Episode 294: cheap or free houseplant care kit essentials

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TRANSCRIPT

[0:00] Music.

[0:15] What do a wooden kebab stick, a pack of paperclips, a plastic takeaway box and an old t-shirt have in common? Well, they're all free or super cheap things that I include in my houseplant care kit to keep my houseplants healthy. That's what I'm going to be discussing in this short but sweet episode. My name is Jane Perrone and I am the host of this podcast on the ledge your guide to indoor gardening and it's been a lovely few days I'm loving springtime oh my favorite time of year I spent last weekend at the Malvern house plant festival part of the Malvern spring show in the county of Worcestershire here in the UK and I got the chance to meet some listeners shout out in in particular to Vivian and Frank, both of whom came to say hello and were absolutely delightful.

[1:21] I sold a few copies of my book and my set of houseplant cards and shot the breeze with lots of lovely planty people, including Worcester Terrariums, a.k.a. Ben Newell, who was delightful and I hope to get him on the podcast soon. He was great. But without any further ado, do. On with the business of the show, houseplant toolkits. What do we put in them? Now, I don't like to consider myself an influencer.

[1:49] I'm a bit of a de-influencer actually, in that I'm telling you kind of not to buy stuff most of the time. You don't need all of the gubbins that people are trying to push at you for your houseplant care. It's pretty simple. There are very few things I would spend money on. I'm going to talk about two things that I would spend money on, but I.

[2:10] The other items are all things that you can get almost for free. You'll probably have them lying around your house, but they really will make a difference to your houseplant care. So I'm going to be explaining those. I know we're usually every other week, but it's a busy time of year. So I'm popping in this extra short but sweet episode for you.

[2:28] So without any further ado, let's get on to the list of stuff to include in your houseplant kit. And the first one is a syringe. So these are the plastic syringes that you often find in children's medicine bottles like liquid paracetamol that you get for children or if you've got pets oftentimes if you've got to give them some medicine it'll come with a little syringe keep hold of that syringe it's incredibly useful for dosing up house plant feeds liquid house plant feeds which are often given in very small amounts a few milliliters at a time and it's important to be accurate if you've got one of these syringes to hand you can use it to draw up exactly the right amount of feed for your plants it's incredibly useful so I always keep these otherwise they're just a single-use plastic that probably isn't going to get recycled so I try to make use of them as much as I can next up is another single-use item.

[3:31] That's thrown away by the millions and we all use yes it's the toothbrush so a toothbrush is a really good tool for many house plant tasks i love using them for mealybugs if you have plants that you can wash down so something like a strelitzia or a fairly hard leaved plant that has mealybugs but but isn't a cactus, then you can take it outside and wash it down. Use a toothbrush, obviously one you've finished putting in your mouth, dipped into rubbing alcohol, which is known in the UK as surgical spirit, and then applied to the nests of the mealybugs, the cottony bits that you see, and indeed all over the plant. Give it a gentle rub with your toothbrush. It will remove a lot of those pests and their eggs.

[4:26] It is going to be a rinse and repeat, but it's a useful tool to have around. And you can use the toothbrush dry if you are cleaning up cacti that have got dirty, cleaning small terracotta pots. Also, it's a good tool to have around. Rather than buying a special brush, just use an old toothbrush.

[4:45] We've all got them laying around. If you have more delicate tasks to complete which involve brushing so for example you've got cacti and succulents that need a dust an old clean makeup brush or an old paintbrush also clean work really well as well if you have one of those lying around to dislodge dust and just clean up plants that you don't necessarily want to get wet so ones that have got furry surfaces spines fluffy bits and so on that might still need cleaning up.

[5:20] Item number three. Again, this is something you're going to have lying around your house, and that is an old t-shirt, an old cotton t-shirt that has gone beyond the pale, probably too raggedy to give to the charity shop or thrift store. It's only fit for recycling. So here's what I do. Get a pair of scissors, cut out decent sized rags from this item, bundle up the rest and add it to the clothing recycling bag and then take those

[5:54] rags and they are perfect. That soft cotton is perfect for cleaning plant leaves. Now, yes, you can buy these special gloves that you can clean leaves with microfiber gloves. I prefer to use an old t-shirt it's free it's available I've always got a pile of these rags sitting around they work really really well and if it happens to be a white t-shirt you'll be able to see the dirt you're getting off your plant really well so using this to wipe down plant leaves just put some water onto the rag.

[6:27] If you live in a hard water area, so an area where there's a lot of dissolved mineral salts in the water, then it's ideal if you can use rainwater or distilled water or water from an RO.

[6:40] Reverse osmosis system, so that you avoid getting chalky residue left on those leaves. So next time you're chucking clothes out, just make yourself a pile of these. As I say, 100% cotton is ideal. deal. T-shirts that you've worn over and over again, they tend to be really, really soft and they can have a whole new life helping your houseplants stay clean. What's the benefit of cleaning your plant leaves? Well, you're going to be removing the dust that might be clogging up the pores, the breathing holes known as stomata on your plant's leaves, helping them photosynthesize more successfully. Plus also they just look very miserable when they're dusty. It can also help with removing pests to things like spider mites and thrips and a damp cloth will do a lot of good to plants that don't have these infestations to remove those things from the leaves and i don't know about you but i make a big mess when i am dealing with my house plants so also these can be used just as mop up rags for cleaning the floor cleaning pots all that good stuff then just bung them in the washing machine when you've finished and they're ready to go another round and you can keep using them until they literally fall apart.

[7:58] Up next the takeaway plastic container so if you have indulged in a cheeky takeaway at any point in the last four years and even the most dedicated cook from scratch.

[8:12] Type person occasionally succumbs to pumpkin katsu or some noodles, at least you can make good use of the plastic trays that these often still come in. So lots of companies are converting to recyclable materials or compostable materials.

[8:31] So I tried to stick to takeaway companies that have cardboard boxes that I can then put onto my compost heap. But occasionally I do end up with these clear plastic trays with lids and they are really useful for your house plants. They are like a mini prop box so I use them a lot. For example I've just taken a heck ton of leaves off one of my primulinas which despite my best efforts still has root mealy bugs. So I've just given up on the main plant, I've taken off a load of leaves, I'm going to make sure those are clear of root mealy's by using some SB plant invigorator on them. Once I'm sure they're clear, I'm going to start propagating. But for the minute they are in that box in a big pile, I've put the lid on. The environment in there is damp. They should be fine. I could stick them in a glass of water, but you end up with a lot of glasses of water and it all gets a bit messy and hard to deal with if you've got a lot of propagations going on at once. So these boxes are really useful for storing cuttings, but also for propping cuttings. So you can line the bottom with some moss or some damp perlite and then stick your cuttings on top. It works really well. If you are doing cacti and succulents, you probably can keep the lid off and just smith them down occasionally.

[9:55] If you've got other plants, keep the lid on, but take the lid off regularly just to check on progress.

[10:01] So this applies to all kinds of containers. I've got some lovely little oval containers that I got from.

[10:07] I think they were from Lidl, actually, which had these little individual ice creams in them. And again, those have turned into prop boxes. And I'll try to put a video on my social media showing those because I've been propagating the lovely begonia, Begonia solimutata, the color changing begonia in those little trays. And it's been working really, really well. So Rage of Recycling. Have a look. See what works. and this is a great way of making cuttings work for you.

[10:40] Music.

[10:48] More houseplant kit tips coming your way, but now a little soupçon of housekeeping. Shout out to new patrons. We've got Susan, Melissa and Marianne who all did a free trial and then decided to follow up and become legends and isabel who upgraded from crazy plant person to legend my patreon is my monthly crowdfunding platform you get extras if you are a legend or a super fan including ad free editions of every podcast a bonus podcast every month and my legendary, December mail out. You can also become a free member now. So if you're interested in finding out what goes on on Patreon, but you don't have the funds, then you can join as a free member and that way you can find out what's going on and feel part of the club for zero pounds or indeed dollars or your currency of choice.

[11:48] Because you're not paying any currency. That's the kind of deal I like. So go and check out the details on my website, janeperrone.com for more if you're interested in that. I also want to hear from you still for your botany questions. So remember, I've got Derek Haynes, aka the chocolate botanist coming on the show, and I'm still accepting questions for him. So if you've got anything plant related that you want an answer to why not drop me a line to on the ledge podcast at gmail.com pose your question for Derek and we will do our darndest to get it answered for you in an upcoming episode right

[12:27] back to the thrifty houseplant kit tips and this one is the paperclip The humble paperclip. Now, if you have access to a florist, you can probably buy florists pins.

[12:44] These are the things that florists use to keep plants and flowers in order when they are doing large arrangements. They're really useful for attaching plants onto moss poles, for pinning down propagations and so on. So if you can get your hands on florist pins, great. If you can't, just use a paper clip. Just unfurl your bog standard regular paper clip so that you've got a U shape and away you go. You can manipulate that in all kinds of ways for all the things I've just described. I think most of us have a bag of these lying around at home. We don't get as much paperwork as we used to, do we? I used to use these to hold together piles of bills and stuff, but obviously that's all online now. So you may have unused paperclips. This is where they come in. You can use them for your work.

[13:38] Plants. When it comes to propagation, oftentimes with plants that are, say, have a bit of a springy stem, the key is keeping the plant material in contact with the damp soil. This is certainly the case for things like spider plants and string of pearls and string of hearts. The paperclip is your friend. The other thing you can use, and I've used very successfully, is little stones or little coins. So if you've got coppers, as we call them here in the UK, the one or two P coins, you can use those to hold down propagations or, but the paperclip works really, really well because it does anchor the plant into the soil.

[14:19] And the reason why this propagation, and the reason why this propagation method works so well is because you're mimicking what happens in nature. So Curio rollianus, the string of pearls. In nature, it's not a string, it's a mat. If you've read my book, Legends of the Leaf, you know all about this. It scrambles across rocky, gravelly ground, looking for places to root into. And then the stems, which are very wiry and fragile, but can produce roots all along their stem, will just put some roots down. So by By twirling the strings around the top of the pot and then pinning down with a paper clip, you can allow the plant to root really nicely. You'll get a stronger root system and ultimately a bushier plant. Same applies to string of hearts, serrapegia, woody eye. Same thing. It's a mat, not a string in nature anyway. So you can get your paperclips working for you by using them to pin down your plant propagations of this particular species.

[15:27] And the final item on my freebie slash very, very cheap houseplant kit list items is the wooden kebab stick slash chopstick slash knitting needle. All of these work really, really well. If you don't want to buy a moisture meter, you can use this instead. I often talk about putting my finger in pots to check if they're damp, but sometimes this is not possible. The pot's too small. There are too many roots in the pot. If you've got something like a ZZ plant, the Zamioculcus zamifolia, with its enormous potato-like rhizomes, then you'll struggle to get your finger into that pot. Same applies with things like Sansevierias, the snake plants. They're just too chunky in the root area. They have a lot of junk in their trunk, these plants, so you might not be able to get your finger into the substrate.

[16:17] Instead, use one of these wooden items. You need a wooden stick something like a chopstick knitting needle or kebab stick stick it in there it won't work immediately you need to leave it in there for about half an hour pull it out and see what the wood looks like has it absorbed lots of moisture and is damp and covered in soil or is it bone dry if it's bone dry it's time to water because your plant is dry at root level where the water is needed so this is why you don't want to just be relying on what's happening happening at the surface. So again, raid your cupboards, have a look around and hopefully you'll be able

[16:56] to track down a few chopsticks you've got lying around and make good use of them. And to finish, I've listed lots of free and cheap things. But now a couple of things I would spend money on. The first being a really decent hand lens.

[17:12] You can buy these cheaply on Amazon, which is all very well, but actually the better quality ones will actually last. I bought a couple on Amazon and they just don't have the durability to really stick around for longer than a few months. So if you can invest in a good quality hand lens and it will serve you really well. The best ones for houseplant use have got an inbuilt LED light and they work really well because even if the light isn't very good, you'll still get a good result. There are ones made by a company called Kite, K-I-T-E, that are good quality. Also, Rupert are good quality. And I found if I was going to buy another one, I'm not because I've got quite a few, but if I was going to buy one, I would be having a look at the triplet hand lens that has built-in LEDs.

[18:06] This is a good quality lens. I will put a link up in the show notes to where you can buy that it's going to set you back about 30 or 40 pounds but one of these should then last you forever you can replace the batteries for the light and it will just keep on going why have a hand lens well if you have a hand lens you can see what's going on with your plants you really can see so much more so you can see the junior unia forms of various pests, which often are not visible with the naked eye. Red spider mites, even when they're adults, cannot be seen with the naked eye unless you're, I guess, Superman. So you will be able to see what's really going on with the pests on your plants. You can also see amazing details. So you might be able to see very fine trichomes, just that means the hairs or the leaves of the plant. You might be able to see different structures you haven't observed before, like extra floral nectaries, which are little points on the plant that release nectar to attract ants and other beneficial insects.

[19:11] And they're totally separate from flowers. That's why they're extra floral nectaries. You can spot loads of features on your plant you never knew were there. And it's just a really cool thing to be able to do. But the main point is pest control. It really helps with spotting problems before they become too serious. So do think about getting yourself a decent quality hand lens if you can. And finally, I want to talk about sprayers. Now, this is maybe a bit of a luxury, but if you have a lot of plants like me I think these sprayers are really good. What I'm talking about is a container which is then attached to a hose with a spray lance on the end and you can fill it with water and then pressurize it so you just click the trigger on the lance and it will spray until the pressure is lost and then you just got to pump it up again. It works really well if you've got a lot of plants and need to do a lot of watering. The only problem is I've had one or two of these and they're not that durable. So it's a struggle to find one that's a good quality one. I would recommend going to like a hardware store and looking there for one that is not super, super cheap because the super cheap ones just break really quickly.

[20:29] Either the hose goes or or the connection to the container goes, or the lance goes. It's just not worth it. If you can go for a sprayer that is marked as a professional sprayer, these tend to be a bit more expensive, but they will work out cheaper. Some of them have a backpack function, so you can wear them, which is really handy as you move around your plants, or ones which have a shoulder strap as well, so you can be mobile while you're watering. You can also use them to apply foliar spray, or pesticides. They are a very useful piece of kit. Now I've been doing a bit of work in Not Another Jungle, Tony LeBritain's shop, and the one he recently bought is the one I'm going to buy, I think. I've been using it in the shop and I think it looks pretty sturdy. It's called the Gloria Prima 5. It actually comes in two sizes. You can get the Prima 3, which is three litres, or the Prima 5 with 5 litres. And it's got a metal lance. It's very sturdy. It is made of plastic, but I think this should last a good amount of time. And when I look online, it's got good reviews.

[21:41] This is a German company, I think, and the construction looks pretty solid. The lance on it allows you to switch between a really fine mist if you're doing something where you want something to spray out very fine to a much stronger stream of water for other tasks that you might want to be doing when you're watering. So I think this might be a good investment, but do look at what's available in your local market. And if you can save up and spend a little bit more on the whole that means you're going to get a product that will last so much longer it's the old saw about the more you spend the better you get when it comes to items like this this is certainly not a must-have if you've got less than i would say i don't know 25 50 house plants it's probably not gonna be worth it but if like me you've got plants outside plants inside a lot of watering to do and a lot of spraying to do it could be a really worthwhile investment and I know I certainly enjoy using it when I was in the shop the other day it just made the job a real dream so I'd love to hear from you what is in your house plant kit what other free things you've been using for your plants whether any of these make absolutely no sense to you and all of your thoughts.

[23:01] Well that's all for this week's show i hope it's been as build short and sweet for you do go and check out the show notes as always at jane perrone.com and i will see you in a week's time for another fun episode full of all the things you need to know about your plants have a great week bye.

[23:25] Music.

[23:37] The music you heard in this episode was roll jordan roll by the joy drops, the road we used to travel when we were kids by komiku and whistle by benjamin banger, all tracks are licensed under creative commons visit the show notes for details I'll see you next time.

[23:56] Music.

Raid your kitchen cupboards and you’ll come across all kinds of free stuff you can utilise to take care of your houseplants.

Got a botany question?

I am going to be speaking to Derek Haynes aka The Chocolate Botanist on On The Ledge and I'll be putting YOUR botany questions to him, so pop your query in an email to theplantledger@gmail.com.

Chapters

0:15 Introduction to Houseplant Toolkits
2:34 The Handy Syringe
3:31 The Mighty Toothbrush
4:47 Dusting with Old Brushes
5:56 Repurposing Old T-Shirts
7:57 Repurposing Takeaway Containers
10:48 Housekeeping and Patron Shoutouts
11:51 Importance of a Hand Lens
12:35 The Versatile Paperclip
17:00 The Essential Sprayer

Check these notes as you listen…

• Toolkit item 1 - plastic syringes from children's medicine bottles or other medication are super useful for precise dosing of liquid plant feeds. Keep a few back and you can use them over and over again.

• Toolkit item 2 - old toothbrushes can be handy for cleaning plants: for example if you have a mealybug infestation you can dip the toothbrush into surgical spirit aka rubbing alcohol and giving them a gentle scrub. You can also use a toothbrush to clean dusty cacti.

• Toolkit item 3 - cut up old cotton t-shirts that are too ragged to go to the charity shop/thrift store into squares and they make soft, efficient cloths for wiping down plant leaves: ideal for removing dust but also pests.

• Toolkit item 4 - clear plastic takeaway containers for plant storage or propagations is a clever way to recycle. These containers can be an ideal temporary home for cuttings or leaves awaiting propagation, maintaining a humid environment for growth.

• Toolkit item 5 - Unravel a paperclip, turn it to a u-shape and you can use it in the same way as a florist’s pin, to hold stems in place in a moss pole, or when propagating plants such as string of hearts (Ceropegia woodii) and string of pearls (Curio rowleyanus).

• Toolkit item 6 - wooden kebab sticks, knitting needles or chopsticks can double as moisture meters by gauging soil dampness for optimal watering needs. Just stick them into the pot down to root level, leave for half an hour then pull out. If they come out dry, it’s time to water.

Two gadgets that are worth buying…

• A good quality hand lens (choose a triplet lens) is a great investment, but steer clear of the cheaper ones as they break very quickly. The makes Kite and Ruper are both good quality. If I was going for one now, I would choose something like this one.

• A pressurised sprayer is also very useful for watering if you have a lot of plants - but don’t buy a cheap one, they always break! I recently used this one - the Gloria Prima 5 - at Not Another Jungle in Bedford and it seems really good quality. It also comes in a smaller 3 litre capacity.

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Whistle by BenJamin Banger (@benjaminbanger on Insta; website benjaminbanger.com)..