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Green Thumb Strut

Mr. CasualMr. Casual 953 Posts
edited April 2009 in Strut Central
Plant people, Whats good?I am looking to green up my interior since I live in the city and have no proper green space of my own. What works well indoors? who has a nice plant set up (insert weed joke) Any pics?

  Comments

  • Controller_7Controller_7 4,052 Posts
    you need sunlight. If you're in one of those dark, no daylight places than you've got an uphill battle.

    Get some succulents. They are resilient, don't require much attention, and come in many interesting variations. They actually like more water than you'd think. They can survive on minimal water, but if you give them a good drink and lots of sun then they'll grow nice and big.

    I think succulents are the cheapest, easiest way to green up your apartment. Most of the time they are already in nice little pots. They also grow very easily from clippings. You can cut a branch off of a jade tree and stick it in some dirt and it will thrive.

    There are some awesome varieties too. Baby fingers, the rock looking ones.
  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    There are plants that can get by with very little direct light. They are generally sold under the "Jungle Foliage"
    rubric and consist of plants that are used to living under the jungle canopy.

    They are generally cheap and require little care, they just don't like to dry out.

    K-mart and other department stores tend to stock a decent selection, as do some independent stores.
  • FrankFrank 2,373 Posts
    I've always loved the Monstera Deliciosa or Windowleaf.
    As featured here on the cover of a record I once was involved in putting out:


    We bought a smaller specimen when we moved to Berlin in 2000 and felt we needed some green in our place. In the beginning, she was small enough to carry her home in a shopping bag, about simular in size to this:



    We watered her twice a week and gave her much love and attention so she rewarded us with about one new leaf per week. She was growing so quickly that you thought you could almost watch her move if you only looked long enough. She got bushier and bushier and just looked gorgerous next to our sand-colored sofa. Unfortunatelly, I don't have any pictures of her at hand so google image search had to do...



    When we moved out after 5 years, we gave her to a friend of ours and had a very hard time getting her out the door and down the stairs in one piece. The Monstera has a big root system and the secret for ideal cultivation is to put her in a big pot. After she had outgrown the pot she had come with, we invested in a beautiful, large, cylindric and kinda 70s looking white model that came on wheels. Diameter was about 3 feet. The wheels were very useful for cleaning and also enabled us to easily move the entire plant around in order to make her grow the way we wanted. The Monstera usually lives in rain forests and climbs up large trees. She uses brown, long and elegant looking above-ground roots to wrap herself around her hosts. her goal always is to get closer to the sun, she can handle life in a relatively dark corner and doesn't need any direct sunlight but she will always grow towards the window so putting her into an movable pot makes it easy to manipulate her growth every way you want and as a result, she will become volupterous and thick.

    In the wild, the Monstera developes big and delicious tasting fruits, reportedly being a perfect cross between banana and pinapple. In captivity, fruits are a rarity so here is your chalenge.

    Here's a Monstera in the wild and bearing fruits and flowers. Look how majestic she is:



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