Creating the right environment for your plants

Q. Hey Plant Daddies! Got a question for you; what’s the best thing you’ve done for helping to create the right environment for your plants?

I recently got a large Monstera a friend of mine was about to toss - I had to take it in! I got it a month ago, and the leaves seem to be telling me it’s not thriving quite yet. My money is on the drafty and dry apartment I call home, and it probably needs to be repotted. I would rather wait till the spring because we are just entering winter in Boston. What do you think? Thanks!

A. That’s a good question! It really depends on how committed you are. And this isn’t a question of whether you’re doing it “right” or “wrong” – some people go to extreme lengths to make their plants happy in not-ideal spaces, while others make use of the conditions they have with plants that will thrive without much intervention. They’re both respectable approaches, and while one is way easier, the other opens the door to far more varieties of plants.

But before I get to that, really quickly – give your new Monstera some time to adjust to your home. It will want to acclimate and “figure out” its new conditions before it starts to grow actively, and given that we’re entering winter, it’s naturally going to slow growth unless your home is a greenhouse with consistent ideal conditions. I would recommend waiting until the daylight hours and temperatures have improved before repotting if you can, because this will allow the Monstera its best start when the growing season begins. Just give it some time, and it will most likely come around!

The three things I’ve done, in order of magnitude of benefit, are lighting, humidity, and soil composition.

1. Lighting

Lighting is key because it is an unavoidable requirement for all plants, and providing the correct level is always the biggest obstacle I have in my urban jungle. What I can’t provide with windows, I supplement with artificial light in the form of full-spectrum bulbs in most of my light fixtures, placed close enough to plants that they provide benefit, and greatly increasing the viable space I have for plants.

2. Humidity

Humidity is frankly over-emphasized for most house plants – 50% is pretty achievable for most people, and adequate for most plants. But by grouping plants closely to create little microclimates, putting them on trays of pebbles to hold water, and investing in a humidifier are all easy ways to boost it, especially in the winter months when indoor heating dries the atmosphere. With higher humidity, leaves tend to look better, resist browning edges, and it encourages healthy growth and strong roots, especially for climbing Aroids and sensitive tropicals like ferns, Calatheas, and Begonias. What is more critical for plants than ambient humidity, though, is a solid watering routine.

3. Soil Composition

A healthy root system is critical for the well-being of any plant, so it is crucial to ensure that the roots are getting the right levels of moisture and air to keep the plant from desiccating, or smothering and succumbing to rot. When I know I can’t keep the humidity as high as the plants would like, I make sure that I’ve done what I can to compensate by making sure that my plants are in the right substrate for their needs – a humidity-loving plant will usually suffer if the substrate gets dry, but keeping the moisture-loving plant wet enough for it to grow well is tricky because this often leads to root rot. So I use light, airy mixes for these plants, which is potting soil heavily augmented with sphagnum, horticultural charcoal, orchid bark, perlite, and LECA pellets, which holds moisture but also plenty of air, and it allows the plants to have access to both the moisture and air that their roots need. (I’ll get more into this later.)

Similarly, I adapt my soil mixes to compensate for my watering habits – like many indoor gardeners, I tend to either over or underwater, so I think about what the plant ultimately wants as I compose a substrate. For plants that only want to dry slightly between watering without going bone dry, I might easily overwater, so I use mixes that dry quickly, with faster drainage and more minerals. On the other side, plants that want to dry well between watering are at risk of suffering from too-little water, so I might add more moisture retentive compost to their coarse, fast-draining mix so that it holds onto a bit more water for longer to give the plants a break from my neglect. It’s a balance I’ve learned over time with trial and error, and something that is very particular to my cultural conditions and practices, so never be afraid to experiment and see what approaches help you achieve the results you want.

Oh, and I hear a lot of advice saying to water your plants until it flows out the bottom, and then to make sure you empty the saucer so the plant isn’t sitting in water – I literally never do this. I find that if I water a plant (that has appropriately dried slightly) until water flows into the drainage saucer, I can come back in an hour or two to find that the excess water has been absorbed into the soil or clay pot. It takes some time for a pot of soil to absorb water evenly, and I think the most important part of watering is to make sure that you saturate the substrate evenly when you water, rather than just pouring a bit into a pot at a time, leaving dry soil. Sure, most plants don’t like to sit in water, but unless you have a very deep drainage saucer and water too much to begin with, this seems like a level of fuss that doesn’t offer any real benefit.

My advice is to water a plant liberally when it’s time, and then if that excess water isn’t being absorbed within an hour or two, just let the plant dry a little more before you water again next time.

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Listeners and members of the houseplant community reach out to us with questions, requests for advice, tips, and suggestions, and often, we think the answer could be useful for other plant parents! Hopefully this helps you out!

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Happy Growing!