Plants don’t occur naturally indoors; but a large proportion of plants can be grown inside a building, if provided with the right conditions.
To be successful with indoor plants, you need to be able firstly, to identify correctly, the plants you are dealing with; and then secondly, understand the conditions required for the specific plant variety concerned.
Indoor plants are simply plants which we have found to be adaptable to an indoor environment.
Usually an inside environment will differ from an outside one in the following ways:
- It has lower light intensities
- It is warmer in winter and cooler in summer
- In some rooms (e.g. kitchen, bathroom, laundry), humidity can get high
- The balance of gases in the air is different: (particularly damaging with gas heaters or air conditioning).
- While many indoor plants originate in tropical areas, this by no means the case for all. The natural environment for tropical plants is usually wet, humid and hot. If those plants are placed in an indoor environment which is cooler and less humid then wetness must also be reduced.
Over-watering is a common problem with tropical indoor plants being grown in temperate regions.
The best rule is: use a freely draining soil, water thoroughly once and then do not water again until the soil is absolutely bone dry. In some situations this might mean watering once very three months, in other situations once a day. The rate of watering is influenced by factors such as temperature, soil type, humidity and cannot be put down to a regular timetable. YOU CANNOT SAY "WATER ONCE A WEEK"!
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