I have a window! With sills! So I’ve gotten some plants and am desperately trying to not murder them.
The window faces west and gets lots of light but the office itself stays pretty cool throughout the day. I’ve already had to take one plant home because it dropped all its leaves and I realized it was going dormant. It’s doing much better outside. I’m told that the office will be very cold during the winter (cold for Florida).
I have a pothos, a dracaena, and a number of succulents.
Please give me tips on dealing with houseplants in an office setting. I’m already getting dirt everywhere and some of them need to be repotted. Is there any reasonable way to do this in the office or will I have to cart them all outside to a picnic table? Tell me also about fertilizer and soil compositions. Tell me about how to help the pothos vine. I’m thinking some command hooks?
Oh, and some of the succulents are in some novelty pots which were a gift. The pots have very tiny openings and I almost killed the plants shoving them in there. Now that they’ve grown a bit they’re stuck in these pots forever. Can I just shove some extra soil in at the top every now and then as they incrementally lose dirt from the bottom via watering?
Speak to me like I’m a child, and not a particulary clever one.
Putting this in CS since gardening is an art, but I welcome a move to more appropriate fora (haha that’s a plant joke I’m basically a pro now).
Yeah, don’t overwater the succulents. A sure way to kill them. They fare much better on less water than is needed than more.
I had a gorgeous purple velvet (does anyone see these any more?) in my office over 40 yrs ago, but it got white flies. So sad. I worked in the Petroleum Building then. This is the building near DTLA with the giant Union 76 painted on the side. It was a U-shaped building, and my window was inside the U. It provided the perfect filtered light for most house plants.
You get a variety of plants. You give them the care you are willing to provide them. Dispose of those that don’t survive. At most, maybe try to decide if they prefer bright sunlight or diffused light on the other side of the room. Water them all 1 or 2 times a week (too much effort to try to remember varous watering schedules.) Maybe, if you think of it, a couple of times a year drop a little fertilizer in the water as you water them.
For repotting, lay down sheets of newspaper.
At one point I had over 30 plants in an old office. I sorta “inherited” plants from everyone who left. At present, I’m down to a single agave which I don’t think I could kill if I tried. Probably went 1.5 years without water during the shutdown…
If I may get off topic a tiny bit, what is the difference between pothos and philodendron?
Those are ideal office plants, because as far as I can tell after many attempts, they cannot be killed.
Do not over water your plants! That is the biggest mistake most people make. Plants aren’t like a pet, they don’t need to be fed everyday. Let them dry out, water when they do, and let them dry out again. The roots need air too. Keeping the plant constanly watered and moist will cause the roots to rot because they never get dry.
Most houseplants will not do well in direct western sun (the hottest exposure). The succulents may – depends on the species. Watch for burned leaves; you may have to create some kind of light diffuser for them. All your plants are tough species. Good luck.
Pothos is a shade tolerant trailing vine type plant that will, if it has the chance, put out feet (hard rootlike structures on the main stem) that will allow it to climb right up a sheetrock wall. Ask me how I know this–I have a pothos I bought for my granny as a housewarming gift in 1984 that’s managed to survive everything life can throw at it, including a couple of unfortunate HVAC incidents where the ambient room temp went up to 120F and it got cooked right down to the soil level. I cooled the pot down as fast as I could, drenched it and soaked the rootball and gave it time and now it’s back with a couple branches that have leaves the size of dinner plates. It’s a crazy plant, I constantly give big chunks of it away to make sure it never dies. It even furnished oxygen for a betta fish in a huge brandy snifter on a call center agent’s desk, that was pretty cool. Anyway, Grandma Plant lives out in a climate controlled hobby shed, takes up a lot of floor room but what the heck, it’s fun to keep around. I have it under a single 4 foot long T8 fluorescent fixture and it’s pretty happy there. I probably ought to cut it back some, one tendril has made it out the door in search of world domination probably.
Philodendrons have an upright habit with load bearing stems to support the big leaves. I’ve never had much experience with those.
Another low light tolerant plant that flourishes under fluorescents is the peace lily–they aren’t true lilies so they’re safe for cats. Anyway, the main trick with those is to keep up on deadheading out any dried stems and flower heads. I’ve also had a lot of luck growing schefflera–they take up a lot of room but totally worth it. They really thrive on neglect and abuse, perfect office plants lol.
For your succulents, get proper pots and some succulent soil. Load the soil in the pots then dig a hole in the middle of the dirt that’s the same size as the novelty pots. Then wrap the novely pots in newspaper. Whack one of those pots with a hammer until it breaks in the paper wrapping. Unfold it carefully, pick up the plant, and brush off the shards of the broken pot, disturbing the chunk of soil as little as possible. Now you’ve got the soil the succulent was grown in and the root, formed and compressed into the shape of the broke pot, more or less; pop it into the hole you dug in the soil in one of the new pots. Level the soil out around the base of the succulent and tamp it down a bit, then do the same with the rest.
True enough - but they perform better, look nicer and even produce spikes of fragrant flowers when grown under optimum conditions, which includes sun.
Succulents that have obviously outgrown their pots need repotting. Knocking a plant out of its pot for repotting isn’t especially hard. As suggested earlier, lay down sheets of newspaper or a small tarp to catch spilled soil.
There are plenty of houseplants that will appreciate half-day sun, which is what a western exposure will typically provide. One flowering succulent that should work fine in that setting, and which is tolerant of over and under-watering is the crown-of-thorns, Euphorbia milii. By the way, the best way to know if a plant needs watering is to push your finger down into the soil. Dry=needs water. Eventually you’ll know by the soil turning paler, the pot being lighter when you pick it up and/or the plant showing the first signs of wilt.
Last summer I bought a Myer Lemon tree from Costco, I had it by my desk in the basement of my building. I bought some LED grow lights, it grew but never blossomed.
I moved upstairs to a window desk a few months ago and my plant is in a window facing east. It loves it! I’ve had dozens of blossoms, I’ve pinched all but 1 “lemon” per cluster and now have 5 lemons about the size of a large walnut!
There are probably 20 new blossoms, as well. I water it once or twice a week. It was potted in a pot that was placed inside a larger pot. If I over water, the excess water leaks out the bottom. So I “borrowed” a tray from our cafeteria for the plant to sit on.
