Green Thumb, Green Home: Sustainable Houseplant Care
Learn how to sustainably grow, style, and care for all of your favorite houseplants. Whether you’re interested in learning how to capture rainwater, minimize your use of pesticides, or just how to keep the couple of plants you have alive, Green Thumb, Green Home is the webinar for you🌿
Fantastic thank you cara um so we are at 7:03 I can still see the participants tab creeping up a little bit but I will go ahead and get started um and just give you guys a little intro to myself and the organization before we dive into
The whole point there we’re here to talk about how to sustainably care for your house plans so um who we are so as sustainability matters um we are a Grassroots conservation nonprofit based out of the shenendoa valley in Virginia and since our founding in 2018 we have hosted over
250 programs serving more than 25,000 participants around Virginia and around the world for webinars like this um in the past we’ve done webinars on composting and stuff like native plants and we’ve had participants as far away as southeast Asia who are watching it as they eat their breakfast I’m not sure
What they’re really gaining from learning about native plants in Virginia but we are always happy to have them and love that this is stainability matters family um really is truly a global thing and we really pride ourselves on cultivating community Through conservation um and our main focus is
Giving individuals like you guys here today all of the tools and knowledge you need to make a difference in the environment without having to wait for the government or your to change any laws this is stuff you can do without any approval it’s just stuff that is super fun realistic and inclusive of
Everybody if you follow us on social media you have probably seen my face talking at you a lot and to some degree I apologize for that um but you’ve probably seen our videos on things like how to make allnatural fertilizers um how to upcycle wine bottles and why
Native plants are important to our ecosystems and although those don’t seem all necessarily directly related they all deal with sustainability and our primary goal more than anything else is to make sustainability fun realistic and inclusive of everybody in the past a lot of conservation and sustainability has
Been left to rich white land owners and we are really trying to change the narrative around that because sustainability is something that everybody can be practicing and even though these large corporations may not be doing the best things for our planet we can still make a big difference as
Individuals in changing what they do and changing what we do in our own personal lives so as carara mentioned during this webinar we are going to do our best to get all of your questions answered and please use the Q&A feature instead of the chat and be sure to upvote the
Questions that you guys want answered because we will be prioritizing those first so I’ll will be answering some of those questions throughout the webinar today but also we should have time for a little bit of a Q&A session at the end um but if we happen to not get to your
Question please feel free to send us a message on social media and I will get back to you as soon as possible um Instagram is probably the best way to reach us because they still just have that separate feature for messages and for some reason Facebook just does not
Prioritize chronology in any of their notification systems so you could send me something two minutes ago and I will see something from like five days ago instead so best way to reach me is probably through Instagram and now that that’s a little bit about sustainability matters um
Let’s actually go through our first set of poll questions so I will send those out to you we would really like to learn more about you guys where you’re joining us from how you found out about this webinar um how many house plants you have of course it’s something that we
Want to know for a webinar like this and if you’ve ever propagated a plant before I would imagine a lot of you guys probably have because you’re in this webinar um but um please feel free to like I said hop in there and answer those questions all of this stuff really
Helps give us a better idea of the community that we’re serving how to better reach you guys and how we can better tailor our programming to you all going forward so as you guys are coming in it looks like we got a lot of people from the shenendoa valley which is
Always great to see I’m sure I know some of you guys personally so thank you for going ahead and joining um it is great to again not actually see you because you guys are unfortunately just a little number on the screen but you were with us in spirit and we really appreciate
You guys being here um we also have some friends from the rest of the Eastern United States some of the Midwest and even some from outside the US like I said before which is always great to see um looks like a lot of you guys found us through Instagram which is absolutely
Great we’ve been really making a push to up our social media game in the past few months again I apologize for talking at you so much on there I know my little like kind of clean shaven head isn’t the most appealing thing to look at in the world but I do my
Best um and how many house plants you own looks like almost half of you have too many to count and you are right in there with me Hannah Cara and I were talking right before we started this webinar and they’re asking me how many I
Have and I lost count a long long time ago and it looks like a lot of you guys are pros at propagating too so hopefully maybe you guys will be able to teach us some stuff and your fellow Zoom webinar participants um about how to more sustainably care for your house
Plant um so thank you guys for filling out that out and while the rest of you do that I will give a little bit of background um about me because I will be the person that’s talking to you for the next hour or so so I don’t even know if
I introduced myself at the beginning but my name is Kenny Barnes and I serve as the program and Outreach coordinator for sustainability matters and I’ve been with the company since February of this year so I organiz a lot of our in-person programming but also do all of our
Social media work um and personally I have been doing social media for the past like two or three years on my own on my own personal page at a plant project where I post informational and oftentimes pretty goofy videos about my house plant collection and my journey to
Collect and care for all all of them um that house plant collection currently sits around a 100 or so split between my parents place and my own place because I do not have that much room room for them anymore unfortunately um but in my time
As a house plant parent I have had well over 200 plants lots of them have been given away um and unfortunately lots of them have also perished due to a lot of factors but sometimes my own improper care and it was really that cycle of getting a plant having it for a
Long time slowly watching it kind of die and then being happy because I have a new place to put a plant so I can buy a new one um that really sparked my interest into the topic of this webinar how to care for your house plants more sustainably
And eco-friendly because for a really really long time I don’t think that I was doing it right and I think a lot of people out there don’t really realize the environmental impacts that curating This indoor jungle can really have but before we get into that I think
It probably make sense to make sure that we are all on the same page of what exactly sustainability means and it looks different for everybody you guys all probably have your own unique definitions of sustainability so if you’d like please feel free to share those in the chat I think it’s always
Valuable to get different perspectives on exactly what it is but here at sustainability matters we Define sustainability as fulfilling the needs of our current Generations without compromising the needs of future generations and so no it is not something that is like never driving a car again or you can never eat meat
Again or you have to be the perfect zero waste king or queen that is not really what to sustainability is about it is about ensuring a balance between economic growth social well-being and environmental care so stuff like using a reusable water bottle or volunteering for a beach cleanup or bringing your own
Tupperware when you go out to eat if you know you’re not going to finish it so you don’t have to use those styrofoam or number four or five plastic takeaway containers that they will inevitably give you and cannot be recycled um those are all examples of sustainability it
May not seem like there’re super big things but it really does add up and it changes the way we we think about the world and makes us more conscious consumers and better stewards of our planet so now that we’re kind of on the same page about what sustainability is
Let’s get into the meat of this webinar and talk about what we’re all here for the plants but again I think a little bit of background on them is necessary before we get into the exact tips of how you can care for them more sustainably um I think this background is really
Important because house plants have been around for a while and really from the start they have kind of symbolize the opposite of what a lot of people Envision them as they are not the best for the environment they are not the most sustainable especially in Western
Culture so the way we kind of think about house plants now was really popularized during the Victorian era in England so pretty much the second half of the 19th century I think it was like 1837 to 1901 she ruled for a really really long time um but if there are any
History Buffs out there you know that this is essentially right after the industrial revolution had concluded its hate day in Europe so there were tons of new positive changes and developments in the Western World in terms of technology and knowledge but a lot of those new Innovations were pretty bad for the
Environment and it was one of those developments that actually allowed people to start collecting house plants in the first place central heating from coal and iron furnaces that was the first time people like Regular middle class people were really able to keep their plant their house warming up to
Keep these plants alive because most plants that we have are Tropicals they like surviving somewhere between 65 to 80 plus degrees um so if you were a poor peasant in England or something you were not really focused on keeping a palm alive you were more focused on staying
Warm yourself making sure you had food and doing all of this stuff so the people who could afford house plants were typically pretty well off financially so they became seen as symbols of status and wealth rather than a way to enhance our relationship with the natural world which I think is why a
Lot of people have house plants now um and that kind of focus on the status and the commodification of house plants is really evident in the example of orchid Hunters um I actually didn’t know about this before I started researching this webinar but it is absolutely fascinating so these guys primarily came from
England and they would literally boat across the Atlantic Ocean to South America in search of new Botanical species to bring back to Europe so they would literally go on the boat you know for a couple weeks go deep into andian peaks in the Amazonian jungle looking for orchids and they often times dealt
With angry indigenous populations who were obviously pretty mad that these white people were just coming in and completely stripping their landscape of all these native plants and it was really not about scientific discovery at all it was pretty much entirely profit-based I literally read a story about these two rival Orchid Hunters
That hated each other so much that one of them literally urinated on the other one’s orchids to kill them so he couldn’t take them back um it is absolutely crazy stuff there was death threats there’s been people killed it is absolutely crazy and again all for money
Not for the research at all um during these Expeditions as many as 10,000 samples could be collected um again from these like deep jungles way off the coast um so it took weeks to cart them back to the coast weeks to transport them back across the Atlantic to Europe
And in a lot of cases of those 10,000 or so species that were collected they were to get back to Europe with a total of zero specimens um so obviously the ones that did survive were crazy expensive and people were willing to pay thousands of dollars um to get them which I think
Is pretty crazy especially when you think about like how like just for inflation like thousands of dollars back then is a lot a lot of money now and it is pretty sad because there are still areas in Central and South America in which the plant population has never
Actually fully recovered from this death decimation and today many countries have laws in place to stop the wholesale stripping of orchids and other plants from their natural habitat which is great to see so house plant kind of continue to operate as this status symbol for the next few years up until
World War II which obviously changed the world and introduced us to this whole idea of globalization and essentially at least in my opinion it kind of reminded Americans that we can go to the rest of the world and kind of take what we want um so we started doing that again um and
A lot of the design stuff that came out of World War II also relied heavily on Plants so stuff like the mid-century modern aesthetic um or this tropical island inspired design was really popular after World War II those relied heavily on palms for aesthetic so people started getting more tropical house
Plants and that pretty much brought us to where we are today in our house plant world and then Co happened and this is probably the biggest shift in the house plant game that has happened since World War II um it’s when I personally got really into house plants um because I
Was really bored and had a lot of time on my hand um which a lot of people did I think but in 2020 saw an 18% increase in house PL demand which is pretty crazy when you think about it and a lot of that was driven by the desire to bring
The outdoors in a distraction from current events um house plant have been proven to really help with anxiety depression and a bunch of mental health issues that a lot of us were facing during the pandemic um but there was also the proliferation of social media plant accounts which a lot of people
Have dubed plrs um I’m not the biggest fan of that term personally I have one I still call it my plagam because it’s kind of like a meme um but it really just changed the game of house plants because everybody was seeing these amazing specimens online that were pretty much impossible
To replicate by yourself because these people have been growing them for years um but it really changed the game of house plants and made them much more of Commodities again rather than enhancing our relationship with the natural world um personal story like I said I really
Got into house plans during Co I had this one picture it was on my dining room table and I got home in March of 2020 and I brought home my five house plans from college and they were sitting there I took a bunch of pictures I was
So proud of them and then a couple weeks later I just got down the Wormhole of YouTube um spent like three hours looking at these house plans and ended up with 2020 with well over 80 probably close to 100 house plants and I started my own Instagram page um and over the
Next two plus years I just started growing that audience and sharing those videos online and like I said I probably had about 200 house plans during that time and I killed a lot of them a lot of them and I think a lot of people do I think it’s a pretty accurate represent
I’m a pretty accurate representation of what the typical Millennial or I mean I’m not a millennial I’m a gen Z but what those kind of people are um right now the house plant Market is anywhere between a 15 to3 billion doll industry globally so there’s a lot of money in it
And that’s estimated to grow about 7% each year so it’s a very very fast growing business and as I mentioned this was all really I’m sorry I just want to interrupt you quickly we’re learning that the chat is not working and I don’t seem to have the power to open that up I
Don’t know if you can okay let me see everyone does that open the chat there we go did that do it woo amazing thank you for letting me know so um now you guys can actually put the stuff in the chat like what does sustainability mean to you and all that
Stuff please still feel free to do it because we would still love to learn about all that stuff um so again that Co boom was really just fueled by consumerism um and buying became the hobby more than actual plant care became the hobby so a lot of people ended up growing their
Collection way too big way too fast they were getting these plants that they had no idea how to take care of pretty much all they knew was was they’re pretty so 70% of Millennials currently identify as plant parents and the average plant parent has killed at least seven plants
So if you are someone out there who does have plants and has killed them you are not alone and I can promise you I’m bringing that average up I am not below that seven at all um and again they’re really just seen as not living things they’re seen as Commodities and that’s
Really like shown in the price gouging that happens in the house plant Market um it’s all based on social media trends and what the trendy plants are at the time so for example my like number one wish list plant for a while was a variegated aloca Fric and at the start of
2021 you could not find one for less than $600 online and trust me I looked hours every single day I looked but now you know about two years later you can literally hop on that seat and buy one for $50 it was purely a market driven craze that was costing people tons of
Money and hurting the environment because people were buying these exotic plants that they really didn’t know how to care for so in the wise words of one P Diddy and the Notorious BIG um M Money Mo Problems this is a pretty big industry there’s a higher demand for
These house plants which means there’s more production which means there’s more greenhouse gas emissions coming I mean you don’t really think about it but they have to grow these plants in massive green houses which a lot of the times have to be heated and have the fans going which relies on fossil fuels
Burning there’s obviously a lot of water use that goes into keeping these plants hydrated there’s the materials to grow them like all the soil additives the fertilizers the plastic pots that they sit in and the transportation to take them from those Growers to the retailers and from those retailers to your front
Door so now that we have a little bit better understanding of the environmental problems caused by house plants uh the plan for the rest of our time is to actually go through and give you guys the tools you need to care for them more sustainably and it is true
That there isn’t like a zero net carbon way to get house plants but that does not mean that you shouldn’t have them again we are focused on making sustainability fun realistic and inclusive of everybody if you didn’t do anything that had greenhouse gas emissions none of you could have pets
Because as terrible as is to say they actually have a pretty high carbon footprint but they bring us a lot of joy and that’s what life’s about and house ples bring joy so you should still have your house planes so the first component of sustainably shopping is choosing the
Right plant for you I hate staring at myself in this picture right now but I’m just going to ignore it so the three most important factors to consider when choosing the right Flav for you are light water and time light is the by far the most important one without it your
Plants are going to die um even the stuff like snake plants that are labeled low light they do need sun you cannot stick them in a room without anything um I really hate that label of low light because all it essentially means is your plants are going to die slower if they
Don’t get a lot of light um if you have a lot of plants I do think it’s probably smart to invest in a light meter um you can see how much light each different spot gets so you can better cater your plants to that exact area but if you
Don’t have a lot of plants a compass works just as well figure out if you’re North facing south facing east facing or west facing and you can just Google what plants are best for that type of window and the second thing is watering think about how often you have to water it is
It a weekly water like most tropical plants is it a monthly water like snake plants and Cactus and that goes into time do you have the time to water it and to fertilize it and to treat it for pests and to repot it there’s a lot of things to consider when
Picking out a plant so I like to ask myself these three questions do I have room for it do I have time for it have I killed it before and if I don’t satisfy all of those questions I don’t buy the plant um that last one I learned the
Hard way I had a ma I probably had five maen hair ferns in my life killed every single one and I will never get another one of those because clearly they don’t like me and I don’t like them um another question to ask also is is this pet safe
If you have pets that like to nibble on Plants a lot of them are toxic um some much more so than others um so again rely on the internet for that do your best to Google it there are tons of good lists out there and great resources for
You to pick the plant that is best for you and your growing environment so now that you kind of know what plant is best for you what’s the best way to get it the most stainable way to actually procure it and like pretty much everything else buying locally and secondhand is the most
Eco-friendly Choice local nurseries hold a really special place in my heart because I worked at one for about a year and got an appreciation for how much hard work goes into curating those plans and making sure that they’re cared for properly um workers at local nurseries typically know a lot more about the
Plans so you can ask them questions about which one would be best for your environment um and the plants tend to be just a lot healthier because the people working at them actually know what they’re doing if there are pests people at local nurseries will treat those
Pests as opposed to buying plants at big box stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s or Walmart those typically come in in just giant shipments of stuff that is not growing in the most healthy soil and because people at those stores typically don’t know how to care for those house
Plants a lot of the times you’re buying them with disease with pests and with soil that is just not conducive to Growing happy and healthy plants um obviously you can still find some gems I have a lot of plants that I’ve gotten from them especially some big ones
Because they’re cheaper but typically I have to reput those into my own soil and I have dealt with the pests and all of that stuff um in addition to buying locally another great option is Facebook Marketplace and Facebook groups these got really popular during Co and afterwards especially locally like
Different like you know Washington DC plant group Winchester plant group and those are great ways to find people that are either looking to trade their plants or sell them um those groups and Facebook Marketplace you can really find some big ones for Ste s um with people
Moving they normally don’t like to move with their giant house plants so like I saw some like 8ot tall fiddly fig you can get for like a $100 if you watch it like a hawk if you watch it like a hawk and then for stuff like pots um
Plant stands and just Decor Goodwill and thrift shops have really awesome stuff I really like doing that because it adds a little more character to it instead of just buying like a plain white pot that every single person could get at Lowe and and in addition to buying stuff
There’s also ways you can pretty much just get house plans completely for free like I say joining those Facebook groups is a really great idea people are always looking to swap their plants and sometimes even giving them away for free um stuff like aloe poos um Tris scansa
They all grow super fast and people are always looking to get rid of them um so if you hop on there and just say you’re looking for this there is a very good chance there will be someone who’s like oh I have 14 of these that I don’t have
Time to take care of please come by and get them I’ve done that personally I’ve given away a ton of house plants that I don’t have time to take care of and most house plant people are pretty friendly and looking to make sure that these living things keep on living so that’s a
Great way to go about it and a lot of the times these plant groups also offer offer plant swaps I believe we hosted one in Winchester back in 2021 um and if that’s something you guys would like to see sustainability matters host again please let us know in the
Chat we could definitely try and organize that um for sometime either later this year or the spring of next year um we love seeing you guys and swapping plants is a pretty fun thing um and another great way to grow your house plant collection is through propagations
Based on the poll it seems like a lot of you guys were Pros on this um so I’m not going to go too much into detail but it’s a great way to essentially regrow plants from Plants that you already have um so you can do it two ways through
Cuting and division with cuting you take a cutting of the plant and regrow from there and with divisions you’re literally separating the plant at the root level and just like chopping in half and then you have two really happy new plans for free um if you’re cheap
With your gifts this is awesome gift eco-friendly don’t have to buy anything it’s like absolutely perfect especially if you have some rare plants people will really be really be feing for those uh those propagations so now that you have sustainably acquired your plant you know what plant
You want you went to that local store or Facebook or you went to a friend and you got the actual plant now let’s get into actually how to care for them sustainably and that includes the type of soil that you use unfortunately most of the soil bases and additives that are
Popular um are non-renewable energy intensive to collect and are overall just pretty bad for the planet so let’s start with the base of the soil which typically deals with the moisture retention um most soils that are super popular like miral grow or espoma use sagum Pete Moss as a beit a
Base which has been used since the 1940s and that piece comes that Pete comes primarily from sphagnum Pete mosses which grow in bogs primarily in Canada and Russia and these bogs cover about 5% of the Earth’s surface but sequester more carbon than all of the planets Forest combined so these guys are
Absolutely vital to our ecosystems they do a fantastic job sequestering that carbon um but unfortunately we use it for house plants Pete is harvested technically actually Mind by draining up that Wetland scraping the surface of the ground several feet deep and then once that Pete Moss is extracted it’s dried
Screened and compressed and as soon as all that’s harvested obviously it’s energy in like intensive to do that there are fossil fuels burning to collect it but as soon as it’s harvested all of that carbon that’s been stored up for centuries is released right back into the atmosphere so essentially we’re
Destroying ecosystems releasing carbon dioxide and using fossil fuels to do it so that’s kind of three strikes and you’re out and there actually are some countries that are now Banning the sale of it um including England they are Banning the sale of it in 2024 and Hannah I see your hand up two
Quick things first of all um Cara and I for some reason cannot chat to all the participants so if we’re trying to put links in the chat um I don’t think any of you can see them which is problematic and then while you’re trying to to fix that Kenny sorry we have a
Great question are having succulents as house plants more sustainable yes so actually a little bit later in the webinar I have plans but water usage is a big component of sustainable house plant care so choosing stuff that doesn’t use that much water is a great way to cut down on that water
Usage things like Cactus succulents um ponytail palms aloe are all really good choices and again I would really just Google lists for drought tolerant house PL you will get a ton of great options um I personally am a notorious succulent killer I don’t know what it is about
Them I think the biggest myth in the house plant world is that succulents are easy to take care of um to me low maintenance and easy are not the same thing um but yes doing stuff that is drought tolerant will just mean that you don’t have to use that much water which is
Great um but yeah so England banned the sale of Pete Moss in 2024 which is awesome hopefully more countries do that going going forward um it’s an unsustainable resource but a nice sustainable alternative is Coco Co which is a waste byproduct of the coconut industry it’s literally just the outer
Shells of coconut crushed and ground up into super small fibers and it is great is for holding on to that moisture and I personally find that it works just as well as Pete Moss and it’s almost kind of shiny sometimes too so I actually
Kind of look the look of it a little bit more and then in addition to the moist your retention there’s also the ation and drainage components of soil so it is a vital component of the soil because you got to make sure that those roots are getting the oxygen that they need to
Grow perlite is superheated volcanic glass and vermiculite is a superheated naturally occurring mineral so as you can probably guess that is not overly sustainable it takes fossil fuels to mine those fossil fuels for the Intensive heating to actually get them to a point where you can use them for
Your house plants um and those both come at a super super high carbon price but thankfully there are again some great eco-friendly alternatives to that Coco husk is literally just again the outside of coconuts they’re just not broken down as much um those are great to make sure
You get air to the roots pumis um that is a natural unprocessed organic product it does come from mine so there is still the fossil fuel of mining it and transport so it’s not the most sustainable but it is definitely better than perlite and vermiculite and then
Bark is also a great one um they’re not typically cutting down trees for that it’s Ty just a byproduct of other industries that they use it for um and those also contain some minerals and nutrients which are really good for your soil and sand is great it’s like my
Favorite soil additive um there’s a lot of sand and there’s also a lot of glass sand now so if you’re able to find s like glass bottles that can’t be recycled a lot of the times they’re broken down turned into glass if you can find those particles small enough
They’re not super sharp so I mean they’re not like not sharp um but you can add them them into your soil keep them from going into the landfill and it actually adds a really nice Sparkle because if you got like a blue bottle or something you’re going to have a nice
Little blue sparkle in your soil and that’s fun who doesn’t love a little Sparkle in their life right and if you don’t have a lot of house plants you probably don’t want yes Hannah look like you about to talk oh oh good okay if you don’t have a
Lot of house plants you probably don’t want to be buying like five or you know four five different soil additives to add to your soil that makes complete sense that’s a lot of time that’s a lot of money so one of my personal favorite products is Rosy soil that is a carbon
Neutral soil they have really really good materials I’ve worked with them in the past on my own um and again we’ll put the link for that in the resources that we send out after this webinar um but just a great company Net Car like neutral carbon footprint and it’s just a
Lot easier than mixing your own soil if you’re not super about the house plant so we got a little bit ahead of ourselves with this but now we are to reducing our water usage um and although the water cycle is technically makes water a renewable and infinite resource
In reality there is not really an excess of fresh water around the world um according to a 2023 study by the UN two billion people around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water and the overuse of fresh water in household settings means that there’s less water
For agricultural use and this is kind of a very very future look at it but you know if we keep pulling using all this fresh water we’re eventually going to have to start pulling it out of aquifers and groundwater supplies which will most likely have slower regeneration rates
Than the extraction rates which could leave us without fresh water um again that is a very very far in the future but even today water takes a lot of time energy and money to filter and clean so that it’s drinkable um I think people often forget about this part in the
Water cycle like if you go to the bathroom that does not just immediately go back into your sink um there’s a lot of fossil fuels and time and money that goes into cleaning that water and that uses fossil fuels which are not that renewable and again reducing your water
Use will also just save you money so it’s helping the planet and it’s helping you and the first step in reducing your water usage is really just learning how to water properly and that includes making sure that you pick the right soil so we just went through all those soil
Additives you can use for stuff like tropical plants they typically like their soil to relatively moist so you should probably prioritize having a good abundance of cocoa corer in that um and probably don’t need as much of the cocoa bark or the sand or the pumis which will
Make the soil dry out faster um overwatering is typically very common among plant parents especially beginners I used to overwater like an absolute fiend because you know more water equals more love right um that’s completely wrong and I learned that lesson the hard way I lost a lot of plants to root rot
Learning that lesson um you see them drooping you just think oh they need more water and they’ll park right back up it’s like no you’re actually just suffocating those roots they’re getting no air and it’s not doing the best um and that mostly happens because of poor soil lack of
Varation watering too often which often comes from watering schedules um watering schedules are super helpful for busy people we’re all busy people and it’s pretty easy to forget about house plants because they can’t scream at us when they need water um but a lot of the times with watering schedules you can
End up watering a lot more than you need to or not enough um there have been some plant that when I used a watering schedule and I looked at it and I was like I don’t know how I didn’t notice you looks terrible for a week but it was
Kind of past the point of saving by the time that I checked on it so instead of relying on a watering schedule I just recommend using the good old finger test um unless you have a cactus or a succulent pretty much all house plants are Tropicals and in general you can let
The soil dry out about one and a half to two Ines um so pretty much that’s like 7 to 10 days depending on what house plant you have but in the mornings I’ll just walk through and just stick my finger right in the soil if it’s still wet I don’t
Need to water it if it’s dry I probably do it’s really it’s as simple as that now there are some water saving hacks you can kind of do to reduce the amount of water that you use um one of them is bottom watering which is probably my preferred method of watering
Plants because it saves th uh water and just a lot easier but essentially you just have to fill a bowl or a tray with water and place your plants directly in there they suck up all that water into the soil through their roots and it’s great because they take only what they
Need normally when you’re watering from the top you do it until it drains out of the bottom of those drainage holes and you can literally see water just seeping out that is not being used for anything and it’s just going to have to be filtered again reusing those fossil
Fuels but with bottom watering it just takes exactly what it needs um I like using boot trays for this Tupperware if it’s small stuff but also those big plastic bins they work really really well you can just load all your plants in there fill it up an inch or so it’ll
Take like 30 minutes you take them all out and then you’re done it’s super super easy um there’s also self-watering Planters which is pretty much the same basic idea as that bottom watering um and I’ll show you how to make your own in a couple slides actually pot material
Is also very very important for this ceramic and plastic pots tend to hold on to water the best um whenever you buy a plant you’re typically buying it in that plastic Nursery pot so for tropical I like to do my best to actually keep it in there because I don’t have to throw
It away and it also just makes the plant stay moist longer so I don’t have to water it as often and then I can just stick it in a decorative planter on the outside so it still looks nice and aesthetic because that is one of the most important parts of the house plants
I know is making your space livable and making it fun um but stuff like terra cotta like you see on the screen that is Clay it is pretty porous like it absorbs the water so it will actually cause your soil to dry out a lot faster um I don’t
Really plant any of my Tropicals in it just because I don’t want to have to water that often they can still do well in there you just have to water it more often which again takes you more time uses more water um so just something to consider and another water saving hack
Is really just capturing the water that you are already using um when you’re waiting for your water to heat up in the sink or in the shower you can just stick a bucket underneath to capture all that water and use it to water your house plants or the plants in your garden um
This is really nice because if you let it sit out for a few days when you do this all of the chemicals that are in the water from the tap will eventually evaporate out um which is great because a lot of these delicate house plants like Calia or some of the variegated
Stuff need distilled water because those minerals can end up burning the leaves so you’re essentially getting that stuff for free when you otherwise either have to use like a brittle water filter or just go buy a plastic gallon jug of distilled or spring water from the grocery
Store and one of the best ways to just capture water is capturing rain water water um I’m not going to go into too much detail about this I’ve personally never set one up before because I am not a homeowner um but we will be sure to
Send you guys a link for how you can set it up in the resources that we send you guys after um there’s lots of ways to do it but essentially you’re just redirecting your gutters um instead of going to a drain or to the street like
They probably go to now you just have a rain barrel and it goes all in there during a moderate rainstorm it averages about like an eighth of an inch of rain um to fall each hour so if you have five 100 square feet roof that can fill a
Properly installed 50 gallon Rain Barrel in about an hour and 50 gallons is a lot of water I mean personally that would last me for months and I have a lot of house plans so one rainstorm could kind of give you all you need for a really
Really long time if you set this up and although it seems pretty counterintuitive growing plants hydroponically exclusively in water actually uses a lot less of it um 70 to 90% less water to be exact which is pretty crazy and it actually grows happier and healthier plants because there’s better nutrient absorption
Because those roots have direct access to the water it doesn’t have to go through the soil or anything so plants grow faster they grow bigger and there’s a much lower chance of pests um and disease personally I have a few plants that I started out as propagations that
Have literally lived in water for years and they’re absolutely thriving they’re not even in a hydroponic system um the picture I had on the cuting versus division slide a few ago um hold two monstero propagations I took those in 2021 um and both of them are still alive
And thriving now I am not the best about changing the water I’ll be completely honest I probably only add to it every month and add fertilizer maybe once a year um so I don’t really pay attention to it but both of them have grown like
Five or six new leaves since then um and they’re absolutely thriving never had any issues with them would highly recommend plus you get to look at those crazy Roots which I think is just as appealing as looking at the leaves to be completely honest and of course like I said at the
Beginning um the one of the best ways to cut down on your water usage is simply choosing house plants that don’t actually need that much water so stuff like snake plants Jades zzy plants Cactus and succulents ponytail palms aloe Drina those are all awesome awesome drought tolerant options and again
Really just rely on Google for that that’s how I learned every single thing that I know about house plant is from Google and trial and error there are so many resources out there whether it be on Facebook groups Reddit um I don’t know maybe you’re on threads um there
Are a bunch of ways to get information on house plants and a bunch of lists out there to give you exactly what you need so in addition to the watering there is also you know fertilizers and and potential pests that you’re going to be dealing with with house plants and
Unfortunately a lot of those are pretty chemically intensive but thankfully there are some allnatural substitutes that you can use um fertilizers tons of food scraps that would otherwise end up in our landfills generating methane can be used as allnatural fertilizers banana peels are chocked full of pottassium
Which helps with the movement of water and nutrients and carbohydrates and plant tissue so just creating happier and healthier plants you can either bury those directly into the soil of your plants honestly would not recommend doing that for your house plants but if you got an outdoor Garden works really
Really well um or you can soak them in water for a few days like up to a week and then pour that into your soil and it in theory will have some pottassium to help your plants grow happy and healthy coffee grounds are another great one um
They have tons of nitrogen which is a crucial crucial component of the chlorophyll molecule which enables plants to capture sunlight through photosynthesis so it’s kind of what makes the plants green and allows them to live very very important stuff you can literally just toss coffee grounds
On the soil of your plants and you can see a huge difference I forget who it was one of our board members said they did this with one of their pieace lies um it was struggling for years they started putting these coffee ground fertilizers in it and within a couple
Months it had grown a ton so it really really works um eggshells are another great one all you got to do is rinse them with warm water and then kind of pound them into a powder um and they are great for calcium which helps build strong plant walls to prevent disease um
And pests um and again just sprinkle those around the soil of your plant and even fish tank water um I’ve never done this because I don’t have fish um that was actually one of my first phobias was fish um I just I don’t know why they’re just really creepy and they always like
Wiggle around when they’re out of water just not for me not for me but anyway aquarium water accumulates nitrogen phosphorus a bunch of minerals and good bacteria and microorganisms um that is great for your plants and if you have a freshwater tank you probably know you have to be changing that every couple
Weeks maybe every couple months depending on how good you are at it um but otherwise you would pretty much just be tossing that water down the sink but you can just use it to water your plants it probably doesn’t smell the best so again maybe use this for your outdoor
Garden or at least test it out there before the house plants because I cannot give you an accurate description of how it’s going to smell um but it is a great way to make sure that that water doesn’t go to use go go to waste and last is
Compost I am far far from a compost expert I kind of live a nomadic lifestyle at the moment so I don’t really have a good place to have a compost pile and I don’t really feel like carrying on a compost bin with me everywhere I go as much as I would like
To um but if you do have land and you are composting you can also just throw all of these into the compost um and then use your compost for your plants and that would work just as well if not better than all of these little fertilizer
Hacks and if you have house plants you are pretty much guaranteed to have pest at some point and typically when you treat them you’re going to use a pesticide which is very chemically intensive you’re probably going to take it outside to spray it so it’s not inside around your plant around your
Pets and your kids um or you take it to the sink in the shower so you can just walk wash it down the drain um unfortunately when you wash it down the drain it enters our waterways it contaminates the soil it contaminates other vegetation so in addition to killing those pests that you’re
Potentially targeting it can also kill and harm Birds fish beneficial insects and plants that you might not have been targeting with it so as an alternative neem oil is really great it’s a actal product that comes from the neem tree which is native to India it’s organic it’s
Biodegradable um and the EPA has found that NE oil has pretty much no unreasonable adverse effects so it’s really good to use and it is great because it only targets Leaf sucking and chewing insects so it will not kill the beneficial stuff and it kills insects at all stages of development adult larvae
And egg um a lot of them will only kill the adult version or only kill the egg version but if you’re not getting them at all three stages you’re really not like you’re going to have to be continually treating it over and over again and you can pretty much make your
Own by just dropping in a little bit of dish soap into a gallon of water and two tablespoons of neem oil Shake It Up spray it onto your plants and it should pretty much get rid of the problems you’re still probably going to have to
Do a couple of treatments of it um but it works really well in my opinion but when you do that be sure to keep your plants out of direct sunlight for a couple hours if you spray them with neem oil and then they get hit with direct
Sunlight that can end up causing crazy discoloration on your leaves which pretty much nobody wants because you don’t want yellow leaves when your plants are supposed to be looking green now on to our last topic of the day it’s upcycling what have you pause for a
Second we had a couple questions come in on that last section um one question is around coffee grounds um Amanda asked do coffee grounds make the soil acidic so you would need to be careful which plants you put them on they do and thank you for reminding me
About that Amanda um they are a pretty highly acidic thing so you do want to be sure that you are only putting them on plants that like that kind of soil and be Shing to use it sparingly um so if you make like four cups of coffee in
Your house in the morning and you just have like one of those big things that’s just like seeping out coffee do not toss all of that onto one of your plants it will not do well a little goes a long way you can kind of just sprinkle it
Around the base of your plant and it should be fine and then one other question Ryan asked are there any concerns around bacteria growth when storing large amounts of water for long periods of time um there definitely is that um concern um I personally would make sure
That you’re not storing it outside and open I did that once on accident with my compost and got a whole bunch of maggots which is great for the compost which but was not great for my back deck um so there is a concern about that um I am
Far from an expert on that bacteria so I would just refer you to go to Google it will be your best friend and you can find that information but I don’t want to share anything that I am not positive with anymore yeah I see Amanda also asked how do you feel about insecticidal
Soap insecticidal soap I don’t know if I’ve actually used insecticidal soap before but I have just used regular dish soap as a cleaning solution um and that works really well to get rid of dust particles it helps your plants capture more sunlight um and also is something
That you already have on hand and is already going down your drain so it’s not really doing anything more than you would already be doing awesome well upcycling is pretty much our last topic of the day there are tons of stuff that’s already at home and that like single use Plastics that work
Perfectly for plants um upcycling Planters yogurt containers most of those are number four or five Plastics which are not accepted in curbside recycling so you can either use those as pots as propagation vessels really anything um you can hot glue or super glue some rope around the side and kind of wrap it
Around to make it look like a basket um if you want that kind of vibe but you can also just leave it as like here’s my oose yogurt container that happens to have catnip in it um I do this I’m obsessed with Cafe Bell for my morning
Coffee and it comes in these cool little like yellow tubs um so I just drilled holes into the bottom of that and I consistently grow cat grass in there and I love the vibe because it’s like it’s a plastic container it just looks pretty cool um so stuff like yeah yogurt
Containers plastic cups maybe you’re obsessed with Slurpees you can use those for your plants you just got to make sure that there’s a hole on the bottom so any excess water is draining out um and glass jars are really like my favorite thing in the world um I’m not a
Dumpster diver by any means but um I have been known to see a like nice whiskey bottle in a recycling bin and grab it because it looks really really good for terrariums um not a whiskey Drinker myself like no hair on this chest um but I absolutely love the way
They look especially Jack Daniels it’s very Sleek but you can use those for terrariums which are essentially enclosed ecosystems like the one you see on the screen um they consistently recycle the water and nutrients that are in there and in theory they can be sealed and pretty much live forever
There’s one super famous one I’m blanking on the guy’s name but he closed it I think 66 maybe 70 years ago um and it is still going strong it is absolutely crazy um it’s a super fun hobby it’s actually how I got into house plants really is doing terrariums and
Also really fun for kids because lets them design their own ecosystem learn more about the water cycle nutrient cycling and stuff like that and stuff you can reuse for water gallon jugs I don’t really use watering cans because most of them don’t hold that much um but they’re great because a
Lot of fertilizers um are measured in gallons it’ll be one tablespoon per gallon so you can just fill up the water put it in there and mix it um obviously you don’t need like a hundred different watering jugs so if you buy a gallon of milk every week you can’t really use the
This for everything but you can also use those jugs for winter sewing seeds which Hannah one of our amazing panelists uh gives workshops on or for propagating stuff essentially you just have to kind of chop it in half and treat it like a chest so there’s a little bit of a flap
Still um put soil in the bottom put your plants in there and it will create a nice humid environment which is really perfect for seeds and propagations to thrive um and then plastic bottles um like that gatorade bottle you see on the screen that is great for watering Moss
Poles all you have to do is poke some holes in the top of the cap stick right on there and it will create a little bit of a drip system to get all of that stuff nice and hydrated and there are a couple of ways you can create your DIY self-watering
Containers like I talked about earlier but essentially you just slice a bottle in half poke a hole through the bottle cap and then feed a little thread or rope through it um then you put your plant in the top half it’s you guys can kind of tell from the picture that’s on
The screen that’s how you do it um it works really really well I actually did this on our own Instagram page cutting a wine bottle in half which was quite the process um but it works really really well I stuck a fern in there which is a
Plant that really likes to stay moist and relatively humid and I didn’t have to refill that wine bottle with water for probably a month um which is really awesome because that means you can have more high maintenance plants that you don’t have to take care of that much and
You’re pretty much ensuring that they’re growing healthy and staying moist the entire time and for plants that are too big for that um you can also create your a different kind of drip system by poking a hole through the bottle cat sticking a Q-tip through it making sure
That it’s super snug so none of the water is just like dripping out and like flowing um take take a chopstick or steak to that bottle flip it upside down and then stick it right in the plant oh not in the plant but in the soil like
You don’t want to be stabbing your plant with this thing obviously um but that will create again kind of a drip system um that will just keep the soil relatively moist and consistently just doing good for your plant um that’s really great if you’re going out of town
For a few days and you don’t don’t necessarily want to transfer everything to plastic pots that are flipped upside down um you can create that drip system that works really well and then I think this is my last slide actually a some household items you can use for plants cardboard and
Newspaper I Rely heavily on this every single time I repot a cactus um I get poked a lot when I repot without them um but you can essentially kind of wrap that around the base of your Cactus and then use it to either take it out so
You’re not actually touching any of that spiky stuff to go contain ERS if you don’t take your glass ones to the restaurant um you can use those for propagations and maybe if they look nice even for terrariums maybe you’ve chipped a plate or a saucer and you don’t want
To use it for dinner guests don’t throw it away just stick it underneath your plant and use it as a drainage saucer those flimsy plastic ones you can buy at Home Depot in Lowe’s I guarantee those will break on you if you put a heavy plant on there I have learned that the
Hard way um in my last place I had a CIA that looked very very nice um and it looked great and I was so happy with it until I picked it up to move and I saw that the drainage saucer had been broken for the past few months and it damaged
The hardwood floor and thankfully my sister paid the security deposit I didn’t um but it was it cost a little bit so always avoid that if you can and you know I should have known better I should have just used a plate um and then old t-shirts and Rags instead of
Throwing them out you can use it to clean your leaves or just as towels um you will inevitably dribble some water when you have house plants it’s 100% a’t going to happen um you don’t need to use paper towels to clean it up just use the stuff that you already
Have and that kind of concludes the formal portion of the presentation I think we still got a few minutes for Q&A if you guys want to hop into that I think we answered all of the questions that have come in so far um I’ll give people a moment to throw some
Any more any other question questions in the chat or in the Q&A if you want to um while we wait Kenny I have a question for you when I have tried the coffee grounds before they have gotten moldy so does that mean I put too many in there
Or should I kind of bury them in the dirt a little bit what did I do wrong possibly too many and you can also just add a little bit and kind of mix it into the soil and that should do well um but also mold is not always a bad sign with
House plants um I’ve had a lot of healthy ones that actually have just kind of a consistent layer growing on the top or at one the drainage hols on the bottom and I have never personally actually found that to be a massive issue you can always just scrape it off
Um and it kind of does fine and I just remembered we actually have an exit poll for you guys so I’m going to share that with you while we answer some of your questions we have a question in the Q&A do you have suggestions for how to deal with fungus
Nets yes those those are the absolute worst if you get them they are super hard to get rid of and they’re just so dumb they’ll fly in your coffee if you have any open container of liquid they’re just going to fly in it I have I’ve probably drank at least 10 fungus
Snats in my day um the protein is not significant zero out of 10 would not recommend um but the best way you can get rid of them is by making sure you don’t have any sitting water out um so like if you water something and the drainage tray fills up they like that
Sitting water so make sure to dump that out and maybe you can use it to water another plant they also feed on decaying plant matter so if you have a bunch of dead leaves on your plant make sure to take those off because it can do well um
And one of the best things you can do is also just put a layer of sand on the top of your soil um they lay their eggs right beneath the surface and then they have to crawl up through the soil once they hatch and on a microscopic level
Sand is essentially razor sharp and it just shreds them to tears um it’s not like the most effective way but if you continually Do It um it does work you can also water mix water with hydrogen peroxide and water that and put that into your soil um I’ve done that
You don’t need to use that much hydrogen peroxide but that also works well it just takes a couple of different treatments we have had a few more questions come in um Amanda says I have a jade plant I want to grow and make it more full I heard that you can poke a
Hole in the bark and a branch will form do you have any advice for this yeah a lot of plants kind of they can grow like that fly figs the same way it’s called notching um but if you essentially just yeah cut a little spot in there it can
Regrow like that um you can also propagate Jades very very easily from Leaf cuttings so if you just like hack off one of those leaves and stick it in soil you can cover it with something to keep it humid um that’s also a great way to propagate those
Another question is which type of plants can you grow hydroponically pretty much everything um I’ve actually never seen like Cactus or succulents but I’m pretty sure you can do it um but essentially every single tropical plant can be grown hydroponically like I said I do monsteras you can do poos um pretty much
Any tropical plant I’ve seen can kind of grow indefinitely um and there are also really really cool hydroponic systems out there that grow herbs I have lettuce grow if you’ve heard of those or Arrow Gardens um they are pretty expensive but you can kind of convert them into your
Own house plant type stuff you just got to get little plugs for them um and you can create your own hydroponic systems out of just like a regular plastic bin and that will be in the resources that we send you after this webinar we have another question when
Leaves start to yellow on the end is that an indication of too much watering ah it is very hard to to say because yellow leaves can come from overwatering they can come from underwatering they can come from pests and they can come from too much sunlight so it’s really hard to say without
Knowing exactly your environmental conditions um but in general if you see leaves yellowing it’s typically a watering issue so I would go through check those roots if they look mushy and brown and your plants kind of limp in additions those yellows you most likely
Have root rot um and you can fix that by chopping off those roots and replanting it into a more medium um but if you see those plants are healthy and it’s still turning yellow it is most likely an underwatering issue so you could actually up it a little bit um or it’s
Potentially getting a little too much sunlight um if you see it like crisping up and turning brown in addition to Yellow that is most likely ass sign up either too much sun or not enough humidity I think we have time for just one last quick question I think this is
A great one to end on Meg wants to know if you could start your plant collection over what is the number one piece of advice you wish you could have followed from the beginning that’s a really good question I’ve actually never really thought about that before but um I think it would
Definitely be just growing my collection too big too fast um I was definitely someone who fell into that mode of seeing plants as Commodities and things to be collected rather than living things and I ended up just killing a lot of plants as a result and at the time
Like I said I was kind of Happy because it just gave me a new place to put a plant but looking back at it it was just kind of just a really terrible system I was throwing away tons of money by letting these plants die um and hurting
The environment as a result so I do really wish that I had been more targeted in my curation because I feel like I would love all of the plants that I have instead of having some that I love and some that I just happen to buy
Because I was bored on a Saturday and wanted to go plant shopping um because there are now a lot of plants that I have that I mean I still want want to take care of them they’re still living things I still really really value them
But I mean I like a lot of my house plants a lot more than the other ones um and sometimes when I’m taking care of those ones that I’m not quite as passionate about I’m really sitting there like like it feels like a chore more than it really should like this should
Be a fun hobby one that’s bringing me joy one that’s bringing you Joy so I would really just make sure that the plants that you get you’re absolutely in love with um and making sure that you have the right conditions at home to take care of it like I said kept buying
Maiden hair ferns like an absolute fool and eventually I realized this just isn’t the plan for me so pay attention to your past mistakes be conscious about what you’re bringing into your home and build that indoor jungle slowly because you’re going to learn how to take care of each plant individually before you
Have an overwhelming amount where you just feel like it’s almost a lost cause thanks Kenny I think those are all the questions awesome well before we let let you guys go we want to share a couple of upcoming in-person events that sustainability matters has on September
30th we will be having lunch at the rapit hanet county landfill on October 7th Hannah will be tabling with some of her Mountain Vista Governor school students at the tree Fest in Winchester at Jim Barnett Park where we will actually be installing a native pollinator Meadow next year so if you
Want to see that site um get out there it’ll be a super fun event I believe there’s also a Halloween event that’s happening in the park of that City day so you could kind of go for a two for one um would highly recommend checking
That Park out on October 22nd we have a seed Gathering event in Shen andoa um that and the landfill are for members and volunteers only so if you would like more information please join us as a member um and feel free to reach out to us on Instagram if you have questions
About that um and we’ll be sure to get back to you to give you all the details for those events and then on October 29th there is an art show at Muse Vineyard in Woodstock Virginia they will be donating a proceed of that art show to sustainability matters and those art
Pieces will be up for sale I believe beginning October 1st um up for the entire month so if you want to go check them out beforehand please do um if you find something you like please buy it because that helps sustainability matters and could make your house even more
Beautiful but I think that kind of concludes the webinar for today so thank you guys so much for taking the time out of your Tuesday afternoon to spend with sustainability matters and hearing me Yap at you guys some more um I really hope you found this webinar useful um
And if you did please be sure to share sustainability matters with your friends and your community members we are really trying to grow our online presence and just kind of spread out just from the shenan NOA Valley so if you know people from around the way please share
Sustainability matters with them um and thank you guys for your continued support like I mentioned we will be sending out a follow-up email after this webinar that will have all of the resources I mentioned in there as well well as a recording of the webinar which
Will be on YouTube in a couple weeks Facebook I believe immediately and through Eventbrite you should have access to it for a couple days as well in that follow-up email and as I said if you guys have any questions please feel free to reach out to us either at our
Email address through the contact form on our website or just through messaging us on Instagram um or on Facebook if you use it I will do my best to monitor that as best I can especially after this well thank you guys we are going to
Head and end the webinar um but I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your T Tuesday evening and I hope to see you guys at more future sustainability matters events thank y’all