(Better back up now if you don't want to be here...)

Growing Plants

Light
Water
Making more plants
Some common plants

Hopefully, you have at least one window. (If you don't, move.) Find out which way it faces, and whether there are things like trees and buildings right outside it. If it is a clear view facing south, you have good light (usually called "direct sun" on those little plastic plant tags). If it is very shady or if it faces north, you don't have very good light. Assuming you live in a dormitory (or this window is in your bedroom), if your window faces east and you are a late riser, you don't have very good light. In all other cases you have reasonably decent light.

Before you buy a plant, read the little plastic tag stuck in the dirt, or ask the person selling it how much light it needs. (You should probably do both... then decide which one to believe.) This is important, especially if you don't have good light; a few kinds of plants will thrive in low light, and most others will just depress you. People who sell plants will be happy to tell you what kinds will do well with your lighting. (Customers who manage to keep one plant alive tend to come back for more; customers who kill their first plants are likely to give up.)

If you are making a cutting from a friend's plant, ask your friend what kind of light the plant gets and how well it's doing there.

Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink

Water your plant once a week, unless one of the following things is true.

• If your plant is a cactus, water it less often. If possible, ask the person you got it from how often to water it. Otherwise, water it every two weeks. (Don't blame me if it croaks. I haven't had much practice with cacti.)
• If your room is very dry, you might need to water the plant more often.
• If the plant tag or the person you got it from says how often to water it, do that. Tags won't say "water every six days", they'll say "keep the soil moist" or "allow the soil to dry out completely between waterings". Watering once a week, in a normal atmosphere, translates to allowing the soil to dry out slightly between waterings. You can figure it out from there. To test the soil, don't just touch the surface. Stick your finger about a centimeter down into the dirt.

Many plants are sufficiently gung-ho about asexual reproduction that you'll have no trouble persuading them to make more plants; some may even be doing it on their own already. You can buy hormonal rooting powder (white powder sold in little foil packets) to encourage the less helpful plants.

Making a cutting: quick and not very dirty

Some plants with leaves are so determined to survive that you can cut off a branch with a few leaves, stick the cut end in water, and practically watch the roots grow. Ok, so they don't actually grow that fast, but that's really all you have to do. Snap off a geranium leaf with an inch or two of stem, or cut off a finger's length of Christmas cactus, or whatever. You just stick the lower end into a cup of water; if you treat it as a normal plant (water it, give it light) it should put out roots in a few weeks. Then you plant it. (I guess if you want a hydroponic garden, you could just leave it in the cup forever...) This is a great way to get plants for free, and the ones that are willing to root are usually darned hard to kill.

Methods for more stubborn plants: rooting powder

Some plants get a kick out of making your life difficult. If you can't get a particular kind of plant to root in water, try rooting powder. Be sure to follow the directions on the packet; it probably says to dip the lower half-inch in powder, then plant it right away.

Just when you least expect it...

There are at least a few kinds of desert plants that don't understand this water thing, but root unexpectedly if you stick them in sandy soil and keep the soil vaguely damp. I rooted about a million jade plants this way by accident. A large, and presumably jaded, jade plant decided to End It All by rotting out its main stem. Fine, be that way, I said, but that looks really gross. The leaves at its perimeter still looked nice, so I got rid of the rotten stems and stuck the leaf clusters in the dirt. This looked marginally better, and I was in a silly mood, so I figured I wouldn't bother tossing the dirt until the plant finished dying, and I watered it quasiweekly with the other plants to keep the dust off. The leaflets all rooted out of sheer perverseness.

Some plants you might meet

Spider plants are notoriously easy. (See how fast they reproduce. :-) You needn't even bother buying one... get a shoot from a friend or from a plant growing in a restaurant or something. Just put the root end in water for a couple weeks before planting it.

Ferns are difficult. They require a more humid atmosphere than human habitations support, these days. Don't buy a fern unless you're experienced or you want to give it to someone to make them feel totally inadequate. Truly dedicated people can reproduce ferns, via spores or runners.

Some people say that African violets (those plants with the fuzzy leaves and the usually purple flowers) are tough to take care of, but I never had any problems with mine. You just have to keep the soil moist nearly all the time, I think. I also left my desk lamp on 16 hours a day... this might have something to do with it. It is possible to reproduce them from cuttings, although mine wasn't really enthusiastic about it. There are many different varieties of African violets, with different kinds of leaves and different colored flowers.

A Christmas cactus (not really a cactus) is pretty easy to take care of. You can reproduce it from cuttings. If you want it to bloom, you have to be careful about keeping it near a cold window in winter and not artificially lengthening its "day". Leaving the desk lamp on for gratuitously long periods seriously confused my Christmas cactus; it didn't bloom at all that winter.

Cacti can be surprisingly difficult to take care of, or possibly surprisingly easy. They can get odd infestations which can wipe out several cacti at once. You're best off buying a book that can tell you what to look for, and make sure whatever it is isn't crawling on any cactus you buy. Some cacti are (comparatively) easy to reproduce, because they make little cacti all around the main stem. I don't know how to reproduce the other kinds.

Jade plants are sometimes tough to get the hang of. Mine dropped a lot of leaves until I figured out how often they wanted to be watered. (They react the same way if you are watering them too little or too much.) I have managed to root some cuttings in sandy soil watered once a week.

Bromeliads are nifty-looking exotic plants that vary in difficulty; ask the person you're thinking of buying one from. Their leaves form a central cup, and some should be watered there; others may rot if you let water sit there. I saw one for sale that was patented or something; the tag said that asexual reproduction was strictly forbidden; since some bromeliads will do that entirely without your intervention, and most plants can't read, I'm not sure what the point was. As you can tell, I know nothing much about bromeliads, so here are some random links to better pages. In general, it seems that humidity is good, and letting the pot sit in water is bad. Oops.

STAY AWAY FROM VENUS FLYTRAPS. They are really neat plants, but nearly impossible to keep alive. You'll only get depressed. If you're looking for a challenge, you might try growing one in a terrarium; that's about the only way you can provide a sufficiently humid atmosphere. Flytraps are a really great present for people you want to feel inadequate.

A WARNING about carnivorous plants in general: they're getting rare in the wild because of opportunistic plant-sellers. Don't support their endangerment... jump to rei's page and read the bottom for more details.

Other resources

Sorry, but you get what you pay for. Here are a few links to other places that might be more able to help you.

Freshwater plants: Like in a fishtank. Try the rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants FAQ or newsgroup.

Bonsai: Those miniature trees. Try the rec.arts.bonsai newsgroup.

Outdoor plants: rec.gardens newsgroup, rec.gardens.roses FAQ and newsgroup, rec.gardens.orchids newsgroup, culinary herbs FAQ, sci.bio.botany newsgroup.

Eating plants: culinary herbs FAQ again, rec.food.veg.cooking newsgroup, lots o' vegetarian stuff.

Many people would like to know what house plants are poisonous, or non-poisonous, to small children. Here's where to find out:

• poisonous plants, click on plant name for picture and more information
• poisonous plants what parts are toxic and how much
• yet another list of poisonous plants
• perhaps more useful to you (unless you are writing a murder mystery), NON poisonous plants; for example, spider plants and african violets are OK.

For information about a particular kind of plant, you can also try a good search engine such as Google.

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