imafan26
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what are the best plants to grow indoors

I get asked this question a lot.
People ask what will grow with no light, very little water or care. I usually answer "plastic", but you will have to dust it once in a while.

What are good indoor plants for people who want plants but are clueless that plants are living things and need things like light, the right amount of water, a little fertilizer and occasionally a new pot and soil?

Pothos is one that I know is easy to grow and will even grow in a vase of water, but it does need good light.
Cast iron plant- Tolerant of over an under watering, but people have still killed it
Ficus = it will drop every leaf if it is put in lower light, but it usually regrows. It still should be taken out once a week and hose the dust off the leaves and flush the soil with water. The soil should dry out between waterings.
Orchids like paphiopedilum and phalaenopsis can be grown as houseplants but they do need some light, fertilizer and occasional watering. They do not bloom for 3-4 months but they don't bloom all year.

What are good houseplants for you and what kind of conditions do they need?

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digitS'
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Broad-leaf Thyme is super easy in the house for me. The plants spend the summer in the greenhouse. It's as open as I can get it but still, really hot.

Cuttings can be taken in late September and October and will root quickly in water.
houseplants.jpg
The cuttings in water were in the shady, kitchen window. The potted ones were from the September cuttings. This is the south window but it doesn't get much sun. Our winters and springs are often cloudy and the sun is very low on the horizon here, at this 48th parallel North location. There is a deciduous tree outside about 20' to the south. Doesn't matter much - they will grow.

Steve

imafan26
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That plant grows well here too. You are right it grows in sun or part shade and does not need a lot of care.

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applestar
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Light is the deciding factor to my list of easy house plants. When I lived in a North-fading apartment, and before I broke down and started using lights, I had very limited selection of plants that I could keep. Sansevieria (Mother-in-law’s Tongue) survived even the worst conditions. It can also be completely dried out and still live on for a while, and under those kinds of abuse, they won’t grow much so won’t need fertilizing. Cast Iron plant sounded even more boring, so I never bothered to get one.

Plain green rubber plant is also pretty resilient. They will get awfully leggy, but will still manage.

- Norfolk Island Pine — they can get leggy from lower light and lose lower branches, but overall, they are not too needy

- some low-light ferns as long as humidity is not lacking

- Just a little bit more light and African Violet will make an effort to bloom. They are also persistent under abusive conditions as long as you don’t overwater.

- I have found regular aloe (not the rosette forming kind) to be pretty indestructible as long as you give them a little bit of direct sun. Too much and they sun burn and get stressed out more.

- Zebra plant, too. I hardly ever do anything for them but they keep getting bigger and multiplying and blooming....

- I have Thanksgiving cactus (mine bloom at Thanksgiving — they are starting to bloom right now). I have the original plant and 2nd plant grown from cutting, and they are often neglected. But they bloom when it;s their time to bloom.

Vanisle_BC
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digitS' wrote:Broad-leaf Thyme is super easy ......Steve
Steve, for years I've grumbled about tiny leaves on culinary t*yme; moaned bacause I couldn't find mention of a broad leafed one anyplace. Now you post pictures of it!! Does it taste like 'ordinary' t*yme?

*Struggling wit* my laptop's dying keyboard :).

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digitS'
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VanIsle_BC,

I will say that it is NOT a substitute for culinary thyme. It's surprising how much the fragrance and flavor is similar, however. Flavor? Well, it seems that there isn't a danger in using it as a medicinal for coughs/sore throats. Altho it didn't really work very well. (Have to say that I'm using my home-grown ginger to good effect, however :).

I have "grown" rather attached to culinary thyme - altho no expert at cooking. When I was living in the sticks as a 20-something, thyme was one of the few herbs that I could grow. I learned to appreciate its usefulness.

I appreciate plants that can do well in the environment that I can provide for them. That's true whether they are ornamentals or edibles and whether they are in the garden or greenhouse or house :wink:.

Steve

pepperhead212
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Vanisle_BC I agree with you about those tiny leaves on thyme - the fact that they don't strip off easily either fresh or dried, make it sort of a PITA to use. However, many years ago I got a plant called Thyme Scented Oregano at the herb farm that sold them, and I kept it for several years, coming back every year, until a VERY cold winter killed it, along with a sage plant, that had lived many years. However, I was unable to find it for a number of years, even after asking the original herb farm about it. I'd see similar oreganos, some lableled Spicy Oregano, but the flavor wasn't the same. This year, I had to order some rosemary from Richter's, and I also ordered several other plants, and one was a Syrian Oregano, which turned out to be the same plant! While the flavor is not exactly the same as thyme, the main flavor component is definitely thymol, and I use the herb more than thyme, now that I have it again. And the herb dries very easily, and the fresh or dried leaves strip easily off of the stems, unlike regular thyme. And the plant grows much larger than the thyme plants I've grown. Here's a photo of the plant, after trimming about half of it off, when I was getting ready to bring the pot onto my back porch. The other plant is a silver thyme that I also got from Richter's.
ImageIMG_20181017_172619248 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Here's the Silver thyme, with only about half of the Syrian Oregano showing on the left.
ImageIMG_20181017_172630397 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Another plus is that in the spring, the plant has huge numbers of flowers, which attract bees, and similar insects. Eventually, I trim them off, when there are enough other flowers around for the bees. Then, the thing gets huge!


Back to the topic, the best things to grow indoors are things you like to eat the most, and must have! lol

imafan26
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Actually the picture Steve posted is not Mediterranean thyme. Here we call it false oregano, but it goes by other common names like Spanish thyme, and Cuban oregano as well. The botanical name is plectranthus amboinicus.

It is a sprawling viney plant that can be green or variegated. It has a very strong smell and is used as an oregano or thyme substitute. It is more bitter than thyme, but pretty indestructible in the tropics. One leaf is all you need for a big pot. The leaf is succulent and it just melts and leaves only a remnant membrane floating on the sauce. It grows equally well in the sun and under trees. It can even get out of control if you don't watch it. It thrives on neglect and does well with regular water or even with rain and an occasional drink. I don't know about the medicinal uses, but it does give me a headache when I have it in the car with me.

There is another tropical substitute that comes from Mexico that is also called Spanish thyme or Jamaican oregano, Lippia micromera. It is a shrub in the verbena family. It also thrives on neglect, but it does like to be in the sun. I have an escapee growing in my garden. It has small leaves and it does contain thymol. It blooms almost constantly with tiny white flowers that the bees like to visit.

A cousin of the one above is Lippia Graveolens. It has larger leaves than l. micromera. It is called Mexican Oregano. It has a lemony oregano flavor. I actually like it better than Greek oregano, since the flavor is not as bitter. I also like lemon thyme.

I usually can get a couple of divisions of thyme (I prefer French thyme to English thyme) before it dies out. It does not like where I live. It grows wild for my mom and at the herb garden since it is drier in those locations. I grow mine in pots. They don't do as well in the ground at my house.

The way to strip thyme is to strip them from the apex toward the root. The leaves come off easily that way. They don't come off the other way around.

Sansevieria and Chinese evergreen (aglaonema) are other good houseplants. They also clean the air. The aglaonema is a good office plant if you put it on a cabinet as close to the fluorescent light as you can get. It is supposed to be good for cleaning the air in sealed buildings.

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applestar
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Another houseplant that had survived neglect for a long time was Gynura aurantiaca (purple velvet plant). It didn’t mind being dried out, but it did need some sun. I had mine in a southwest-facing window with a tall building about a 100 feet away that blocked the setting sun.

It turned out that if I took care of the plant reasonably well, it would bloom little yellow daisy-like flowers, and they smelled horrid. That plus once I adopted a kitten, any fuzzy plant acted like cat hair magnet — so both this plant and African violets were eventually evicted as soon as I got tired of using old toothbrush to brush their leaves clean....

For EDIBLE easy plants, I would recommend onion bottoms. When you use onions, cut the onion at a diagonal and reserve their base intact in pyramid shape (you can cut off and use the apex if the piece is big) and snuggle in the surface of potting mix. Keep reasonably watered and they will sprout greens. This doesn’t require a lot of light since you are going to trim the greens as they grow. You will get weak long and pale growth (which is also very tender) in low light, and sturdy green growth in high light. Sturdy ones can get tough if the plant is dried out too often. Water with leftover tea and coffee (dilute with water if you have a lot, or container is small) and soda, milk, juice and other beverage finished bottle/carton rinse outs. Mulch with used coffee grounds or tea leaves. Add an earthworm if you are not squeamish, and they are good to go without bothering to fertilize.

...check ingredient and nutrition labels — orange juice is very high in potassium, sodas usually contain some form of phosphorus, protein and amino acids contain nitrogen. Milk — well that’s obvious. Watch out for salt content since most plants are sensitive to salt. I would avoid using sport drinks on plants. Some bottled WATER contain added salt.
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