I am looking for some green stuff (no not the smoking type) to put inside my living room. What plants can you recommend that are low maintainence and survive indoors?
This one does very good indoors plus you can create many more from it (attached image). I am looking for something that is 2-3 times larger. Do you take your plants to the balcony every morning for sunlight? Any secrets that you want to share? Are there any plants you leave outside in your balcony for the whole year? Do they survive in Swiss conditions?
I have found peace lilies survive here and you can divide them too. I have bought plants from Coop, Ikea, Migros plus general garden centres and have found the trick to getting them to flourish is to re-pot them immediately - they will usually need a larger pot and to buy a compost specifically for houseplants. Peace lilies are quite sturdy and will survive a few days neglect. In winter it's probably worthwhile misting the plants with water from a spray bottle because the air becomes dry with the central heating.
I have lavender and rosemary that I leave out all year round. They both need to be pruned right back in the autumn and then the following year they'll pop back up. However they won't provide you with anything over the winter.
I have found Orchids to be very low maintenance. I only water mine one time a week and don't take them to the sun. They should avoid breezes and cold. And if they lose their flowers, just keep watering once a week (fill the pot with water and let it out), and the plant will grow a new leaf first then grow new flowers. Sometimes this takes a few months, but it's really cool to watch it happen with little work.
I bought this plant from Coop a few months ago for CHF 80. I forget the name of it, but apparently it's from the South American jungle where it gets very little sunlight. Also NASA did some research on it and discovered it cleans the air in your living room.
It flowers as well, although the flower's gone at the mo.
My big secret is to water all of my plants with the water i take out of my aquarium. They love it! I should start bottling it.
I've had bad experience buying plants from Ikea. They are cheap - but they've always seemed to die shortly after I get them. I've never known whether it's because I'm crap at keeping plants, or because there is some other factor (like diseases) at work. I guess you get what you pay for...
Why not a philodendron? They have both volume and structure! They are the ones also known as "swiss cheese plants" and have slits in their leaves to let in light to all the neighbouring leaves (when they grow in the jungle!) I was assured at Migros florist dept. that they were coming back into fashion! I didn't realise they had gone out of fashion actually; I've had one for years and my daughter has grown cuttings from it. It's always an event when a new leaf unfolds. I think Migros plants are pretty good quality. I once bought 2 identical plants from Ikea, only to find that one of them must have had a disease of some kind; every time anyone walked past it a leaf or three would fall off until it was quite bald! Its twin still survives. I think re-potting after purchase is a good idea. Have fun.
Actually the main reason I started this thread (but did not want to say) was because I am a big plant killer :-( Ok not a killer but they stop being as leafy as they should be. So I am on the same boat as Mark. Should we be talking to the plants or something? :-)
Glenda nice! I like them. Actually they are perfect!
coop seems to have a special offer on some plants at the moment - yucca - which if you put on the balcony in the summer will possibly flower (lovely creamy-white bells). I have yet to meet anyone who has had a yucca die on them - there are other plants on special too and they're quite big and well-established.
I've gotten many from Coop Do-It (my second home nowadays )
Oh, Jumbo in Hinwil isn't bad either.
Water them? It said 3x weekly on the label - I've had 'em a month and watered 'em twice - look fine. All green-only (including one Swiss Cheese Plonker, sorry, plant )
I got mine from Ikea and Migros. Most of the ones Ikea sell are from the list of 10 plants that clean the air inside best. This list includes the palms and the ferns varieties that they sell there.
I used to be a plant killer but my Ikea plants are still great after 5 months. I got the palms for 29.95, you water them a little bit (say 0.5 liter) once a week, and once a month you add palm feed to the water. The ferns need about the same, i.e., once a week, but less water since they are much smaller size.
The Ikea palms I mentioned are big, they fill about 1m2. They do well near a window but not in full light, and outside they will burn, so keep them inside. The ferns are nice in the bedroom. Oh, and my Ikea plants seem disease free.
They are beautiful, delicate and exquisite and their subtlety matches the austere minimalist interiors of swiss apartments perfectly...but more importantly they are low-maintenance. I have neglected mine for weeks now and they are still there smiling at me in full-flower when I come home...which is more than I can say for...
I saw one metre high plants at Ikea on special last week 20chf down to 5chf. I also went through the plant section and picked myself out a nice little peace lily.
My main criticism of the Ikea plants is that most of them are pot-bound - they have out-grown the pots, and after that the roots go round and round in the pot and then stick out the bottom - so re-potting would be recommended.
If I was at home I'd buy about 10 x $2 Ikea pot plants, take 'em to my dad's place, re-pot them using his potting mix and pots and leave them in his greenhouse until he says one day 'Oh, did you forget about your plants ?' - then I know they are ready to come to my place...
Usually over-watering rather than under-watering is the problem for indoor plants. I put my little Ikea purchase into a container of water and soaked it when I got home, but I won't water it again until it looks droopy... that's the good thing about peace-lillies - easy to know when they need a water.
I saw some great big cocos palms at coop today - across the bridge from Central - left hand side facing Hauptbahnhof - they were in the window along the little side-street as we were walking past - looked great but huge plants in tiny pots... was thinking 'why do they do that' - then I realised, probably less weight for importation or transport - little pots take up a lot less room - and of course they keep them looking great in the greenhouse and then sell them at their peak...
