In this post I review The New Plant Parent, by Darryl Cheng. If I had to sum up this review in a single sentence it's this: If you want to understand the fundamental building blocks of plant care, read this book. That may be enough for some of you to go buy it, which I recommend that you do. But if you want some more info on what those building blocks are, read on.
A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Darryl Cheng after having read his book. After the interview I decided I would reread The New Plant Parent with the intention of writing this review.
The New Plant Parent is roughly 200 pages long and filled with photos and detailed notes and guidance. The book is broken up into two main components. Part one is called "Caring for Plants" and focuses on a number of subtopics to help new plant parents understand plant care holistically. In part two the "House Plant Journal", Darryl takes the reader through 19 plant care experiences he's had with different plants. In these 19 journal entries, Darryl weaves in the different building blocks from part one while also adding plant-specific nuances and notes. Something particularly useful about the journal entries is that for many of the plants, Darryl has documented their growth from the day he acquired them, over a period of years.
Darryl begins his book with several chapters that could be described as practical philosophy. It appears his goal is to knock his readers over the head in a few different ways in order to erase our preconceived notions about plants and plant care. If you enjoy plant care and are eager to learn how to improve your own skills then I think you will find these chapters to be useful in resetting your approach. I know they have been useful for me.
The next few chapters focus on the core building blocks of plant care: light, soil, water, pruning, propagation and repotting, and then pests. There is a lot of information in each chapter that will be useful to any new plant parents without a degree in botany. Perhaps most importantly, Darryl breaks down how these different building blocks rely upon and interact with each other. If you, like me are someone who has often launched an app or googled solutions to specific plant care problems, understanding the relationships of these building blocks will prove invaluable.
For the purposes of this review, I'll just share a couple of anecdotes from the book about light. Light, for Darryl, seems to be a particular point of interest and an area that he seeks to really break down for the reader. With his background in engineering, Darryl, takes umbrage with the vague directions we so often receive around light and plant care. During our initial interview I think he actually winced when he said the words "Bright, Indirect Light". In his book he takes special care to explain in technical and quantifiable terms what it means to determine if a plant is in a position to receive the light it needs - not just to survive, but to thrive.
The reader is encouraged to take the perspective of the plant and determine how much sky the plant can "see" from its location in the home and how many hours of direct sunlight it receives each day. Then the reader is encouraged to use an actual light meter (no your eyes are not adequate) and compare the readings of the meter throughout the day with your perception of how much light the plant is receiving. There are some useful tables and charts in the book that can help the reader understand if they are placing their plants in appropriate locations based on the light meter readings.
The water, soil and pruning, propagation and repotting sections include similarly useful information in both word and visual formats. For me, the soil section, which breaks down the different types and compositions of soil was particularly useful. I have always struggled with understanding soil types and ratios, as well as the type of relationship different soil compositions have with water. In reading these chapters I feel equipped to make better decisions when purchasing new plants and repotting based on their needs and the soil types I will need to have on hand.
It's worth noting here before jumping fully into part two that in addition to the book, Darryl is also the creator of the Instagram account @houseplantjournal. In fact because he is the creator of @houseplantjournal and had so much success with it, he was approached by an agent to write this book. So, section two in particular reflects how Darryl got his start in the plant care world. He's a guy who simply enjoys documenting and understanding the growth and development of his plants.
For the 19 different plants he documents in part two, Darryl includes specific strategies to help the reader succeed. These strategies are often categorized as "survival" - what you need to do simply to keep this thing alive, and "growth" - what you need to do to help it thrive. Also included are useful pieces of information like typical lifespan, and best practices around propagation and repotting.
Darryl also includes "observation" sections for some of the plants. At first these seemed less interesting to me than the specific strategies, but then I realized that these observations (with photography included) span years of care, regeneration and growth. Getting access to years of observation of the same plant is incredibly useful to a new plant parent. We don't know what we don't know. Getting to see the evolution of a plant over the years across a couple of pages helped me understand how the plant could potentially change and what kinds of cycles to look out for, some of which which may look bad, but are simply part of the growth process.
As someone still very much in the early stages of my own plant care education, I've found this book to be quite informative and useful. From learning more about the fundamental building blocks of plant care to learning specific nuances of particular plants, this is a book I find myself pulling off the shelf frequently to reference when I need a reminder.
You can purchase the New Plant Parent on Darryl's site - www.houseplantjournal.com
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Eli: First question - How did you get into houseplants?
Liz: Well, I grew up in a house that had a lot of plants. So I didn’t really think of them as houseplants, I just thought of them as things you have in your house. I guess I just grew up around them. And then… after college I was living in a shitty apartment and I realized it was missing some life so I got a plant. And then it just spiraled out! You get one plant and you realize how happy it makes you and how much it changes a room. Then you get another plant and you say, “well they need a third friend” and all of a sudden you have forty plants. Ya know?
Eli: Hahaha, yes… I can relate to that. Were your parents into plants? Who did the plant thing?
Eli: So, you got a plant. It livened up the apartment. The addiction… flourished if you will…
Liz: It definitely flourished. One of the things about plants that I really like is that they mark time for you. If nothing else changes in a room or in your life, your plant gets bigger and you’re like “Oh my god, this thing is passing time in front of me.”
Eli: I like that. I think we’ve got our preview quote for this interview… So what does your plant setup look like?
Liz: My apartment collection has changed dramatically in the past couple of years for a couple of reasons. The first reason is I moved from a very sunny location to a very cave-like dwelling. So the first thing that changed was my light. So I had to refigure a lot. I had to give away some plants because I didn’t have enough window light in the apartment that would support some of the plants. So I had to give them or let people babysit them until I move. The other thing that changed getting a pet - my dog’s name is Violet. Some of my plants are very poisonous and I also like having some plants on the ground, some plants shelved and some plants hanging. But all of my ground plants or anything within the reaches of a little puppy - if it’s poisonous or even if it’s not poisonous I had to move it.
My current plant situation is mostly non-poisonous plants hugging the walls of my apartment very high up. But mostly I’ve got vining or creepers, some snake plants. I propagate plants a lot. There are three plants that I just keep propagating over and over again because they just do really well and make nice pups.
Eli: Nice. What are we talking about?
Liz: Ya got your Pancake plant - Pilea Peperomioides. My big mother has just lots and lots of pups constantly. So there are little propagated baby pancakes all over the house. Also, my Swedish Ivy grows like a weed. I think it might actually be a weed, but I’ve got a lot of Swedish Ivy propagating. I have also been propagating a number of Avocado plants because I love avocados. I recently learned how to grow avocados from my mom while home during covid.
Eli: That’s sweet. Do you have any that are bearing fruit yet? Can you do that outside of tropical climates?
Liz: I haven’t gotten that far yet, but what I do is take the pit and stick toothpicks around the circumference of it and let it sit partially in water in a glass. You put the round end of the pit into the water and that side will start to produce roots first. Then the seed cracks and it begins to sprout out of the top. But that process takes like four to five months. So that just happened. Then they grow leaves. But I’m an urban gardener and don’t really have any outdoor planting space. So they stay pretty small living in water for now.
Eli: Got it - as an urban gardener without much space, how has adding the Plantfolio to your tool kit helped you manage?
Liz: One of my biggest challenges is that I have a lot of plants probably 40 or 50 and many of them have grown quickly and need to move into bigger pots. In my 550 square foot apartment and adding in my puppy Violet, I don’t have much space to begin with and don’t have space I can let just get messy. When I’m repotting, I’ve got dirt flying all over the place. With this potting station first and foremost right now, it gets my repotting off the ground. It gets it away from my puppy, which is pretty important given how curious she is. I can stick it right over the sink and I’ve got the silicone inserts that I can use for dry or wet work. So I have a whole little plant station right over my sink.
Eli: That’s great to hear. Do you have any special plant care tips or techniques that you’ve developed around repotting or propagation or anything else? Any nuggets of wisdom that could help other people?
Liz: Hmm. Yeah I do. The first thing I have to say is if your plant is giving you trouble and you go online and read what you’re supposed to do with that plant and say to yourself - “I’m already doing all of that.” Then it’s a good time to disregard what the internet has to say, because to me, every plant is unique has its own needs based on your home, your air, your light, vibrations. You just gotta figure out what it needs. My anecdote on that is my Pancake Plant - everything on the internet says they need this much light and this much water. My original plant almost died following that care routine and I needed to bring it back to life. How did I do it? I did nothing and now she’s super happy and has lots of babies. So don’t always listen to the internet.
The next thing I’m going to say is that I have this great book and I’m going to endorse it. It is called Terrific Garden Tonics by this guy named Jerry Baker. My mom has this book so I grew up with this book. This guy Jerry Baker has all of these recipes - 345 do-it-yourself-fix-em-formulas for the garden - maintaining a lush garden. He has lots of tips, some of which I didn’t realize my mom had been teaching me over the years. Things like using mouthwash or beer or cola or dish washing fluid, or ammonia, of tobacco or tea granules. All these different things you have in your house that you can make different cocktails and teas out of for your plants. If you have bugs in some of your plants there are different combinations of baby shampoo and whiskey and water that you can use to clear them. Or if you use a bit of chewing tobacco and put it in stockings and steep it in water, tobacco is so poisonous it’ll kill anything including bugs in your plant. SO if you just make this really dull tobacco tea and dump it in your dirt it’ll kill bugs.
Eli: That’s fascinating - it’s always cool to learn new home remedies for these commons issues - especially dealing with bugs. So, what’s next for you? Any special houseplant projects or plant goals?
Liz: All of my plants are smaller. None of them are standing trees. None of them take up the whole corner. One of my goals is to have a big beautiful Monstera or Fiddle Leaf Fig or one of those big guys that take up half the room. I want a plant you have to shake to simulate being in a storm so they feel like they’re outside. I want a high maintenance big plant!
Eli: Yes - I hear you on that. I’ve been enjoying that plant shaking meme going around. I’ll have to send it over if you haven’t seen it.
Liz, thanks so much for taking the time to share these plant tips and photos of your plant setup and puppy Violet. It’s been great speaking with you. Good luck on the quest for a big plant!
For our second installment of Houseplant Enthusiasts, we're joined by Darryl Cheng. If you can connect to the internet and have even a passing interest in houseplants, Darryl needs no introduction. But I'll do it anyways. Darryl runs one of the most well-known, houseplant-focused Instagram accounts @houseplantjournal. With over 500,000 followers, there's a good chance you've either liked a post of his or seen one a friend of yours liked - and for good reason. Darryl, as you'll learn in the following interview is an opinionated guy when it comes to plants and plant care. His posts are typically educational and take a different approach to a lot of the content you see online. While he appreciates the aesthetic quality of houseplants, he clearly bristles at the idea that it is the only quality for which they should be appreciated. Darryl is also the author of a book called "The New Plant Parent", which I highly recommend. In it he breaks plant care down to some basic concepts, that should provide us all with a framework by which to determine how to care for our plants.
That's enough about Darryl. Let's hear from the man himself. The following interview has been edited for brevity and ease of consumption, but it is still quite long. If you prefer to listen, you can hear the audio interview in full here.
Eli: So Darryl, tell me about yourself. Where do you live? How did you get into plants?
Darryl: My name is Darryl and I'm from Toronto, Canada. As far as how it all got started, a few years ago I was living with my parents and one day my mom said, "Hey help me decorate the house with some houseplants." And so I said, OK, and she also added, but you need to figure out how to take care of them because she said that she was bad with plants and you know, to me that was kind of confusing because she taught me how to do outdoor gardening. We did stuff together out in the garden and so I was like, “Why would indoor plants be any different?”
So I bought a bunch of plants and then I went on Google and tried to look up the plant care advice and you know, I'm sure that both of us being more technical people, you could understand that when you read something that's too vague you're actually like, “Wait, but what exactly does indirect light bright indirect light mean?”
The plant collection at Darryl's parents' house that started it all...
I had this question running in my head and also obviously all other sorts of questions, so that's how I just started Houseplant Journal. It was just a Journal blog for my house plants. It started on Tumblr, then moved to Instagram. I also happen to like photography so I dabbled with time lapse videos taking pictures of you know flowers opening or leaves growing. Fortunately for me some of those went pretty viral and big news corporations picked them up and started showing them to people.
And that was I guess you could say, like a big break kind of thing, right?
But then also what I liked to do was write about how to take care of plants, but not just writing about it with the same old bright indirect light water weekly. I wrote it more precisely and more explicitly to say, like what do I actually do, right? So anyway, this caught the attention of a literary agent.
She said, “Hey, I think you can write a really good book about how to take care of plants and so that’s what we did. We put together a proposal and then about two years later the book came out. This was back in March 2019. And the book is called “The New Plant Parent.”
It's a book about general plant care, and I think one of the reasons why I wanted to call it the new plant parent is not just because it’s for people who are new to plants, but also because it represents a new way of thinking about plants. Not so décor-focused, you know? It's thinking more about how plants are just fascinating to witness how they grow.
Eli: So this all kind of came from, you know, working with your mom, realizing that there wasn't really that much great technical pragmatic advice. The underlying kind of knowledge, and so you just kind of self taught over a period of time. That's awesome.
Darryl: Yeah, I want to just quickly touch on that point because there's, you know, really only two facets that I think make all houseplant care slightly mysterious, and the two things are number one: We're not being technical enough about specifically, light. Because if you know how plants work, light dictates the growth potential of the plant and then your watering, fertilizing, repotting, all that stuff only realizes that potential. So what I'm trying to say here is anybody who you think out there has really beautiful plants, probably just has extremely large windows.
Eli: cackles
Darryl: At then, the second thing is, how much you can accept that a plant is still growing, even if it doesn't look perfect. I wrote it in another quote on Instagram. I said, “You know the wise and experienced plant parent is not the one who never loses a leaf. It is the one who knows how much leaf loss is acceptable and that the plant is still growing.”
Which is to say that for me, you see some of my very nice plants that are growing with me for a long time. I can tell you that those plants have gone through many cycles of losing, like constantly losing leaves. Like the staghorn Fern right here. Every single leaf that you see on it right now. It was not there when I first bought it. When I first bought it, it had a totally different set of leaves. And every every couple months it just drops one of those leaves and then they die off, right? And so, rather than panic about it and then think that I need to change something, I'm like, “No, this is how it's supposed to grow.” And that's why I'm happy with it.
But what I see most from people is, they see one yellow leaf and then they're like, “Oh my gosh, what I'm doing wrong?” And then they think, “Oh the plant is, like quote, unquote, dying.” When they think it’s dying then they want to correct it. But now combine that with the first item that I said which is that they're not technical enough with light. Then it's like I said, the best your plant can do is based on the best possible light it has. If you put a plant 10 feet from a window, it doesn't matter how you water, it doesn't matter what special terra cotta pot you got. It doesn't matter what moisture meter you used. It's just dying. The plant is not working.
Sorry, I went into a rant there because this is just like. Just think about this. The words that are coming out of my mouth are coming from a person who has literally seen thousands and thousands of questions that are like, “What's wrong with my plant?”
And I say to them, “show me where you put the plant.” It's always 10 feet from the window. No chance people, no chance.
Eli: I mean it's a constant cycle of regeneration, right? You're going to have some change. They go through their process. They do their photosynthesis. They contribute to the overall life of the plant, and then they phase out and then a new stalk comes. A new stem. A new leaf. And the cycle repeats.
Darryl: Take a walk in the forest. Take a walk in a jungle or in a conservatory and you'll see dead leaves all over the ground. That's how it goes. Indoors, just because you see dead leaves, you're not used to it or something. That doesn't mean that it's not supposed to happen.
Eli: Alright, so let me let me keep on moving us forward here. Tell me a little bit about your collection. Obviously we can see a lot of interesting, different, you know, diverse stuff in the background of just this one screen. But what's your collection look like? How many plants do you roughly think you have? Do you trend toward any particular family or species or?
Darryl: Yeah, I think well in terms of how many are honestly never counted. But basically you can say any window space there's a plant there. And anywhere there's a plant where there's no window, there's a grow light on top of it. So yes, I probably have at least 50 to 100 I'm sure of individual pots.
I trend towards what you would call the classical houseplant, so Aroids, Monstera, Philodendron, Pothos. I do have a small collection of little, tiny succulents I was talking to you about using the Plantfolio for repotting. They feel almost like little jewels, you know, because it's so interesting the way they look and they're sitting under a grow light.
I've recently started getting into these more, let's call them higher maintenance Aroids like some Anthurium, some other types of Philodendrons and I have them inside an IKEA cabinet. When you seal up the cabinet, in fact, there's no humidifier. There is humidity naturally in there when you seal it well. It’s between 60 and 70% and it's just from when you moisten the sphagnum moss in there.
When you moisten everything in there and then you seal them in then the humidity stays really high. So another thing we talked about just as sort of a little aside is that I have no humidifiers. I never mist any of my plants. My ambient humidity right now is 32% in this room. But then in the cabinet it's 70%. I still don't have any humidifiers, it's just from sealing up the cabinet very well and those plants in there are nice and happy. As for all the plants I have out here, it's not the humidity that makes them that makes them nice. It's the light that makes them nice. They grow strong and the leaves come out to their fullest shape because of the light.
Eli: I mean, there's gotta be some upper and lower bounds to that though, right? You said 32%. So if it was any lower than that? I often hear people with the theory that if you've got some crispy edges or browning edges, it may be a result of lack of humidity. Are you saying BS or are you saying up to a point?
Darryl: You know, I'm glad you brought it up as wanting me to be more precise about it. So number one, we are dealing with thousands of different plants, right? So it's hard to just pinpoint, this or that plant. We're also dealing with, I would say millions of people's individual tolerances for visual imperfections. You know what I mean?
Like here, look at this Ctenanthe burle-marxii. So you know if you're looking at it from back here, you say it's pretty nice, right? But then if I bring it up close and show you underneath there's some brown tips every now and then and then dead leaves here and there, right? It's sitting in this room, 32% humidity, and I've had this plant for three years.
I guess what I'm saying is, it's almost like confirmation bias where if you find brown tips, then you want to believe that raising the humidity can prevent it. And that’s because we want to be able to correct and control things. My thing is, I don't even want to say that because I don't want to perpetuate this idea that you know the goal of owning plants is to have perfect leaves.
Eli: Yeah, I mean, I hear I hear what you're saying. I understand the philosophical perspective of where you're coming from. That said, a lot of people are looking at plants as interior decoration, and you know they're trying to get that instagrammable prop.
Darryl: I'm really, really glad we are debating this philosophically because this is exactly it. It's almost as if when people have listened to my advice, they're not understanding that it's coming from a philosophically different place. So when they say to me, “how do I prevent brown tips?”
My first answer is usually “you can't prevent it. It will eventually happen.” Because I'm telling you from experience. Back over there I have a peace lily that I’ve had for eight years. It constantly has Brown tips. It constantly has yellow leaves. I just keep cutting it back and then it keeps growing.
It's like saying I'm going through my human life right now. Oh, I'm constantly, you know, getting cuts and scrapes and bruises. I'm constantly getting sick. But like you know, maybe once a year I get a cold or something. Can I go through life like without ever experiencing these things like sure you can say somebody could. But honestly, you can’t
Eli: You’d have to be bubble boy.
Darryl: Exactly, and so people are treating plants that way. And I'm telling them that they're not going to enjoy having their plants around. In fact, I recently gave you access to the course. The course is called The Essentials of Houseplant Enjoyment. It's not called Best Practices for Commercial Production of Plants. I know how to do that too, but I'm not going to say that that's what you should try and do.
Eli: Interesting, I mean I like what you're saying. I think though you know the disconnect comes from this constant need of, particularly with Instagram – and this is actually kind of an interesting segue into one of my other questions. I'll try to bridge the gap here, I may do kind of a clunky job of it, but. I mean ultimately when you're doing the whole influencer thing. People want to see pretty pictures right? Instagram is a very aspirational type of marketing. “I want that. I want to be that. I want to look like that.” I certainly see it in the plant care stuff. Some folks like yourself and others that I've noticed, you know, do a nice job of kind of saying, “Hey, here's the real side of it. It's not just the perfect plants, it's other things too.
So I am interested to hear as a successful influencer in the houseplant space. What’s that journey been like? How do you think about your position in the houseplant influencer space? What's your unique take on everything? And that's a multi-pronged difficult question. So feel free to unpack it.
Darryl: Yeah, yeah, I think. There have been, I would say ups and downs where there's times where I I feel, well, firstly I can be perfectly honest with you and say that, you know insecurity scales up infinitely. I could fall into a trap of thinking like. “Um? Only 2000 likes? That's very low for me.” You know what I mean? Five years ago when I started I was like, “Oh! 30! Yeah!” So it's like I'm telling you that that insecurity can scale no matter how big you are, and so it's a challenge to keep that from getting at you.
The bigger you are, or the bigger that people see you, those ideas can get at your head a lot easier. So it's really important to just try and focus on what I consider the things that will - you know how we talked about content - add value to someone else.
So you have to think about that for yourself too in terms of what you would do, the things that you engage with, right? Like the activities that add value to yourself and that are valuable for you. In terms of what I was doing, you know, putting together my book proposal, you know writing, writing blog posts, for example, editing YouTube videos, making the course. When I made it right like that, that took a lot of effort and if I didn't try and squash the little thing nagging, saying, oh, you should you know, figure out an Instagram post that gets you a lot of likes. I'm just saying that those ideas creep into everyone's head and it's a challenge to keep them down and keep those voices quieter and then try and find the things and identify the things that really do add value.
Eli: So let me ask you kind of another meta question, right? So houseplants seem to be kind of having a moment over the last several years. And I think that's partly just due to, you know, social media. You could probably say that about almost any industry, just being more exposure.
Darryl: You said it exactly right, which was the way that Instagram is an aspirational platform. Beauty, travel, food. All of these things have been well established on Instagram and I think the reason why houseplants in particular fits that mold well is because in the past when would you see someone else’s houseplants? Only if you go to their house.
Now we have the ability to share our private collection with the world. And people are realizing wow, these collections are wonderful. The moment I see a particular person's shelf. I know it's that person’s shelf. And then it's like you feel like you know them. You feel like you visit them. Funny story is that you know when we all used to travel. Hopefully soon we can but when I did travel I would make it a point to try to visit some followers that I follow too. So I have seen some of these collections that I wouldn’t even consider like iconic collections but I've seen them in person and it's something that’s really kind of unique. It’s not a tourism thing, but you know, it's this need to connect with people in real life, in person.
Eli: So where do you think this space is heading right? I mean granted we are in the midst of a pandemic, so I'm sure it kind of throws everything up in the air a little bit, but what do you think is happening with house plants? Where do you think people are going with this whole thing?
Darryl: You know, I think it's interesting that we say where is it going. Because when I look at the past, I can say that I’ve seen where it is gone. Which is, you know, in the 50s and 60s and 70s houseplants were like a default part of your interior décor. But then where did we get these ideas of oh no, I killed the plant. Don't overwater! All of these ideas came from back then and again back to the whole light thing is anybody back then who they thought was a green thumb? It was probably just because they had extremely large windows and enough time to remember to water the plants.
Eli: cackles
Darryl: And then anybody with smaller windows or who believed the lie of “thrives in low light.” They would then be disappointed with their plants and so this gradual disappointment sentiment just permeated through every single person who ever tried to have a houseplant, which is the reason why the first impression people get today around houseplants is: I'm afraid to kill it.
Where do you think that comes from? It’s because the instructions back then just didn't really teach them anything. Then in the 1990s, when interior decor trends changed and said that they wanted minimal and no plants or whatever, then what happened in houseplants? Nobody bought anymore indoor plants.
I talk about this thing called the ABC of houseplant appreciation, that's aesthetics, biology, and companionship. It looks nice. Biology is, plants are fascinating. Then C is companionship. Which is, could they have sentimental value?
They can, you know. Because if you took plants that I have had for a long time, if you just replace them with the same plant I'd be like, “Hey, that's not my plant right away.”
Today I hope that the plant hobby continues beyond the point where in any interior decor trends, if they change that, there will still be people who are just interested in plants, regardless of whether they're trendy or not. That's the hope. I think that with social media that will be the case. There will always be people who are fascinated with plants using those two other facets of biology and companionship.
To me, a window with no plant in it , doesn't look right.
Eli: Right, but I mean we're in a moment where all kinds of businesses have popped up going direct to consumer: The Sill, Bloomscape, and then other incumbents that have been around for a long time like Costa Farms and others. There's a real surge right now. Do you think it's going to stick around?
Darryl: Would you say that gardening ever had a surge or decline like a major surge or decline just talking about outdoor gardening?
Eli: I know just by looking at some reported market data around the last couple of years that there has been a relative surge in the gardening sector broadly compared to the years prior. I don't know how much of that is attributed to indoor house plants. But I know that there is a surge. The media has picked up on this as well and are running stories about average household spending on gardening, which has increased 30 to 50% in certain areas. And this was even prior to COVID. So I think we are in some kind of a surge at the moment I don't know about historically. [Source 1 | Source 2]
Darryl: I would say the degree that house plants will endure is going to be a function of how much people see it as a hobby versus how much people see it as a decor thing. If people really are just into it because they like the look of it and they just want to have you know a leafy corner or something like that, then if it's a dark corner when the plant eventually dies, they might be discouraged about it and then they give up on it.
But if they ask me and I tell them your plant has no chance back there and I told him to put it by the window and they do so. And then I also say, by the way, you should expect leaf turnover because these don't last forever. Then it's like now in their mind their expectation has been changed about what the plant is supposed to do. So if and then they'll grow to love that plant regardless of whether it looks magazine perfect.
That Staghorn fern is legit
Eli: I gotcha all right. So let's transition. You've written a book and you've designed an online course. Can you tell me a little bit about what a reader or student could expect to gather by going through them?
Darryl: Sure, so the book I would say, think about it like if you had a good friend who is experienced with plants putting everything they knew, not just distilling stuff they find on Pinterest but like really telling you what's going on with how to take care of plants and how to have a long-term hobby and enjoyment with them. That's what's in the book.
As far as I've seen, my book is one of the only houseplant books that shows the progression of some plants. It says this is what the plant looks like three months later, three years later. This is what it looks like, and the purpose of that is to show that, again, is sort of an aspirational thing. You could have a long-term relationship with some plants. There's even two or three that I showed how they declined and then threw them out after.
It’s meant to be an honest account of what's going on and talking about. You'll get pests every now and then. It's not a big deal. You should deal with it, obviously, but it's like you don't need to feel bad about it.
That’s the book. Just outlining all the core fundamentals of plant care in a way that at least is technically more satisfying for technical minds. I had so many people comment and say like. After reading the book, everything makes sense with plants.
Then the online course is not just a read aloud version of the book. It's seeing all these things again, like having that friend telling you their experience with plants. But then it's like have you ever tried to learn how to play guitar?
Eli: Tried....
Darryl: So yeah, you know there are some people who try to play guitar. They learn how to play one song. But then they can't play anything else, whereas somebody else may take guitar lessons. They learn the fundamentals and then they have the core skills to then play any song.
My approach to plant care is to teach you the fundamentals. You know the dynamics of light and water and all these things work how those things work from a fundamental perspective.
So then you can go and read any plant care advice and have it make sense for you, because the problem that I'm seeing is that people are reading plant-specific advice and thinking that those are rules to ensure that this plant is perfect forever.
Those are suggestions about what you should do, but then in those suggestions there's some codified language like bright indirect light. But what exactly does that mean?
And then, those instructions are not meant to say: Guarantee the perfection of the plant.
It's just to guarantee the longest possible life. Understanding that there still will be leaf turnover there still will be browning tips every now and then. And when you talk about long term plant ownership you have to know and be comfortable with things like propagation, because sometimes you're gonna have to sort of reset the whole plant because it's just going to grow too gangly or something. Propagating is the only way to get new life out of it. That's actually one of the magical things about science.
Eli: So now I'm anxious to ask you if you have any specific plant care tips? Because I feel like that's almost counter to your entire philosophy here.
Darryl: No, no, it's actually funny we can think about this even from the Intersection of content creation OK right? Which is that I could easily have like 500 different pieces of content by taking 500 different plants and saying here's how to care for this plant. Here's how to care for that plant. It's all the same. Sorry. It's not the same, like exactly the same, but I mean, I don't see plant care as being specific different instructions for every plant.
I see it all as just tiny tweaks and variations on the same few concepts. The way that I think about things is shooting myself in the foot for content creation because I end up saying the same thing over and over again because I want people to realize that there's not much difference.
I can take care of any plants you give as long as I can find the name on Google. I just kind of glance over some of the care instructions. Then I know exactly what to do with it. The point is, for me, I measure light, but if you don't want to measure life then you know the best possible thing that you can do for the plant is to put it right in front of whatever biggest possible window you have. That's because we all live in caves.
So first, put the plants as closely to windows as possible. The second thing relates to the Sun, which is because we know the sun moves across the Sky. If the sun comes into the direct line of sight with that plant for longer than two or three hours, then you should block it with a white sheer curtain.
The instructions that I just said deals with any plant where they say they want bright indirect light.
Because that's the one that needs the most explaining. You see, if I said to you: “Cactus. Give it as much sun as possible.” Then you don't need to think about it. You just put it in front of the window. But bright indirect light people are fixated on this word. They think oh, so does that mean the point is to avoid direct sun altogether?
No. The point is, I call it, “give it the widest view of the Sky.” Really this is because I use a light meter and walk up to the window. It's 400 foot candles. You take 2 steps back and it's 2. I'm just constantly trying to figure out a different way to tell people that their plants need to be right in front of the window, and that is step one.
I'll give you the second thing, which is about watering. Do you want to know how to water any plant?
Eli: Please.
Darryl: There's only three different what I call watering strategies. The first type is - given that the plant is getting adequate light, then you water the soil when the soil is completely dry. So Cactus, snake plant, ZZ plant, any succulents. The way that you water the plant is when you check that the soil is completely dry, then you drench the soil nice and thoroughly and then put it back where it's going to be.
The second type is water when the soil is partially dried. So if you want to talk about like a dryness percentage, you know the succulent is going to be when it's 100% dry. Then the partial dryness is anywhere 40 to 70%. Drive somewhere in the middle and the way you assess this is you either poke around with a chopstick and feel it, or you just lift the pot and you should know what the weight of fully wet is versus fully dry soil. It's pretty easy to feel it.
Three. Three is keep the soil evenly moist. So the perfect example is maidenhair Fern. You lift the pot when it's fully watered, it's heavy, then one or two days later if the pot is getting towards 2/3 of the weight, it's time to water it again.
So what I'm saying is the approach to watering any plant is less confusing if you take it as just constantly observing the soil and using that as your cue to say OK, Now it's time to water or no, I'll wait till later.
That's why you look around me and you think like, how do I keep track of watering. There's nothing to keep track of. I just look at the soil and make the assessment. Now go and read any plant care advice and I'll tell you, bad care advice will say water it at a specific frequency like every 10 days every seven days whatever.
Now the only reason why that's bad is because most people don't realize what they're saying is given this light level the soil will reach whatever dryness that is appropriate in this number of days.
Eli: Ok, let’s talk about tools Clearly light is the top priority for you. Any types of tools you recommend light-related or otherwise?
Darryl: A standard light meter is one of my favorite tools, because when I look at the number, it's basically telling me what is the growth potential of this spot. And so when I take it and I go and measure it somewhere I'm literally feeling that the plant is going to be nice and productive right here. When you use a light meter, you're getting down to the nitty gritty and knowing how well that plant is going to do.
But the second tool that I like to use is a chopstick, and earlier I talked about probing the soil. Some people talk about using a finger, but I feel like the finger is too intrusive into soil and it only gets my hands dirty. So chopsticks are a good tool to use to assess soil dryness.
Eli: Any final thoughts?
Darryl: I think, If we look at our indoor space more like it's an indoor garden, then we become gardeners who understand that we are working alongside nature. We're not supposed to look at it as if we are controlling these things and making them adhere to perfection. If we can understand this, then we can accept that visual imperfection is not “wrong.”
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It was a lot of fun speaking with Darryl for this interview. Clearly he's got some strong opinions on plant care, which is exactly why I was excited to talk to him. I cannot recommend his book The New Plant Parent or his online course The Essentials of Houseplant Enjoyment enough. I consider myself someone who is still "getting into plants" and I learned a lot that I have applied directly to my own approach from both.
]]>Welcome to a brand new houseplant interview series called Houseplant Enthusiasts. The series highlights houseplant enthusiasts from around the world, focusing on each individual's personal plant journey. The series explores how people "get into plants" and exposes tips and tricks that will help others on their journey to successful houseplant care. I am using this series as a way to meet and learn from customers, and hopefully give them a new outlet to share their stories and show off their plants!
For our inaugural interview, we begin with Maisa Nammari, a plant-loving student based in Boulder, Colorado. Maisa has between 80 and 100 houseplants and is a big fan of tropical plants. In this interview she shares some fantastic plant care tips and specific products she uses for her own plant care. You can check out her excellent photography at @miishmiish on Instagram.
Eli: Tell me about your plant collection - how many plants do you have, living situation, plant setup, light situation.
Maisa: I actually don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but I would say I have around 80 to 100 plants. Yeah, it gets a little out of hand at times haha. I have been put on many a plant moratorium over the past year and they don't always, you know, end well, in that I will be like, "but I like this plant and I really had to buy it....sorry!" And yeah, my boyfriend just rolls his eyes and it's alright. But he does contribute he will refill the humidifier from time to time for me.
Eli: So you live in Colorado, I'm guessing it's kind of dry, what your setup like?
Maisa: I believe the temperate zone for Boulder is 5b, but I am a tropical plants lover, so all of my plants are inside pretty much throughout the year. I don't have many plants to go outside in the summer. Except my lemon tree. It's still a baby and doesn't produce yet but it's a cutting from my grandfather's which produces a lot of big hefty lemons. So I have hope for the future. But yeah, I have been blessed with amazing light in my apartment. I have most of my plants in front fo the southeast window and then across from that is a SW window and I have some skylights because I'm a third-floor apartments and it's just it's just ideal light for plants and that's kind of why I have so many. It's really nice. I kind of dread the day we move out and we have to figure out how to make these plants happy again.
Eli: So you mentioned your grandfather, can you tell me a little bit about how you got "into plants"?
Maisa: Yeah, so my mom is was at the Botanic Gardens and has worked there for about 15 years now. And my grandpa is a master gardener. And so I've just kind of grown up around plants. We always had plants in the house when I was growing up. And I, you know tried to have a little garden of my own outside when I was seven. It didn't go very well haha. But yeah I've had this appreciation for nature for my entire life. The second I moved out of my parents' house the thing I was most excited to get for my own place was a plant.
Eli: Do you remember what your first one was?
Maisa: I got a couple at once actually. I got a Black Pagoda Lipstick plant, Dracaena Corn Plant, a Red Maranta and a Calathea White Fusion. Those were my starter plants, which you know, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. But four out of the five of those are still alive.
Eli: That's really good. I have not been as successful with my first plants. But my parents gave me one of my first plants and they were smart. They gave me a Swedish Ivy. And it's like you couldn't kill that thing if you tried, you know, and they gave me this one dinky little Vine and I'm thinking, "thanks a lot," you know, like what is this thing? And before I knew it, it was just a total beast so you know they started at me out right.
Eli: So, 80-100 plants. Any specific varieties or families you're into across those? Or are you all over the place?
Maisa: I'm all over the place. I've lately gotten really into Aroids and Alocasias. Those are the ones I've been drawn to lately. I started out really loving Calatheas. I think I have to credit those plants for educating me more about like houseplant care because they're so finicky and you know, you gotta, let your water sit out or give them distilled water. You've gotta keep the humidity really high. They're pretty demanding plants. So yeah, I was determined to keep them alive and really did my research. Now it's kind of branched out to more different types of tropicals.
Eli: You mentioned that those plants kind of schooled you, but any special plant care tips or tricks that you've learned over the years that really stick out in your mind?
Maisa: I learned a couple years ago to always put Superthrive in my water whenever I repot. It's basically a rooting nutrient. It helps plants grow big and strong roots. So I do that every time I repot. What else? If you live in a dry climate, a humidifier is a must unless you have very hardy varieties. But if you like Alocasias and Syngoniums and Calatheas, then a humidifier is your best friend. I can't live without my humidifier. Here, humidity is a must, especially for houseplants and especially in winter and even int he summer when the air conditioning is on. That's just as bad, I feel.
I also get spring water delivered. I'll admit it's a little bougie haha, a lot of my resources go to my plants. But because I have Calatheas and some more delicate philodendrons, I just didn't want to give them tap water - especially because the tap water in Boulder is very hard. It's got a lot of fluoride and chlorine and I noticed a difference when I water with spring or distilled. My plants had less brown tips and crispy edges. So to me it's worth it. Then once a month I use Bonide and sometimes add in some Superthive.
Eli: So going back to your plant collection - with 80-100 plants that almost requires a care routine of some sort right? What does yours look like?
Maisa: So, I water my plants probably once a week. And you know, I've got many of them around my working area, so I'll just take a peek into their pot and see how they're doing and see how moist the soil is. If things are looking kind of droopy, then I'll say alright time to water. It'll take me a couple days to get my shit together but yeah everyone gets watered haha! I pretty much do it all at once at that point. And it does take kind of awhile to do. But if I'm short on time, I'll identify those most in need and focus on those and then wait a couple days and do the rest. Most of my plants are on the same schedule.
Eli: So, here's a question for you, do you bring the water to the plants? Or the plants to the water?
Maisa: I usually bring the water to the plants, but, lately, with the Plantfolio haha, honestly, honest to god, I've been bringing the plants to the water and I like it a lot. Because a lot of my plants are in cachepots with a nursery pot inside and you know, I've never had a plant die of over watering. I am proud of that fact haha. But in the cachepots they have this reservoir of water that fills up if you don't fill it out. And it's always driven me nuts and given me fungus gnats. So before I needed to go around and bring water to each plant, water it, and then come back again later to pour out the cachepot reservoir so there's no standing water into some big pitcher or something, which is a huge pain in the ass. But now I've just been taking my nursery pots and watering them over the sink.
Eli: I appreciate the name drop! In all seriousness, how has using the Plantfolio Indoor Potting Station changed your approach to plant care? Any tips for new users?
Maisa: I like that I can just bring the nursery pot over and water there over the sink and I don't have to go back and empty the cachepot. As far as tips? I think it's very intuitive, so I think anyone who knows how to water a plant will know how to use the potting station. It's great to have one side be the silicone mat and then the other side the grate. So you have one side to repot with soil and then you can water your repotted plant. That's another tip actually that I think most people know, but you should always water your plant after you repot. With this you can just do it straight away. This is something I've had trouble with, I got this new plant. I made this huge mess. Now I gotta give it some water and my theory holds that it's very easy and convenient as opposed to repotting on a balcony or on some newspaper and making sure you're not getting muddy water all over your house, which has happened!
Eli: Final question, what would you say your plant goals are going forward?
Maisa: Let's see... I don't really feel the need to get more plants. I've kind of reached a nice threshold of - oh, I have a lot of plants and they're all alive for now. I want to get all of my plants to a point where I can you know, start making productive propagations and build up my plants. Boost them up to be a little more full and lush.
]]>So, you've just received your Plantfolio in the mail, unboxed it and now you're ready to do some transplanting or repotting. You might be wondering... what's the best way to use this contraption?
And that's a fair enough question. As a houseplant enthusiast you've probably developed your own methods for taking care of your plants indoors. In fact, before launching Plantfolio, I was really curious to see how people tackle the same challenges I was trying to solve. I polled several different houseplant enthusiast groups I belong to on Facebook, asking how people keep their houses or apartments clean despite the messy nature of plant care. As you can imagine people had a lot to say. Here are a few ways people described their approaches to plant care:
Clearly, everyone has their own method but if you've purchased a Plantfolio, then you're looking for a simpler, cleaner way to care for your plants.
I look at successful indoor plant care like this: if I can do it simply, efficiently, and without a big mess then that's a success - assuming I don't kill any plants in the process of course...
Plantfolio helps satisfy all three of these criteria, and it can adapt depending on your plant care tasks. Here are four helpful questions to consider when you're getting ready for your plant care tasks.
Answering the first question will help you answer the next three questions.
If the answer to question 1 is all of the above or if there is a significant amount of water involved, you should setup the potting station over your kitchen sink. If not, then you can use a table or countertop.
If you're repotting and soil is being transferred between bags, pots and the trash can, then make sure you've got everything close to hand. For example, bring the potting soil bag and the trashcan right next to where you're working so you're keeping the biggest contributor to a mess within your contained workspace.
Once you know what you're doing, where you're working and have all of the supplies you need close to hand it's time to think about your Plantfolio configuration.
Does it make sense to keep both trays in the frame? Or do you want one half of the potting station to become the wet side, and the other side the dry soil side? If you take one tray out, you now have an extra covering for your countertop to place an extra pot or bag of soil on.
You also want to think about where to place your side walls. The sidewalls can serve a number of purposes. They can be useful for holding tools. They're great for leaning taller unpotted plants against while transplanting. But they're probably best for reducing the splashback of water and dirt. Depending on what you're using the sidewalls for, you may want them side by side at the back, or covering one of the corners. You may not want any sidewalls at all! Just remember, you can add, more and remove entirely throughout the process.
Once your plant is watered, propagated, potted or whatever else you might be doing, it's time to clean up. Here are a few tips to reduce mess and keep cleanup simple.
That's it for now. I hope this was helpful information for beginner plantfolio users. If you discover any useful tips of your own please do share them with me at eli@plantfolio.co
]]>Welcome to the plantfolio blog! In this first post, I’ll tell you a bit about my houseplant background and explain where the idea for an indoor potting station came from. Then, I’ll talk about creating a design, testing materials, building the initial prototypes, as well as getting feedback from testers.
It was Fall of 2019 when the initial idea for plantfolio really began. I was about 4 years into the process of getting into plants. If you’re already a plant person or refer to yourself as a plant parent, then this is something you have probably also experienced. If not, let me explain.
For many of us, sometime around your mid-twenties to early thirties, if you don’t already have pets or kids, you might find yourself “getting into plants”. In my experience, this is especially true if you live in a city, rent an apartment and work in front of a computer all day. Of all the addicting vices out there, it’s pretty tame, relatively inexpensive, and only moderately annoying to the people around us (usually).
What does getting into plants look like? Symptoms look a bit different for different people and there are quite a few stages, but for me the first couple years looked like this:
If you live in an apartment - particularly one without access to a porch, deck or patio - you’re doing these activities in your kitchen, in your sink, on your countertop, on the floor, or even in your bathtub. You’re cutting open trashbags. You’re spreading newspaper on the floor. You’ve got the vacuum, the Swiffer, the sponge all lined up, ready to go.
As enjoyable as taking care of plants can be, the mess involved with indoor plant care can be a pain in the ass. Wouldn't it be great if…
At some point, the wheels started turning. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a compact, self-contained workstation that could be set up quickly when doing my plant activities (plantivities)? This station would keep in the dirt, water and debris so I don’t have to worry about a big cleanup when I’m done. When the work is done, it cleans up quickly and folds up to be stowed somewhere convenient.
This problem statement became the goal.
Paper and cardboard model I started with after sketching ideas
It also needed to look cool. I wanted it to have a classic, old-school vibe that implied durability and quality. Later, upgrading to a wooden frame, I hoped to make it feel almost like a piece of furniture, while still being a tool. For some reason, the L.L. Bean canvas beach bags stuck in my head. So that’s where I started. After drawing up sketches, and creating a paper model, my girlfriend and I went out one Saturday to a fabric store and found a lightweight canvas. Then, with a utility knife, a hot glue gun, wooden dowels and rubber flooring material from the hardware store, the first prototype was created (see below).
Ugly and barely usable, creating this was a great exercise in figuring out the overall form as well as what not to do.
After showing this initial prototype to some friends and family, I decided to move away from the rubber base to a wooden frame, resulting in the next iteration.
I was still using off the shelf supplies at this point, but things were starting to come together. It was somewhat useful, though still pretty clunky. The canvas proved to be too bulky and was difficult to work with. My girlfriend’s mom hooked me up with an extra sewing machine (thanks Christine!), which made things a bit easier, but canvas was overkill for the use case. She suggested checking out sailcloth.
Sailcloth was a game changer. Lightweight, easy to sew, easy to clean and water beads right off of it. It was perfect for the sidewalls which were a key part of the design. The plantfolio’s sidewalls provide a splash guard for watering as well as for dirt. With added loops, they can be used for tool storage while you work, and because they’re rigid and sturdy, early testers actually used them to prop up their plants while repotting, which has proven to be a useful ability. With the sailcloth material tested it was time for the next revision of the frame, the inner mesh and the removable tray.
The next iteration introduced a heavy duty steel mesh in a rubberized coating, a larger, sturdier wooden frame and reinforced sockets located around the perimeter of the indoor potting station. These sockets allow you to decide where you want the two sidewalls located while you work. In this case I wanted to do some watering over the sink, but didn’t want to splash the counter on the right, so I moved the sidewall from the rear location to the side.
Sending this version out to indoor plant enthusiast friends for user feedback, generated some awesome feedback to inform the next iteration. This feedback resulted in a deeper frame, questions around the type of hinge to use, alterations to the sidewall design and a material decision about the removable trays that sit within the frame.
From largest to smallest - Plaskolite prototype, drawer liner prototype, homemade silicone form
The inner tray took some time to sort out. The very first prototype started with black rubber flooring. Then I tried to cut, fold and glue soft plastic drawer liners. Then I tried to cut up a piece of plaskolite (the rigid plastic diffuser covers in fluorescent ceiling lights) and glued that together, which took forever. I tried each of these methods to avoid having to work with a manufacturer until I was absolutely sure the frame design was ready. I had tried 3D printing some other parts for the plantfolio prototype, but a 15” x 15” print was too large for any non-industrial printer and too slow and costly.
I really liked the idea of the potting station having a tray with a soft, rubbery, flexible material so you could easily take it out of the plantfolio frame when it filled up with dirt and fold or roll it up for easy disposal. It needed to be rugged, easy to clean and have a tight fit in the frame so dirt doesn’t escape between cracks or gaps.
The answer it turns out was silicone. After a number of inquiries and an attempt at DIY mold making, I found a manufacturer and was able to get a custom silicone tray designed and manufactured. The result is the set of trays in the photo below. They fit snugly, are easily removable and fold or roll up for dirt disposal. I hope you find them useful.
It goes without saying that gathering user feedback and validating that your product is actually solving problems is critical. I’ve been involved in gathering user feedback in early stage companies several times. But those experiences were for software products that other people were building. As a physical product built by yours truly, this was a bit different.
Before I began building the physical prototypes, I started by getting more active in some Facebook groups I had joined previously. I asked people how they solved problems associated with messy and time consuming indoor plant activities. The responses blew me away. This one question elicited over 100 unique responses from other plant enthusiasts. I wasn’t the only person with this problem! And people were trying all kinds of solutions.
It wasn’t until January of 2020 that the early prototypes were ready for user testing. To prepare, I created an onboarding deck in Google slides, as well as a demographic survey taken before the user testing. I also created a product testing survey to be taken after using the product. I then followed up with each user in a phone call or in-person session to hear their words directly and ask them questions. This resulted in some killer feedback, that enabled improvements between each iteration.
A few key learnings included:
Once COVID-19 hit, feedback slowed down a bit. But, I already had a lot of the key feedback needed to move the product forward. This feedback was worked into two additional prototypes and with some fine tuning, resulted in the product sold today.
I have loved creating plantfolio. And while we’re just getting started, I am really proud of how this first version has turned out. During the depressing months of COVID, bringing this product to life has given me the opportunity to be creative and solve problems so many plant enthusiasts experience! I stand 100% by the quality of the product and its ability to solve these problems. But if you’re reading this and don’t feel 100% satisfied, please send me a note and I will make it right. Or, if you have feedback for future iterations, please let me know. I am dedicated to building the best indoor plant tools possible.
Finally, plantfolio has also allowed me to connect with old friends and family. It’s a simple project, but it takes work! We’ve got a long way to go but I couldn’t have made it this far without all of you. Thank you!
Now, let’s get back to growing.
-Eli
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