerably lower light and temperature (when bought young they are more likely to adjust without going into shock) it is going to have to adjust to those conditions meaning - since it has less light it will need less water and less nutrients, the plant is not using all its resources up like it would so it doesn't need to "re-up" because it really hasn't lost much.

So even though it uses less there are many factors that affect the soil- AC will dry out a well ventilated area rather quickly depending on the pot type. Also many plants indoors lack humidity they'd have in their native range.

Having a larger pot for small roots is bad because it will not dry out as evenly, the top will become more dry while it could still be sopping wet at the bottom. Seeing that you go and water the plant again when it doesn't need it and the plant becomes water logged, suffocates and dies.

The killing of indoor plants by overwatering is #1 most common, especially since when you bring a plant home, unless you have the same environment as the place you got it from in your home, it is going to go through some shock, many people don't know this and see their plant a little sad after they just got it and then panic and water the plant.

Plants need time to adapt. You can't just keep changing things and expect to see results in a day or two. Often times even if they look a little sad it's best to leave them be, especially if they have enough water, light and humidity. They need time.

Starting small when buying a plant in general is much better practice, for so many reasons. Just don't put it in a huge pot :)

Edit: Wow, didn't think this would get this big lol Thanks so much for such interest in plants and horticulture!

To be clear I was mostly talking about house plants in this, since they are a plant that is usually not of the climate where you live and is why they're a house plant because the can't live outside. (But not always- in FL many "house plants" can do better outside, depending on the plant still)

Doing my best to answer questions- you guys are lucky I'm sick and aren't busy outside :P

Edit 2: Here are a couple pages from one of the best houseplant books I've seen and had. There is helpful info that can be used for other plant types as well. You can get the book off Amazon, its rather inexpensive and 100% worth it.

Edit 3: Forgot to stress the fact that many of our tap water had loads of chlorine and chloramine in it. The chlorine can evaporate out if the water is left out before use but the chloramine will not. These are things that can really affect a plant over time. Along with mineral build up from water and fertilizer. Here's another good resource.