Stop Killing Your Houseplants

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Speaker 11 If the plant could tell you and scream at you, like, what do I actually need?

Speaker 11 Light is the first thing. Of course, you still have to water, but none of those things can work unless the plant is working.

Speaker 12 I'm Christine Zier-Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 13 I'm Rosie Guerin. And you're listening to The Wire Cutter Show.

Speaker 12 this episode is called stop killing your houseplants

Speaker 12 kyra christine so obviously we're talking about houseplants yes i get the sense that christine you have a little bit of a green thumb i do a light green thumb it's a light green thumb it's kind of like i have a lot of houseplants but I kind of neglect them, but they somehow, I think, have enough going on that they can stay alive.

Speaker 12 That sounds like a green thumb to me. Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm doing a lot to them.
It's just like they're kind of, I water them every once in a while and they're fine. I can never say that.

Speaker 13 What's your situation?

Speaker 12 I used to have plants. Guess where they are?

Speaker 13 I feel like they're six feet under.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and they're not growing back.

Speaker 13 They're compost.

Speaker 12 What about you, Rosie?

Speaker 13 I have actually moved away from having houseplants because I've gotten so bummed out over the years after killing so many. I want to do better.

Speaker 12 I absolutely think this is a problem a lot of people have. I do.
You know, a lot of people in my life have told me this, like, I just can't keep this thing alive or it's just not thriving.

Speaker 12 Why do they not look like the beautiful things I'm seeing on Instagram? And you know, this time of year is a really great time to be thinking about your indoor plants.

Speaker 12 You might be seeing some flowers budding outside, but the indoor plants, they need some care in the spring too.

Speaker 12 And so this is a great time if you're kind of trying to figure out how to make your current plants look nicer or if you're sort of plant curious, you don't really have plants, but you want to bring some home, this can be a great time to do that.

Speaker 12 Yeah, so our first guest today isn't a wirecutter journalist, but he definitely fits right into the wirecutter ethos.

Speaker 12 His name is Daryl Chang, and he runs the website and Instagram handle Houseplant Journal. He's a trained engineer who takes a very specific approach to growing houseplants.
It's very left brain.

Speaker 12 So he's going to be sharing some tips for making your houseplants, you know, survive.

Speaker 12 And a little later, we'll talk with Wirecutter Senior Staff Writer Rose Laurie about great ways to get new houseplants on the cheap, which I'm very excited about.

Speaker 12 We'll take a quick break and then we'll be back with Daryl Chang of Houseplant Journal.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back. This episode, we're talking all about houseplants and ways to make yours thrive.

Speaker 12 Our first guest today is Daryl Chang, and you might know him from his very popular Instagram account, Houseplant Journal.

Speaker 12 His latest book is The New Plant Collector, The Next Adventure in Your Houseplant Journey.

Speaker 12 And he's just a wealth of knowledge on how to give plants what they need and how to diagnose problems your plants might be having. And the tips we're covering today apply to all plants, by the way.

Speaker 12 Really universal guidance for helping plants thrive. Daryl, welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 Hello, thanks for having me.

Speaker 12 I'm really pumped to have you here. I have followed your Instagram account for years, so I'm like very into all the plant inspo.

Speaker 12 I've been looking at your new book and trying to diagnose plants in my living room with like what's going on with them. So I'm very excited for this conversation.

Speaker 12 Something I think is super interesting about you is you have an engineering background. You're an engineer by training.
How does that impact your approach to plant care?

Speaker 11 I think it actually falls back to the story of how this all started, which is, you know, many years ago when I was still living at home with my mom, she said to me, hey, Daryl, can you decorate the house with some house plants?

Speaker 11 And I said, sure. But she added, you need need to figure out how to take care of them because I'm quote unquote bad with plants.

Speaker 11 And I think, yes, we hear that a lot and we laugh about it. And, but I thought, wait a minute, mom, you taught me how to do outdoor gardening and you're pretty good at it.

Speaker 11 What's still different about indoor plants? But she went back to the narrative of, oh, I have a black thumb, I kill everything.

Speaker 11 So I did like any good millennial would and bought a bunch of plants and tried to Google the care tips and stuff. And what I found was a lot of vague, hand-wavy types of things.

Speaker 11 You know, if you try and Google houseplant care advice, you'll find a lot of just like do's and don'ts.

Speaker 11 But as an engineer, I want to know how things work so that I can sort of like choose what action to take rather than be told. So that's really how it began.
And engineers love to measure things.

Speaker 11 And so I realized that a lot of the very important growth factors for plants are never really measured. In the houseplant realm, we don't often talk about any measurements.

Speaker 11 and instead we go to very vague things like bright indirect light or oh, it likes medium light.

Speaker 11 My engineering mind just said, you know what, this kind of way of talking about plants doesn't really work for me.

Speaker 11 And so I'm going to try and decipher it for myself and even like come up with my own framework, if you will.

Speaker 13 So I think I probably

Speaker 13 am aligned with your mom, although I don't even have the outdoor gardening skill, but I've historically considered myself to have a black thumb.

Speaker 13 I mean, I have a black thumb, but I also have a black thumb.

Speaker 13 And I've just had really a tough time keeping plants alive. But every time I've had to say farewell, I'm sort of like, I'm going to do this again.
I can do it better. I know I can get this.

Speaker 13 I'm curious for myself, but also for the folks who have had trouble in the past, what does it mean to get back to basics?

Speaker 13 Like if you really strip this all down, starting at square one, what does that look like?

Speaker 11 If we're going to talk really, really right down to like before you even buy a plant, what's the mentality of owning a house plant?

Speaker 11 And I think a majority of people believe that if I am able to quote unquote care for this plant correctly, then I should never, ever lose a leaf and the plant should look perfect all the time.

Speaker 11 And right then and there, I will say, that's completely wrong. And let's shift it towards.
the fact that every individual leaf has a limited lifespan.

Speaker 11 It doesn't last forever, you know, if only you care for it correctly. But rather, the goal of owning a houseplant in the long term is that your growth outpaces the decaying of the older leaves.

Speaker 11 And the last point is that your plants will change. They'll grow and they'll keep changing.
And there will be a point where you don't like the structure of it anymore.

Speaker 11 And then you have to know what to do in order to sort of like reset that structure.

Speaker 12 And all of that should be an expectation of owning a plant for the long term that really resonates with me i've had some like monsteras that have gotten too big for their britches and i don't actually like the way they look anymore but i actually have more frequently had the opposite problem where it's like a failure to thrive the plant isn't getting big and beautiful and lush and i'm like oh no i don't like the shape it's like oh no like the the leaves are yellowing or i'm losing i'm losing you you're you're half the size of when i got you What do you think like are the most important things that people miss in terms of when their plants are just not thriving?

Speaker 11 So this is another sort of,

Speaker 11 at least when I first realized this, as a kind of like another hit of reality, which is that the shape of the plant that you buy is what's the result of growing in a nursery.

Speaker 11 And if you were to objectively measure the light in there,

Speaker 11 let's just throw in the numbers right now. It's like between 1,000 to 5,000 foot candles of light hitting it.
for most of the day.

Speaker 11 You take that same plant and you bring it home. Let's say you follow some Google advice that says, oh, it's okay and low light.
And so you decide to put it far from your window.

Speaker 11 You measure the light far from your window and it's like 50-foot candles.

Speaker 12 And the foot candles, that's a way of measuring light, just to be clear. Like that's how you measure the light that's coming through the window.

Speaker 11 Yes, that's right. Like the other, like ignoring the unit, just think of the number, right? At a nursery, you take out your light meter, it's a thousand.

Speaker 11 In your house, far from the window, you take out your light meter and it's 50.

Speaker 11 So we're dealing with even less than 10 times difference here, right? So what's the result of that? Your plant is now having like one tenth the productivity. What is photosynthesis?

Speaker 11 It's just the plant making its own food, which is a really kind of amazing feat if you really think about it.

Speaker 11 Now its little engine is running at one tenth the speed and therefore pumping out, you know, carbohydrates at one tenth the speed. It would show, right?

Speaker 12 It sounds like you suggest that people really should have a light meter and take it to the plant store where they're buying the plant and use it in their own homes.

Speaker 12 Do you have any suggestions for people who don't have a light meter?

Speaker 12 I imagine that most people who just like want to buy a couple of plants for their house don't really want to spend the money on that.

Speaker 12 So what can you do to gauge the light in your own home or when you're going shopping?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I'm not suggesting that everyone has to get a light meter.

Speaker 11 I'm saying if you have more than 10 plants or if you're starting to spend in the range of like several hundreds of dollars, I would hate for you to spend that much money only to be disappointed with what your plant looks like because you didn't know the light levels in your home, right?

Speaker 11 So let's say, yeah, you just want to get a few plants to decorate your space.

Speaker 11 You don't want to use a light meter, then my advice is the plants have to be right in front of the window, not 10 feet away, right in front.

Speaker 12 Got it. Yeah, I feel like I see that in New York City.
You'll walk by people's apartments and you'll just see the windows are full of plants.

Speaker 12 And I fight with that in my own apartment because I want the light to come in and like hit the humans in the apartment, not just the plants.

Speaker 12 But like you're saying, it is really just that you got to get them as much light as possible.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And the second part is don't expect your plants to grow as nicely as somebody who has simply larger windows.

Speaker 13 Right. So it's really expectation setting.

Speaker 13 It's understanding that wherever your plants came from was likely more of a conducive environment for growth than where you're taking them, unless you're really setting up the conditions in which your plant can thrive, by which we mean

Speaker 13 placing them somewhere in front of a lot of light.

Speaker 11 I have a sort of funny saying where I say,

Speaker 11 anybody who you think has a green thumb probably just has exceptionally large and unobstructed windows.

Speaker 12 Okay, so I love that. Let's talk about that, though.

Speaker 13 Explain it to me like I'm in preschool, the difference between direct sunlight, indirect sunlight.

Speaker 13 How do I know that what I'm being told is true in terms of someone's selling me a plant that needs indirect sunlight and I go home and I put it where.

Speaker 11 In my mind, telling someone bright indirect light, telling someone high, medium, and low, I actually think that whole system should be just put to the trash.

Speaker 13 It seems very subjective.

Speaker 11 It is completely subjective. And another often stated system is saying, oh, it's an east window, it's a north window, south window.
That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 11 Nobody's windows are exactly the same size.

Speaker 11 Nobody's windows have the same obstructions outside. The way that we talk about temperature outside is to tell you what you should wear outside.

Speaker 11 So you know if you need a parka or if you can just go with a windbreaker. But if we were to say high, medium, and low temperature, that doesn't make any sense, right?

Speaker 11 We all need to have the actual degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit in order for us to make a judgment about how to go outside.

Speaker 11 With light, saying bright and direct light and high to medium and low is actually completely useless.

Speaker 11 It's either you use the numbers or you just have to put it right in front of the window and hope for the best.

Speaker 12 Okay, we've talked about how important light is. It's get those plants right up to the window if you can.
What if you are dealing with a situation where you really love houseplants?

Speaker 12 You want to have this lush, beautiful houseplant garden in your home, but you don't have optimal light. What are some options for people who just don't have great light?

Speaker 11 Well, the great news is nowadays we have white LED lighting. So you can use that type of light to grow most houseplants.

Speaker 11 Pothos, CZ plant, snake plant, Monstera, these kinds of plants have much more modest light requirements.

Speaker 11 And I'm so sorry, going back to measuring again, because I've seen thousands of people's questions who show me, hey, why is my Monstera doing so badly, even though I use a grow light?

Speaker 11 And then I say to them, show me a picture of how you've actually set this up. And the grow light is pointing at the Monstera five feet away.

Speaker 11 If you measured it, you would see the number is 100 foot candles or whatever. Every inch that you move a grow light closer will change the number dramatically on a light meter.

Speaker 11 So, my saying about grow lights is this: if you're using a grow light without measuring it, it's like you're using an oven without knowing what temperature you've set it at.

Speaker 11 Sure, you could just turn it on and hope for the best, but what I'm saying is I've seen enough examples of it failing that it's not worth the failure.

Speaker 13 What is the percentage, do you think, of times you're answering people's questions with

Speaker 13 get a light meter?

Speaker 11 I would say it's 50 and 49 of two different issues. One is the light, poor lighting, and they're not aware that it's poor lighting.
And the other 49% is the expectations. Like,

Speaker 11 oh no, this leaf is yellow. What am I doing wrong? Your plant is fine.

Speaker 11 It's always supposed to lose that lowest leaf.

Speaker 12 This is so interesting.

Speaker 12 I don't have any plants right now because, well, I always thought that I had a black thumb, but I've also historically always lived in apartments with pretty terrible lighting, including right now i basically live in a basement so what are some good species for people to consider if they have this issue like well what do you think is pretty like dummy proof

Speaker 11 i actually don't like calling it that because then it implies that you are incapable taking care of a plant whereas really it's just am i going to be happy with how this plant looks in one year's time

Speaker 11 and that's more of a subjective thing that you could adjust in some ways and not make it totally based on just your own skills, so to speak.

Speaker 11 The ones that you will notice the least change is snake plant, ZZ plant, Pothos.

Speaker 11 You should buy one of each type of those plants and two of them, keep them right in front of your windows and one of them put them wherever you want.

Speaker 11 And then two months later, switch it out, switch out the one that's in the decorative position and. then put that other one back to the window so that it doesn't starve.

Speaker 12 So that would work even in like a windowless room.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 12 So I have a question around pets and plants.

Speaker 12 I have a geriatric cat who loves to go munch on my plants and it's a constant struggle. What's your advice for people who have pets?

Speaker 11 I don't have any pets right now, but I took care of my friend's two cats for like about two weeks and one of them was quite munchy.

Speaker 11 And I've sort of learned that with cats, If you say no to them, you have to give them a yes right after.

Speaker 12 They're like children in that way.

Speaker 11 Yes. So what I did was I quickly grew some cat grass, which is the actual grass that they should eat a little bit of, moved the plants out of the way so that they're not so inviting.

Speaker 11 But then right where I had those plants before, I put the catgrass so that that way when the cat came up to it, it was allowed to eat it and it was fine.

Speaker 11 And really all it was is what it just wanted to munch on something leafy.

Speaker 12 Right. Okay.
I love that.

Speaker 12 Well, I had a question about, you know, earlier you talked about how a lot of people don't think of indoor indoor plants as having seasons like an outdoor plant would, but it is spring now.

Speaker 12 And to that end, what should a plant parent really be doing differently now versus other times of the year? And does that even depend on where you live, like the outside climate?

Speaker 11 So in an indoor setting, the temperature change is not nearly as dramatic as for outdoors.

Speaker 11 So interestingly enough, there's a sort of misinterpretation that, for example, winter has quote unquote less light.

Speaker 11 Yes, if you're outdoors in the middle of an open field, there's less light, but the sun's angle is much lower in the sky, plus there are no leaves to block the sun.

Speaker 11 So in fact, in the winter, the sun peers into my living room longer than it would in the summer, right? People say, oh, water less in winter. Well, not necessarily.

Speaker 11 If you're getting the more sun, plus the air is drier in the winter, then everything is actually evaporating faster and being used up faster.

Speaker 11 So you could be watering more frequently in the winter, which is why I say if you're observing your soil dryness as your cue to water and not just a rote schedule, then you won't be affected by the changes and rather just observe how the soil dries.

Speaker 12 I really love that because it really brings the, I think the thing that outdoor gardeners do in their gardens. It's like this real attunement with nature.

Speaker 12 You know, I think the thing with plants for a lot of people is they see these beautiful pictures on Instagram. They see these beautiful, lush spreads in magazines.

Speaker 12 And plants for a lot of people are this part of decor.

Speaker 12 In your most recent book, especially, you talk about some reasons you should think beyond that for being a plant parent. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 12 Like, why do you think that someone who is approaching taking care of indoor plants should think about these plants as more than just decor?

Speaker 11 I call it the ABC of houseplant appreciation. A is for the aesthetic.
So that's the main part, which is like, okay, yes, the first thing people think of is it looks nice.

Speaker 11 The plant looks nice and makes my space look nice, which I'm not saying it doesn't. It definitely does.
But then beyond that, there's B, which is for biology.

Speaker 11 And that's when you can appreciate how the plant grows and even how... it's very different than how humans live, right?

Speaker 11 Because we can't chop off a piece of our arm and have it grow another person, right? But the plant can do that. And then the last part is C, which is companionship.

Speaker 11 When I have my Monstera for a long enough time that you couldn't simply replace it with another Monstera, it wouldn't be the one that I grew, right?

Speaker 11 So there's actual like companionship with this as a living thing.

Speaker 12 Okay, Daryl. Sometimes we like to do a rapid fire lightning round of questions at the end of an episode.
So we thought that would be fun to do with you.

Speaker 12 We want to ask you for your plant recs for different spaces. Are you game?

Speaker 12 Yes, let's do it. Answer the quickest thing that comes to your mind.
Basement apartment with just a few tiny half windows. What would you recommend?

Speaker 11 It's easy plant.

Speaker 12 I want plants in my windowless interior rooms. This is for me.

Speaker 11 Fake plants.

Speaker 11 Okay, sorry. Sorry.
Sorry. Actually, you buy three plants, two of them in the window, one of them in the space, and rotate.
Okay.

Speaker 12 I live in the desert with barely any humidity. Cactus.
Tiny apartment with big plant aspirations.

Speaker 11 I think a pothos would be good. It'll grow fast.
You'll have too much to handle in one year.

Speaker 12 Sunroom with drafty windows with freezing temperatures outside.

Speaker 11 A freezing temperature. Okay.
You got to start venturing into outdoor gardening, hibiscus, for example, right? You keep it outside in the summer, right in the sun.

Speaker 11 It can so-called overwinter, even in a garage, it can still tolerate, you know, a cold room that's bright. It'll just defoliate for most of the time until springtime and it grows new leaves.

Speaker 12 Lives alone and travels a lot.

Speaker 11 I would also say cactus.

Speaker 13 Okay, so I just want to recap because I think the most important thing I'm taking away from this conversation is a reminder of how photosynthesis works from biology.

Speaker 13 That's really, I mean, you're talking about light, light, light. If all else fails, understand

Speaker 13 that light is how your plants get fed.

Speaker 11 Yes. If the plants could tell you and scream at you, like, what do I actually need? Light is the first thing.
Of course, you still have to water.

Speaker 11 Of course, you still, like, of course I do all those things, but none of those things can work unless the plant is working.

Speaker 13 And I think the other thing that is jumping out from what you talked about is setting expectations, understanding that these are living things and that I'm not always thriving, let's be honest.

Speaker 13 So why would my plants always be thriving?

Speaker 11 So you do your best with the care and you try to set up the environment as best you can. But nature is still going to happen.
Decay is still going to happen.

Speaker 11 If you wanted it to look the same or always, you know, know, perfect all the time, then that's where the fake plant comes in.

Speaker 13 Daryl Cheng is author of the books The New Plant Parent and The New Plant Collector.

Speaker 13 Daryl, thank you so, so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

Speaker 12 Thank you very much. Thanks, Daryl.
Thank you.

Speaker 12 We're going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we'll have Wirecutter senior staff writer Rose Laurie on to talk about the best hacks for getting houseplants on the cheap. We'll be right back.

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Speaker 5 And with Rocket Mortgage, you can put your home equity to work right away. When you unlock your home equity, you unlock new doors for your family.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back. Before the break, we chatted with Daryl Cheng about how to keep your houseplants happy this spring.
Hint, hint, it's all about light.

Speaker 12 And now we're going to talk about how to get great houseplants on the cheap.

Speaker 12 I don't know about you two, but I find houseplants like incredibly expensive

Speaker 12 Plant shops. So I'm excited to hear about this.
Yeah, that's right. I am so ashamed about all the money that I've put into houseplants that I killed immediately.

Speaker 12 But that's why we're going to talk with Rose Lori, who is a wirecutter senior staff writer. She's written about how to find plants for a fraction of what you'd pay at a fancy plant shop.

Speaker 12 And she really does know how to find a bargain. She's going to share strategies for where and how to shop and even how to propagate plants yourself so you can just get it for free.

Speaker 12 Rose, welcome to the show. Thank you.
It's so great to be here how are you all good and we're excited to talk to you about plants i'm always excited to talk about plants

Speaker 13 all right rose plants pots all the stuff involved let's set aside for a minute

Speaker 13 you don't have a good track record of keeping them alive even aspirationally the stuff gets expensive you have something like 57 house plants in your home I mean, last I counted, yes.

Speaker 12 That's incredible. You got them for all about $50, like total?

Speaker 14 From the best of my recollection, I think it cost me in the ballpark of 50 bucks.

Speaker 13 Where are you finding these plants?

Speaker 14 Honestly, most of them I'm finding through some sort of local buy-nothing or buy-nothing-like group. There's a few that I belong to.
Some are specific to plants, some are not.

Speaker 14 And I do a lot of buy-sell-swap trade of plants just from there. You know, people, they want to trim their pothos plant.
Those trimmings become new pothos plants. They give them away.

Speaker 14 A lot of people, myself included, their plants get too big for their space.

Speaker 14 And unfortunately, you have to know that it's time to say goodbye to that plant because you just can't care for it the way it needs to or should be cared for.

Speaker 14 So yeah, it's not a strict one-to-one trade, but like it's a community of folks that, you know, are up for helping each other out.

Speaker 13 What are some other reasons you would want to swap or re-home a plant?

Speaker 14 Sometimes a plant just just kind of doesn't thrive in your air, in your environment, and it can be tricky sometimes to pinpoint why.

Speaker 14 And then you just, it's the same thing where it's like, well, I just have to see if someone else wants to try and take this on.

Speaker 14 I can't figure out if it's a light issue or a humidity issue or whatever the case may be. So I think that's the reason a lot of people, or it's just like, I have too many plants.

Speaker 14 I have to admit that I've done that too. I've downsized from time to time.

Speaker 12 It's time to purge. Can I ask, when you're looking for a buy-sell or like buy-nothing group in your area, what are you doing? Are you Googling like Facebook Marketplace plants?

Speaker 12 If somebody's just like kind of curious, they want to find a keyword search. Yeah, what is the keyword search?

Speaker 14 I mean, I think you kind of hit, you know, if I were starting from scratch, I would

Speaker 14 search on Facebook. I would look plant, buy, sell, swap, trade, local.
I would put my town name in.

Speaker 14 Gardening, that's another thing that I've noticed that even if you find it hard to find sort of plant communities, meaning houseplant communities locally, try gardening next and there are people who garden who will also like have indoor house plants and so you can sort of find people that way too i've also seen it all over reddit it's very easy to find your local subreddits or

Speaker 12 subreddits i didn't even think about that that's a great idea too yeah yeah yeah what about i've sometimes seen the botanic garden close to me doing plant sales did you ever hit up like local uh plant communities in that way i do in fact you just reminded me that i forgot a prop i was going to bring because i thought you guys would get a laugh out of it So the town next to mine in New Jersey has a garden club.

Speaker 14 And every spring they do a huge like three or four day sale. The prop I was going to bring was they send me a postcard every year to remind me.

Speaker 14 And the postcard is good for $1 off a purchase of $10 or more.

Speaker 14 But like, I will take that dollar. Thank you very much.
Like that's how cheap I am. So I do find that like gardening clubs, botanic clubs, botanic gardens, definitely check those out.

Speaker 13 To be fair, Rose, you did bring a couple of props, including your shirt.

Speaker 12 What is your shirt read for yourself? My shirt says easily distracted by plants, which is true.

Speaker 13 And then also, there's a prop on the desk here.

Speaker 12 What do you have? Rosie, this is not a prop.

Speaker 14 This is a gift. Y'all can have some snake plants to take home.

Speaker 12 Oh, my God.

Speaker 12 So this is a cutting. It's not a whole plant.
Correct.

Speaker 14 Well, I mean,

Speaker 14 more or less, yes. This is most snake plants that you would see potted would be, there'd be more stalks than what I have here, but it could be.

Speaker 12 Rose, I'm very curious about how you go about finding good healthy plants when you're kind of looking on Facebook Marketplace or other places online.

Speaker 12 How do you kind of gauge whether something is healthy and worth your time? Have you run into any issues with unhealthy plants when you get them off of Facebook Marketplace?

Speaker 14 I did once get a plant years ago that

Speaker 14 slowly looked like it was flagging, sort of, you know, dying. And I did ultimately investigate, meaning I depotted it and there were ants in the soil.
That's the only time I've ever had that problem.

Speaker 12 But also I got that plant for free.

Speaker 14 So like that's another, like one of the reasons that I, you know, I'm a natural cheapskate, but one of the reasons that I like doing plants for free is like some plants die.

Speaker 14 You know, you're not going to have 100% success. And if I didn't pay anything or next to nothing for the plant, then it stings less.
That's all, you know? But.

Speaker 12 Don't you run the risk of, you know, bringing basically a sick plant into your environment, though, and then it can affect the others?

Speaker 14 The way that it can affect the others is if it has some sort of an infestation.

Speaker 14 Something like fungus gnats, mealybugs, spider mites, very small bugs that live either on the leaf, often the underside of the leaf, sometimes where the leaf meets the stem, sometimes in the soil.

Speaker 14 Now, it would have to be a very severe infestation to actually kill a plant, but it's certainly not ideal and it's not always pretty to look at.

Speaker 14 and yeah you definitely want to avoid it so yes when you get a new plant look at it real close you want to look for spider mites they're almost I mean, honestly, you should have a magnifying glass or an app on your phone that works as a magnifying glass.

Speaker 14 And this is, if you look at the guide to buying plants online, you can see a couple examples of this. Sometimes you can't really see the spider mites, but you can see their strings.

Speaker 14 They just look like very thin white threads. So you should definitely inspect your plants when they get home.

Speaker 14 One of the things that I try and do as much as possible, and you do need to have the space for this in your home, you should quarantine any new plant that comes in, no matter where you get it from.

Speaker 14 If you can quarantine it in a room where it's the only plant in the room, great. If you need to just make it a corner of a room, like the most you can do, you should do for about a week.

Speaker 12 Okay, so let's do a quick recap so far. Rose, you don't need to spend a lot, if anything, on new plants.

Speaker 12 You know, try to find local buy-nothing groups and garden clubs, make plant friends who can give you little cuttings, and dial in your plant keyword search on places like Facebook Marketplace.

Speaker 12 And when it comes to bringing a new plant home, whether you're, you know, getting it off of Facebook Marketplace, getting it for free, or even like maybe even from a store, it's a good idea to quarantine that plant for at least a week to make sure it's healthy and it won't spread anything to your other plants.

Speaker 12 We wanted to ask you because you did test how to shop for plants online last year. And I have a two-part question for this.
First of all, why are people shopping for plants online?

Speaker 12 Because it just seems like there's a wealth of options in most local areas. And then, if you do want to do that, is it worth it? That's a great question.

Speaker 14 So, the first part, I honestly would say that an online plant purveyor should kind of be your last option.

Speaker 14 It's good if you want to send a gift long distance. You know, I live by snake plants and pothos plants.
I like my bread and butter plants, but like I also like plants that have pink in the leaves.

Speaker 14 I'm a real sucker for that.

Speaker 14 I just got a cloche, like a glass dome.

Speaker 12 I got it from a garage sale, of course.

Speaker 14 I've always wanted to grow a plant under a cloch because you can kind of create a little micro high humid environment.

Speaker 14 And so I'm thinking for that, since there are specific plants I would want to grow in that, I might splurge on like a dot-com type plant purchase.

Speaker 14 But yeah, for the most part, that to me is like your last option. I would look for neighbors.
I would look for garden sales. I would look for local plant shops.

Speaker 14 Everyone's probably got a big box store near them. Home Depot has a section.
Lowe's usually has a section. They're not expensive, but they're usually not in the greatest shape.

Speaker 14 They just don't get the attention that they need. But you can probably rescue from there if that's kind of your best option.

Speaker 14 Online plant purveyors to me are for for gifts or special plants that you're willing, I want this plant. I'm willing to like splurge over my usual.

Speaker 12 And you think that they travel well? I just imagine plants coming in a box and like, wouldn't that kill it?

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 14 A good plant purveyor will either include for free when necessary, or they'll ask you to spend like another five bucks on a heat pack, which is kind of just like the ones that you break and put on your sore leg or what the case may be.

Speaker 14 And we found that those can work pretty well. And they should be packed very, very well.

Speaker 14 We actually timed how long it took us to open each package because, between you know, the dirt and leaves getting bruised or bent or damaged or snapped off, like there's a lot of reasons why this thing really needs to be packed well.

Speaker 14 It should have a lot of signage on the outside. You know, we counted up how many, like this side up, live plants inside, all those sorts of stickers.

Speaker 14 So, for the most part, the delivery was not as bad as you might fear.

Speaker 14 There was one snake plant that did meet like the worst possible fate it could have met. It did not have a heat pack and it arrived like

Speaker 14 the leaves were like soggy and spongy and like flopped over. Like they were, it was dying.
It was, it took all of like, what, two, three days in transit to basically kill this thing in a cold snap.

Speaker 14 But for the most part, the plant will survive those two or three days.

Speaker 12 But by and large, just go local. Just

Speaker 12 like, just go local if you can.

Speaker 13 And, you know, unless you're trying to buy a rose that you can put under a cloche, like in

Speaker 12 like in medium case.

Speaker 12 Okay, Rose. Well, before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question.
What's the last thing you've bought that you've really loved?

Speaker 14 First of all, I have been trying to buy less in 2025, just in general.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 14 But there are things that you have to buy like toilet paper.

Speaker 14 And I have been trying to find ways to bring less plastic into my home and into my life.

Speaker 12 So terrified, whatever.

Speaker 12 This is a real setup. It is.
All right.

Speaker 14 Well, the punchline is I bought who gives a crap toilet paper.

Speaker 12 That's the punchline. I love who gives a crap.
I bought the who gives a crap. And this is toilet paper we recommend, right? Yes, yes.
It is. And it comes wrapped in this pretty paper.

Speaker 12 It's almost like a paper.

Speaker 14 Well, okay, so you've you've used it yesterday.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 14 There's one roll in the box that has a little like label on it that says, open this one last. And I haven't opened it.

Speaker 12 And I'm really curious to see what happens. I'm not going to ruin the surprise.

Speaker 14 If anyone can make toilet paper fun, they've found a way. But yeah, the packaging, which is paper, is very appealing.
It's just fun. And there have been no complaints.

Speaker 12 Is it really soft? Like, what's so great about it? Yeah. I think it is soft.

Speaker 13 Thank you so much for joining us, Jose.

Speaker 12 Thanks so much. Thank you.

Speaker 12 All right. That was a lot of plant info.

Speaker 12 What do you all think? I loved it. Yeah.

Speaker 13 I feel empowered actually after that. I think the combination of Rose suggesting you can get plants very, very cheaply, if not free, and Daryl reminding me about photosynthesis and how essentially

Speaker 13 light is how you feed plants.

Speaker 12 I knew that, but I forgot that. I kind of kept thinking, oh, if I just give my plants more fertilizer, maybe they'll perk up a little bit.
Totally. Water.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Just over watering.

Speaker 12 I think that was my problem before. And also, I've always lived in apartments that just didn't have much light at all.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 But I think if I really wanted to take care of another plant baby anytime soon, I think I would just get a pothos and hang it directly in the one window I do have. Yeah.
Let it let it do its thing.

Speaker 12 Let it do its thing. Yeah.
And not expect it to like grow into a big, huge, flowing plant. It's just going to be a little one.

Speaker 12 Set your expectations. Yeah.
I also think I might want to get a light meter because I think that I'm ready. I have maybe 20 plants in my home.
Oh, that's definitely a lot of fun.

Speaker 12 Yeah, maybe I'm ready to actually get a little scientific. And I would like to welcome some more plant babies into my home.

Speaker 12 So I think I'm going to keep an eye out this spring and summer for plant sales. Rose's great advice around, you know, look for plant sales at garden clubs or, you know, kind of locally.

Speaker 12 I don't think that I have the patience for Facebook Marketplace for finding plants, but I would, I would, I would dip into a little plant sale. Find your community.
That's right.

Speaker 13 As ever, if you want to find out more about wire cutters coverage, head over to our website or you can find a link in the show notes.

Speaker 12 And Rosie, if you would like to learn more about fake plants, we also have a fake plant guide to the least terrible fake plants. I love that.
I prefer faux because it makes me feel,

Speaker 13 yeah, it makes me feel a little bit better, but I'm going to check that out. Daryl Cheng's two books, The New Plant Parent and The New Plant Collector, are available now.

Speaker 13 And you can check him out at House Plant Journal on Instagram. That's it for us.

Speaker 12 See ya. Bye.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 13 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.

Speaker 13 Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia by Itube, and Diane Wong.
Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy.

Speaker 13 Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.

Speaker 12 I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Sear Clissette.

Speaker 13 And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 12 Botanic, botanic, botanic, botanic. Botanic.
Rose, sometimes I see the local botanic garden close to me. Hello, snow.
I'm not saying it right. I'm sorry.

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