What I've learned growing these
What has worked for me and what hasn't, plant by plant. Take what's useful.
Each note takes one plant and stays with it - how it uses water and light, and what it does when something is wrong. The mistakes are in there alongside the method.
- 01Pothos in Water, Pothos in SoilThe same cutting behaves differently depending on where its roots end up.
- 02The ZZ Does Not Want Your AttentionMost ZZ plant deaths are drownings, not neglect.
- 03Why Your Monstera Hasn't Split YetFenestration is a light problem before it is an age problem.
- 04Taking a Cutting That Actually RootsWhere you cut matters more than what you cut with.
- 05The Philodendron Climbs, or Manages WithoutForgiving without being boring, and it tells you clearly when something is wrong.
- 06Repotting Without Killing AnythingMost houseplants want to be repotted less often than people think.
- 07What to Do With Spider Plant Pups & BabiesSpiderettes are baby spider plants: when to cut them, root them, and pot them up.
- 08Aloe That Actually Thrives IndoorsThe failure mode is almost always the pot, not the plant.
How to read these
A note describes a species, not the particular plant you have. The light in your room and the pot it is standing in both change how a plant behaves, and neither is visible from here. Where a note and the plant in front of you disagree, the plant is right.
None of them hands you a watering schedule to keep to. The ZZ is the clearest case - a fixed weekly interval is the most common way to kill one - so where watering matters the note says what to check instead of when to pour.
Some of these are about propagation rather than care: cutting below a node, rooting it in water, and potting it on once the roots are an inch or two long. Every plant I sell was propagated and rooted in this house before it went out, so those notes describe what I do rather than what is generally recommended.