Tovah Martin’s The Indestructible Houseplant: 200 Everyone Can Grow

Plant-lovers oftentimes favor conversation and music for houseplants. They give companion planting similar priority. Planting associations heighten indestructibility.

Room-sharing involves:

• African violets;
• air (friendship/urn), aluminum, barbershop (cast-iron), beefsteak, burn, century, inch (oyster), measles (polka dot), mirror, mosaic (nerve/rattlesnake/silver net), never-never (prayer), panda, radiator, snake (mother-in-law’s tongue), spider, zebra, zz plants;
• begonias, bishop’s cap (fire-sticks, Medusa’s head), blue chalk-sticks, blue daze ;
• Chinese evergreens;
• Christmas, mistletoe (old man’s head) cacti;
• club, spike mosses;
• crotons;
• dracaena;
• elephant foot, fig, octopus trees;
• false/Ming arralias, ferns;
• geraniums;
• hens and chicks (house leek);
• Hindu rope (porcelain/wax flower), maidenhair (wire) vines;
• ivies;
• Joseph’s coat;
• Malaysian grapes, Mexican mint;
• Norfolk Island pines;
• peace lilies, philodendrons, pothos;
• sedges, silver squills, slipper orchids, snow roses, string-of-pearls. 

Plant-lovers ultimately judge container-sharing as sustainable with same-species only. They keep indestructibles indestructible by:

• fertilizing compost- and loam-enriched potting soils with fish emulsion-reinforced organic fertilizers every 3 to 4 weeks from early spring to late fall;
• potting in clay or hand-thrown or unglazed terracotta with subtle base-mouth flares;
• pouring a 2-inch (5.08-centimeter) layer over surfaces before soils feel dry, leave nothing on probes, pale in color;
• propagating by leaf wedges, root-ball division, stem cuttings;
• repotting in spring when root-balls fill 2- to 3-inch (5.08- to 7.62-centimeter) container wall margins;
• respecting night-time temperatures of 60°F (15.56°C);
• sun-lighting 36 inches (91.44 centimeters) from west-facing windows;
• trimming super-leggy wintery, super-thick autumnal growths.

Each above-mentioned experience leaves them houseplant sustainability experts. 

Environmental stress makes even newbies disease and pest managers. It necessitates treatments which ask of houseplants:

• extermination, mists, oils, soaps, traps respectively against mealybugs, spider mites, scale, aphids, whiteflies;
• watering adjustments when waterlogged soils harbor fungus gnats.

But it never obstructs configuring households into fragrant, lush, radiant homes so long as containers remain inaccessible to children and pets and gloves serve to protect hands during such contact activities as:

• fertilizing;
• irrigating;
• misting;
• pruning, propagating;
• repotting, rotating;
• spraying;
• trapping.

All interactions indeed offer hopes for sustaining fresh, green, healthy, inviting households with Tovah Martin’s 2015-released Timber Press publication about The Indestructible Houseplant adept at:

• self-defense with contact irritants;
• self-promotion with pleasing structures and textures;
• self-sufficiency with minimal care. 

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources. 

Martin, Tovah. 2015. The Indestructible Houseplant: 200 Beautiful Plants That Everyone Can Grow. Portland, OR, U.S.A.: Timber Press, Inc.