7 Effective Ways To Not Kill Your Indoor Plants – Beginner’s Guide

You started gardening and potting cute plants in your house. But as a beginner, you don’t know how to take care of them properly. So, you end up killing them even though your intentions were good.

Well, you’re not in this situation alone. You’ll find no gardener didn’t make the same mistakes and killed their plants at least once. It’s relatively common in beginner’s gardening scenarios, especially in terms of indoor plants.

To help you out, we’ve created a detailed guide on ways to not kill your indoor plants. Stick around to the end if you want to raise your plant babies healthy.

Let’s look at the mistakes you could be making and the solutions to them.

Purchase Plants That Do Well Indoor

The first move to giving your plants a healthy life is selecting the right one. This means that choosing the right indoor plant is crucial. In the nursery, you’ll find plenty of plants that may seem nice to you, but you must check if they’re capable of being a houseplant or not.

If you bring a plant meant to grow outside, that will not give the outcome as a houseplant properly. So, check on the plant while buying appropriately.

Choose The Right Pot For Your Plant

When it is about choosing the right pot, beginner gardeners often think it only means a pot with a vast room. But it is wrong. Your plant surely wants some room to grow, but you must know the borderline. Otherwise, you’ll end up with root rots.

You should not give your plant more than enough room in a pot to grow. Suppose you’ve got a plant that comes with 4 inches of potting. It would be best to make the new potting exactly in the sized pot.

If you allow more room, the plant won’t be able to suck in the water and nutrients from the soil properly. Then it’ll have to strain itself to get what it needs from the soil. Again, there’ll be too much moisture which is harmful to the plant.

Do Not Over Water Or Under Water Your Plant

Scheduled watering is necessary for any plant to grow at its best. Here scheduled means you need to understand well when your houseplants need watering. Besides, you’ve to be careful if you’re overwatering them.

For this, you need to have an excellent or basic idea about the humidity of your weather. Moisture is a must for some plants and big rivals to others. You must know whether your plant wants moisture or hates it.

You can use a humidifier in this case. Or else you can use the god-gifted tools and your fingers to check if the soil is dry and needs some water.

Pro Tip On Watering Plants – If you see your plant’s leaves seem dry, but the root is wet, you should not choose to water it. But to meet up the thirst of the leaves, you can sprinkle water on the leaves using a spray bottle.

Do Not Keep You Plant In A Dark Corner

People often misunderstand houseplants. They think houseplants require more shade and less light. So, often houseplants are set in the darkest corner of the house.

It is a big mistake indeed. Your houseplant can literally die in the corner even if you water it enough. They require sunlight, too but on a minor level. But you must place your houseplant in a place in your house where it can access the needed amount of adequate sunlight.

Do Not Let Your Plant Eat Excessive Sunlight

From the day we first learned about plants and trees, the primary thing we knew was that they must need water and sunlight to grow. Well, the comment is valid, but sometimes it could backfire.

Houseplants generally require less amount of sunlight than other plants. Direct sunlight or excessive sunlight is enough to scorch the plant to death. You need to find a suitable place in your house where there is a little sunlight and shade to balance your houseplant’s health.

Be Careful About Pests And Diseases

Pests and diseases are the cruelest enemies to your plants. The best way to eradicate them is by taking necessary prevention steps. For this, you can use pest control fertilizers and necessary amendments to control diseases.

Yet no matter how much you take care of your houseplant, pests and diseases find their way to jump on your plant and ruin it somehow. So, cut them off whenever you see your plant is affected by pests or the leaves are dried and dead out of any disease. That’s how the rest of your plant won’t get affected.

Ensure A Balanced Temperature

Balanced temperature means not too cold and not too hot for your houseplants. Plants do not like to get frost and freeze like us humans. Besides, they also don’t like being too hot and sweat out all the water.

Now you must find the best spot for your houseplants where they’ll get a balanced temperature.

One More Pro Tip – When you’re repotting your plant, make sure you use a pot with a sufficiently large drainage hole. Drainage is essential to ensure your plant’s good health.

Containers that don’t have drainage holes end up suffocating the soil by stacking the moisture and water inside, which results in root rots.

Moreover, try to avoid plastic or ceramic pots and look for something more porous. So that the air and water in the pot can pass through nicely. A Terracotta or a Basalt Pot is an excellent example of a porous pot.

FAQs-

●      Does spraying water on plant leaves help?

Spraying water on plant leaves helps when you want to increase the humidity but don’t want to overwater the roots of your plants. In such cases, gently spray water and let your thirsty plant leaves drink some water.

●      Is it OK to water houseplants at night?

No. It is not OK to water houseplants at night. The ideal time for watering plants is daytime, especially when the sun is above the head. It is necessary because enough evaporation is required when you water the plants.

At night, due to no sunlight, evaporation doesn’t occur. As a result, your plants can get their roots rotten.

●      Why do my indoor plants keep dying?

Impromptu gardening techniques could be the reason behind your indoor plants dying. You need to make a checklist of all the above points to make sure you’re doing the job well.

Conclusion

Hope that you’ve found out the ways to not kill your indoor plants by reading this article. Remember, when you’re just starting as a gardener, it is more vital for you to learn how to keep your plants alive instead of increasing the number of your plants.

So, start with a minimum number of plants and take care of them. Happy gardening!