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There’s little evidence that indoor plants that repel spiders keep spiders out of a house. A potted peppermint or lavender gives off far too little scent to change where spiders go. Spiders come inside to hunt insects and find quiet shelter, so the fixes that work are cutting their food supply and closing the gaps … Read more >>
For most offices, a ZZ plant or snake plant is my top pick: both handle fluorescent or LED ceiling light, and both can go two weeks or more between waterings. If you want something that trails off a shelf, golden pothos is the next easiest choice and grows faster under overhead lights. Office plants fail … Read more >>
Yes, several beneficial bugs work well indoors. Predatory mites are the best pick for most houseplant owners with spider mites or thrips, because they’re tiny, they stay on infested plants, and they hunt pests in the leaf creases and undersides where sprays miss. For fungus gnats, beneficial nematodes or soil-dwelling mites handle the larvae in … Read more >>
If you want a bold look indoors, my top picks are Monstera deliciosa, fiddle leaf fig, rubber plant, bird of paradise, Alocasia, Philodendron selloum, banana and Calathea. Each one brings broad leaves that fill a corner faster than a shelf of small plants. For most American homes, I’d start with Monstera deliciosa, because it grows … Read more >>
Most tiny white bugs on indoor plants turn out to be one of a short list of culprits. If the white bits look like cotton and sit still on stems, you most likely have mealybugs; if they fly up when you brush the leaves, they’re whiteflies; and if they jump around in the soil, they’re … Read more >>
Most indoor plants do best with fertilizer every 2 to 4 weeks in spring and summer, when they’re putting out new leaves. I recommend a liquid houseplant fertilizer mixed at half strength every 2 to 4 weeks from spring through late summer, then tapering in fall and stopping from late fall to late winter unless … Read more >>
Yes, you can grow these two crops in the same bed, and they make easy neighbors. You can plant tomatoes and eggplant together as long as you give each plant 24 to 36 inches of space, keep the taller tomatoes on the north side, and move the whole bed to a new spot every 3 … Read more >>
Eggplant is a hungry, warm-season crop, and steady feeding is one of the simplest ways to get more fruit from each plant. To fertilize eggplant well, work compost and a balanced fertilizer into the bed at planting, side-dress when the first fruits set, and then feed every 3 to 4 weeks until growth slows in … Read more >>
The plants I’d keep away from eggplant are fennel, potatoes, sweet corn, black walnut trees, and big, hungry crops like cabbage or broccoli that crowd its roots. Other nightshades, such as tomatoes and peppers, can grow nearby with good spacing, but they shouldn’t follow eggplant in the same soil year after year. Eggplant is the … Read more >>
Pothos is the hanging plant I’d pick first for a dim room. It trails for several feet, keeps its leaves in a north-facing window, and recovers from a missed watering faster than almost anything else you can hang. Heartleaf philodendron is a close second for rooms that are even darker. For most homes, golden pothos … Read more >>
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