You’ve always wanted that best friend that knows everything about houseplants and can give you advice that you can’t find on Google. Well, we found her!
We here at Lilac Market Headbands are a huge fan of flora and fauna (if our name doesn’t make that clear enough), but it’s not always easy to keep a plant both alive and well, or even just start learning the plant basics.
That’s where our miracle worker friend, Tasha Adams, comes in!
Owner of Hickory Lane Plants in Springfield, Missouri, Tasha was the first mobile plant business in the area. Her love of plants began in her office while she admired her colleagues' green buddies, and it planted the seed of starting her own plant shop. Working multiple jobs to keep her startup debt-free, Tasha opened the Hickory Lane Plant’s famous trailer Lucy in 2018. Now, Tasha has a thriving business at a quaint brick-and-mortar location, and helps everyone from the beginner to the advanced find the plant of their dreams!
Today, Tasha is answering all your burning plant baby questions to help you be the best plant parent, no matter what level you're at!
What are your top 10 best tips for plants (that even Google doesn’t know)?:
1. LED lights, if they’re bright and there’s enough of them, can keep a plant going if your light conditions aren’t ideal. A 36-count strip of LED lights can work, I use them myself. If you can, experiment with lights with a plant you don’t care about or have an abundance of, like a Pothos. Put it under there, then watch to see how it goes: is it growing? Is it burning? Some grow lights are actually for growing veggies, and those can burn houseplants. I actually put my Alocasia in a cabinet and I put the lights in there to create its own microbiome!
2. Do not repot as soon as you bring your plant home! There’s a stigma that the nursery pot is bad. Absolutely not true. Even the experienced planter gets the same spiel from me: You don’t have to repot this, give it time to get used to your environment first. Plants have to be shipped here, so they undergo hot, then cold, then air conditioner, back to heat, and now you’re making them put on a new pair of pants? That’s not very fair. You can even leave them in their smaller plastic nursery pot, then place that inside your larger preferred pot (it's pretty and makes watering cleaner!). The quickest way to kill a plant is to immediately repot them into a larger pot and water them in. Don’t do it.
3. Don’t be afraid to water. If your plant is in the correct pot for its size, over-watering is not defined by the amount of water that you give your plant, but by how frequently you water. The roots on a plant need oxygen, they have to breathe. But if they have water on their roots, they can’t get oxygen. It’s like putting a lot of moisturizer on our face, they need dry time. Plus, there’s bacteria in the soil, and if the water is there too long, bacteria can go crazy and you’ll get root rot. Give it one good drink each time it’s time to water, not daily sips of water. I’ll take my plants to the shower or sink and I spray down the plant first, then I use my own neem oil to get the leaf shine and keep pests away, rinse again, and then water the soil really well to make sure all the roots on every side have gotten a good drink. Finally, I let them drain, dry, and put them back. That replicates what they would experience in their natural environment.
4. Whenever you propagate a plant, mitigate the shock by promoting root growth. When it’s first cut, the plant has no roots to get nutrients, so it has nothing to support it until the roots grow back. That shock can be stressful, and for a healthier lifetime of the plant, you want to try to make it as stress-free as possible. Putting it in some kind of Ziploc bag or dome, even a cake topper, will create a little micro-environment where it’s really humid, which helps plants root faster. So if you have a cutting, take it and put it in a baggie and make it like a little greenhouse. You can put it in a window sill and monitor it for stress, like wilting. You can even just wrap the bottom of the roots in a bag, that’ll work, too.
5. If you tend to over-water, use terra cotta. Terra cotta is a porous clay, so it helps wick away moisture too. If you under-water, using ceramic or keeping them in the plastic (which is actually ideal), it will help hold more water. I water every two weeks, and if they can’t handle that, they aren’t in my plant family. I do all my maintenance that way. Maintenance on plants can be an hour to two hour thing, or you can make it 15 minutes. Your pot choice can help with your needs.
6. Try to keep a bi-weekly watering schedule. While it’s tempting, watering weekly can be hard to deal with, for you and your plants. Think of this scenario: if you water every single Sunday, and that week there wasn’t much sun, your plant baby won’t use as much water in the pot. So watering it more can create root rot. It’s okay to not water your plants every single week, and gives you more freedom in your schedule, too. Plants should be okay if you don’t water it every week.
7. Choose plants that fit your lifestyle. If you’re working from home, go ahead and get that rare collector plant that’s picky and even a bit challenging, that’s awesome. But if you’re never home and when you are you want to just relax, keep a plant that’s not so high maintenance. If you don’t have the time or energy to invest in regular care, just stay away from a thin-leaf plant and you’ll be fine. I have just enough plants that I’m able to take care of on the weekends, but I don’t overdo it.
8. Be confident with your plants! A lot of people feel like if there’s something wrong with their plant baby and they aren’t sure what to do, the answer is to repot. But much more likely, it just needs some water or more light. Be bold, change one thing at a time and take cues from your plant while checking the basics of what you know: is your soil dry? Do you need more light? Just start with one variable at a time instead of doing everything at once, that’s so important.
9. Be okay with not being a green thumb. No one has a natural green thumb. It’s just people willing to learn, and pure luck. I’ll still have the occasional death, but I always learned something from the experience. Whenever someone takes a plant and it dies, they take it so personally. They feel like they killed something. Plants are the new pets, and pets are the new children. The honest truth is that you need to accept that it’s okay to kill a plant and it’s extremely useful for your education. Plants don’t talk back, they need a day to a week to really respond to what you’re doing. So since it’s not an immediate “yes or no” answer, a lot of people struggle with that. Patience is absolutely key. You have to simplify it to focusing on the problem, decide one course of action, and then wait. Don’t do anything else until you see what it says back. If your plant is just maintaining, it’ll do even worse the more you mess with it. Owning a plant is an amazing opportunity to refine your patience and ability to listen. All of that is so important and will make you into a master plantperson!
10. If you could tell a budding plant parent one bit of advice, what would it be?:
Plants shouldn’t make you worry - they should be fun! They should make you happy, and so many people get stressed out by it. So if it’s not bringing you happiness, don’t keep it. Give it away or get rid of it, it should be enjoyable and not more work. Marie Kondo your plants! My collection has changed dramatically over the years and with changes in lifestyle, and keeping only the plants that bring me real joy in the family has been the best decision.
Tasha's Top Plant Recommendations at Every Level
For the Freshly Planted (Beginner):
For anyone just starting, the Snake plant is the easiest one. It only needs water every two weeks to a month. And what makes it so easy is the lighting is so versatile - you can put it in high or low light, it will still do well.
Next would be a Zz plant - but I like to call it the “easy Zz”, because it’s such a pretty and effortless plant. It’s thick-leaved, and it can take a wide range of different lighting situations. What’s cool about them is they have a water reservoir that they will pull water from if they need it. So if you under water it by chance, it’ll be fine, since it has a natural reserve.
And of course, a Pothos plant is one everyone has in their collection. Your mom had them, your mother’s mother had them, the neighbors would share them, it’s very common. It’s very adaptable, can be propagated easily (meaning to make more than one), and comes in lots of varieties. Plus, it looks so good in houses, you can literally have it strung around your home as decor. It’s so Instagram-worthy!
For the Budding Gardener (Intermediate):
This is a big family range, but the Philodendron family is a good plant to graduate into. They can take almost all types of lighting, except direct sunlight. Most houseplants don’t want to go into direct sunlight because they’ll burn.
Syngonium is a really popular plant, also known as Arrowhead plants. They can honestly be a great option for both beginner and intermediate plant parents. But what puts them into the next level up is you have to buy them online or find a reputable supplier in order to make sure that you’re getting a happy, healthy plant. Unlike other plants that are more common and can be found at a shop or Lowe’s for example, you would have to seek out this specific plant.
Hoya is a lovely thick-leaved plant, and they like a little bit higher amount of light, they don’t like it to be too dark. While they grow well in shade, they won't flower unless given enough light. So they prefer a West or South-facing window, and have more specific needs, unlike the Pothos. They're a big creeping plant, so they can really be a showcase in any room.
For the Master Grower (Advanced):
Unpopular opinion alert: A lot of people have trended toward succulents, and said “succulents are easy”. While they’re not rare by any means, I’ve lost count with how many people walk by and say “you don’t want me near your plants, I’ve even killed a cactus!”.
Somewhere, this idea came about that succulents or cacti are low-light bearing, minimal plants - but they’re definitely not! If you buy them, put them on your dining room table as decor and forget about them, they will die. And then, because of this false idea that they’re the easiest plant in the world, people aren’t willing to give plants a try again. They need less water and either a South or West-facing window, set outside under a covered porch or in the shade of a tree. Anything less than that, you’ll get what’s called “etiolation”, where the plant stretches towards light.
My very first plant was a Walmart succulent, you know the kind: the rocks were glued on, it had zero drainage. I brought it home, put it on my table, and it died a slow, painful death. But it’s because I had no idea they actually need more care! If you’ve had that experience do want to try again with either succulent or cactus, do your brightest window that you have, and stick with flood-drought watering. When you water it, you flood it so it’s very wet. And then you let it dry out completely, just like how it would be in nature.
Calatheas is one in particular even I struggle with, but they’re so worth it. I personally have quite a few in my personal collection, and I adore all of them, but my favorite is the Medallion Calathea! They appreciate a higher humidity, but they don’t need it to live. If their lighting and watering are off, that can kill the plant or create browning. The leaves are so darn cool, they’re just so beautiful and detailed, a brown spot ruins the whole thing. One variety, the White Fusion, is pretty hard to get a hold of, but if you do, a lot of people will put them in glass humidity domes. It looks like Beauty and the Beast!
If the advanced plants are the ones you have to hunt for, Alocasia would be top of the list. I don’t import or ship those. If I do get them, I get them locally. When I do get them, I wait at least two weeks to a month to sell them because they are picky. They’re another plant that wants higher humidity, and they’re more prone to spider mites since they have very thin leaves, which makes it easy for a mite to puncture. If someone says they have an Alocasia that’s struggling, I tell them to go home and look under the leaf of the plant. If you see webbing and clear dots, that is spider mites, which will suck the life out of your plant. So they require more regular checking.
Want to get to know Hickory Lane Plants?
Check out their storefront on 1938 St. Glenstone Suite D in Springfield, or catch them at the local Farmer's Market of the Ozarks and C-Street Market starting this April! Keep your eyes peeled for a much-anticipated plant swap, coming this May.
Planning your next event or just looking for that crazy plant lady experience? Gather your friends for a Plants 101 class, or hire the mobile shop Joe the Truck or Lucy the Trailer for your bridal shower, birthday party or grand opening!
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