Okay, Y’all. You will not believe what happened the other week. My sweet boyfriend let me choose whatever plant I wanted from the nursery as a Valentine’s Gift. I have been wanting a big Snake plant for AGES. However, I can never convince myself to buy one. I know I haven’t typed up a Snake Plant guide yet, but these plants are very slow-growing. They are also ridiculously hard to kill. With that being said, when I went to go repot my beautiful new snake plant, I discovered he had ROOT ROT! Thankfully, I was able to salvage him, but talk about a disappointment! This got me thinking though. I should share my tips for buying healthy house plants that will thrive in your environment. Because if I can get tricked into buying a sad plant, then so can someone who doesn’t know the more common signs to look for in an unhappy plant.
Know your environment
One of the best tips for purchasing a house plant is to know your environment. What do I mean by this? Well, there are a few aspects about the space you’re planning to put your plant that really factors into what plant to buy:
- Light Conditions: What type of light does your home get? I wrote a pretty thorough post here to help determine what your lighting conditions are in your home
- Humidity Levels: Is the room you want to put a plant humid? If the plant requires high humidity and you have low humidity, this may require you to water more frequently.
- Pets: Do you have Pets? If so, you want to make sure that if you purchase a plant that is toxic to them, that it’ll be in a place they can’t reach.
- Space: How much space do you have? You don’t want to buy a plant that’s going to get huge but only have a tiny little space for it.
- Time: Ok, this one’s not really about the environment, but you don’t want to buy a plant that will be time-consuming care-wise if you travel constantly or just aren’t home often.
Once you know the aspects of your home ecosystem, this will help you narrow down which plants will and won’t work for your place when you’re at the nursery or garden center!
Avoid sick or Stressed plants
Ok, so you know which plants CAN work with your home. Now to choose a healthy plant! After all, you don’t want to spend a pretty penny on a plant, only for it to be D.O.A. and you blame yourself! Here a few tips for buying healthy house plants to consider once you are at the store:
What to look at while at the store
- Quality of the Plant Store: While even the best stores can sell you bad plants (like the nursery I bought my snake plant from), there are definitely certain stores where you just won’t be getting a quality plant. Big box stores, like Walmart, often aren’t selling healthy plants. This isn’t to say you can’t find good plants at those stores! But the next several tips will come into play when you purchase from a place like Walmart. In general, take a look around the store and if you see a lot of unhealthy-looking plants, keep your money.
- Foliage: When you have found a plant you want, take a look at it’s leaves. Are they wilting? Yellowing? Brown Spots? or does it have new growth on it? If it has new growth and not any of the other symptoms then it is most likely healthy! New growth is always a good sign!
- Pests: Speaking of foliage, look at the leaves to make sure there isn’t any sign of pests. This could mean visibly seeing a bug, seeing webbing, gooey spots, and holes. Be sure to check the soil too. My boyfriend’s mom last year told me about the annuals she purchased just to find out that they had maggots in the soil.
- Roots: Ok, so you have your plant. His foliage is beautiful, no pests, but when you lift him up you see roots coming out from the bottom of his pot. This is a good indicator that he is root-bound. This means he is probably pretty stressed, and you could damage him when repotting him if you’re not careful.
- Weeds: If you see weeds growing in the soil, there is a good chance that the plant has been competing for nutrients with the weed.
- Buds vs Flowers: I know. I know. The flowers are so pretty! However, you really want to buy plants with more buds than flowers, especially if you’re looking at an annual. This means you’ll have the plant longer because it has not bloomed yet.
What to do once your plant is home
So you have your plant! Now what? There are a few things you can do to ensure that your plant stays healthy but also, does not infect your other foliage friends if for some reason he isn’t.
- Keep him separate from your other plant friends at first. Keep him isolated for a few days, just in case he did have pests.
- Don’t put him directly into the sun, even if that is where he will ultimately go. Rather, gradually introduce him. There is always the chance that he wasn’t in enough sun at the plant store, and the sudden overload of UV rays may overwhelm him.
- Don’t water immediately. You can’t know for sure the last time he was watered, and you don’t want to over-water him. Rather, if there is any moisture in the soil, wait until the soil is fully dry to water.
Well, there you have it! These are all useful tips for buying healthy house plants that I use. Of course, there will always be some things that you just can’t see with the plant, AKA root rot. Hopefully, this will allow you to forgive yourself for the times you have bought a plant and it died within days. Chances are you bought a dying plant and it wasn’t your fault at all! Let me know in the comments if you have any tips you use when buying plants!