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Yes, lemongrass comes back every year, but only where winters stay frost-free or where you protect it from cold. Lemongrass returns on its own outdoors in USDA zones 10 and 11, often survives zone 9 with mulch and frost cover, and comes back in zones 8 and colder only if you overwinter it indoors or … Read more >>
You can grow lemongrass in pots almost anywhere in the US, even where winters dip well below freezing. Plant one lemongrass plant in a 5- to 10-gallon pot with drainage holes, fill it with a rich, well-draining potting mix, give it at least six hours of direct sun, and water whenever the top inch of … Read more >>
Yes, you can keep lemongrass alive and growing inside your home through the coldest US winter. To grow lemongrass indoors, give it a large pot with drainage, at least 6 hours of direct sun or an LED grow light, temperatures above 60°F, and soil that stays lightly moist. With that setup, you can cut fresh … Read more >>
Lemongrass needs two kinds of cutting each year: light tidying in summer and one hard cutback in late winter or early spring. To trim lemongrass, pull or snip off brown leaves as they show up, and once a year, just before new growth starts, cut the whole clump down to about 6 to 12 inches … Read more >>
Hanging baskets make a porch feel finished. But if every evening out there turns into a swatting session, your plants might be part of the problem, though probably not in the way you think. The good news is that you can keep mosquitoes away from hanging plants without giving up your ferns, petunias, or trailing … Read more >>
An overwatered areca palm shows yellow lower fronds, limp drooping growth, and soil that stays soggy for days. When soil stays that wet, the roots can’t get air, and they start to rot. To fix areca palm overwatering, stop watering, empty any standing water, check the roots, trim off any mushy brown ones, and repot … Read more >>
When a ZZ plant starts falling over, the most common culprit is wet soil that has started to rot the rhizomes and stalk bases. A ZZ plant falls over most often because overwatering has softened its rhizomes, followed by too little light, a top-heavy clump in a small or light pot, and less often thirst, … Read more >>
ZZ plants are naturally slow, but low light, winter, crowded rhizomes and watering problems can stall them completely. Here is how to get new shoots.
You hang a gorgeous basket by the front door, and two weeks later a house finch is sitting on a tidy little nest right in the middle of your petunias. It’s sweet, but it’s also a problem when you need to water. If you want to keep birds out of hanging plants, the trick is … Read more >>
Houseplants don’t clean the air in a typical American home in any way you’d notice. Air purifying plants absorb tiny amounts of chemicals in sealed lab chambers, but in a real house, normal air leaking in and out does far more cleaning than any number of pots you’d want on your shelves. I still think … Read more >>
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