Home Blog Plants in my living space

"Parlour palm"

Plants in my living space

I've found that having plants in spaces you are a lot, like the office, relax me. Workdesign published a study to support this. One of them is that having plants in a workplace reduces concentration problems by 23% and fatigue by 30%. It also helps to reduce coughs, sore throats, and eye irritation by at least 24%. So in short, it is very beneficial to the well-being of employees. Extending this to my living space...it puts my mind to peace. It helps me to relax. Seeing the green leaves, fun patterns, and just something that's alive and growing in front of my eyes is very satisfying to me.

I have two areas where I keep my plants, a sunny, south facing window, and a shady room without any windows to the outside. The shady room only has internal windows and gets its' light from other rooms. It's a dark room most of the day, but to light it up, I use LED strips.

The sunny room

The sunny room has all my succulents, cacti, and tropical plants. These plants all need a lot of light. Some of them need a lot of humidity, while others like to be dry. I keep them all in the same space but give each of them different care. The plants that like the humidity get misted with water every day, to keep the leaves damp. The plants that like to be dry will get water, maybe once a week, some even once every two weeks.

Some of the plants in this room need bright, but indirect sunlight. So one corner of the room has partial shading because of curtains.

"A parlour palm"

This is my parlour palm in the sunny room.

The shady room

The shady room is home of low-light plants. Right now, there are several spider plants, a low light tolerant ball cactus, and a snake plant. These plants don't like to be in the sun at all, because it'll burn their leaves. These plants can tolerate low-light. The spider plant needs to be watered fairly frequently and can't dry out. If they dry out, their leaves will turn brown and fall off. The snake plant and the cactus, on the other hand need to dry out completely. If you keep them too wet, their roots will rot and the plant will die. So they're amazing for people who forget to water their plants because these plants need to dry out completely between watering.

As you can see in the picture above, there are two glass jars with water and propagated spider plants. I'm growing a few small cuttings in water, this way I can see the plants grow roots until they're ready for some soil. This is definitely not a requirement for propagating spider plants, but I like to be able to see the growing roots.

"The shady room"

This is my shady office, I use the LED strips to provide the plants with some additional light.

Humidifier

I've recently gotten a humidifier to create a more humid environment for some of my plants. This is not a huge problem in the summer, but the winters with burning radiators make the air very dry. This can cause some problems for some plants that like to be in moist soil at all times because they'll dry out too quickly. So to combat this dry air, the humidifier will help to raise the humidity and provide these plants with a more pleasant environment. Of course, I don't have enough humidifiers to take care of all of my plants, so I also spray some of the plants with some water.

Posted on: January 28th, 2019

I help you achieve great SEO, higher conversions, and help you grow your business

Contact me now to start growing your business online

Roelof Jan Elsinga