You probably know someone with a green thumb - someone who can grow anything,
who's house is full of plants, who can take one look at your ailing philodendron and tell
you exactly what's wrong with it.
Don't you hate her?
It really seems as if there are two types of people in the world: 1) The green-thumbs -
those with unlimited time or money or a simple knack for growing things and 2) The rest
of us, the black-thumbs - people with no time, no money, no attention span, no nurturing
instincts or with young children and/or dogs who love to eat anything green then bring it up
a few minutes later in a different shade of green.
There is a way out. It is possible for you to have real, living houseplants in your house or
office or dorm room without dropping a lot of money at the florist's or the garden center.
You just have to be prepared to be ruthless. The secret is to be darwinian. You need to go
through a large number of plants, knowing that any given one will probably die on you.
Eventually, sheer, random chance and natural selection will turn up a plant that you won't
kill. There is a houseplant out there for you if you have the stomach to sacrifice dozens or
even hundreds of it's brothers and sisters to get to it. Can you be the type of person who
can look a plant in the eye and tell it, "Sorry pal, but you probably aren't going to make it.
Rest assured that you will have given your all for a good cause."?
The key to being able to do this is to find a source of (forgive the pun) dirt-cheap
houseplants. If you know that a plant isn't costing you anything, you are more willing to
give it a try. An additional bonus is that you are more willing to experiment - you can
force yourself to try new things with a plant - or even more difficult, leave it alone and let it
grow at its own pace - if you know that you won't be wasting money by doing so.
Here is a list of sources for free or very cheap houseplants and what you will need in order
to grow them. It is a list that has been compiled over the course of many years and scores
of sacrificed plants.
Getting started - What you will need:
1) Dirt - Yes. You could go with potting soil, vermiculite or "soil-less"
mix from the garden center, but that would cost you money and discourage you from
planting a statistically meaningful number of plants. Regular dirt from your backyard or an
empty lot will work almost as well. There is a question of transmitting plant
diseases through ordinary soil, but if the plant you are trying to grow is that frail, you
probably aren't going to have much luck with it anyway. It's probably best just to throw
your new plant into the deep end of the environmental pool and let it take it's chances.
(Besides - if you do use purchased potting material, you'll need to replace it
or sterilize it every time a plant dies in order to prevent the spread of whatever killed it.
Can you imagine the reaction of your family when they come home to find you boiling a
big pot of dirt on the stove? "Hi. What's for dinn... oh, never mind...")
2) A container of some kind - Those orange, terra cotta clay pots work really well, but you
can grow a plant in anything that will hold dirt. Just make sure that there is some way for
excess water to drain out of the bottom. Old tins from imported olive oil make funky pots.
3) Sunshine - By going through a large number of plants, you will eventually find one that
can make do with the amount of available light in your place. Just keep in mind that every
plant needs some light in order to carry out photosynthesis.
Sources for Cheap Plants:
1) Avocados - Avocados are the kings of cheap plants. They are readily
available and cost you nothing (well, the pits, anyway). They will almost always grow.
(Shhh...shhhh... wait a minute. We'll get to that in a moment.) In fact, you probably have
a pile of old, shriveled-up, dried-out pits that you've been meaning to grow into plants for a
while. Throw them out. Do yourself a favor and start with a new one. If you don't like
avocados, get a pit from a neighbor or even a local restaurant.
Now, most people are convinced that they can't grow an avocado plant from a pit. They
are wrong; they have made one of two mistakes and let it shake their confidence.
ANYBODY can grow an avocado.
Take your avocado pit. Look carefully at it. The first thing that you need to do is to figure
out which end is the top and which is the bottom. The fat end is the bottom. It
seems like the "sharp" end should point downward, but that's not the way it
is. Think of the actual avocado hanging on a tree. The fat end is at the bottom, right?
Now imagine the fruit falling off the tree, plopping into the dirt below and growing. Still
fat-end-down, right? That's the way you want it. (Some pits are almost round - that can
be tricky. Either pay close attention when you remove it from the avocado or look for a
stem-mark which will also point downward.)
Now, stick three or four toothpicks or small nails into the pit. The goal is to suspend the
pit 2/3 of the way in water - up to its neck, if you will. The toothpicks are there to hold the
pit just a little bit above water. Suspend the pit from the top of a glass or an
old salsa jar and fill the container up with water to the top. The very top of the avocado pit
should be sticking out of the water.
Now comes the hard part - leaving it alone. Most people assume that they can't get an
avocado pit to grow, but that is usually because they don't give it time to do its thing. It can
take a month or more before you see any action from an avocado pit. Give it time and
keep topping it off with water. Eventually a long, white tap-root will start growing from
the bottom of the pit. After another week or two, the pit will split on the top and start to
sprout. (Occasionally, you will get a dud pit that won't grow, but you will
know, because the water will turn brown and cloudy and start to smell. If the water looks
good, leave it alone.)
You can plant the sprouted pit in dirt whenever you want. (In point of fact, you don't even
need to suspend it in water at all; it's just too easy to lose patience and assume that you've
got a dud if you can't see any root action.) It will take your avocado a week or two to get
used to its new home before it starts to grow again, but then it will shoot up pretty rapidly.
Once it gets to be six to eight inches tall, you will want to clip it. This will encourage it to
grow out bushy, instead of tall and gangly.
A word of caution. Your avocado will get sick and die. It's inevitable. Get
used to the idea now. BUT - don't panic. If it looks like it has some horrible, leprous
disease, take a pair of scissors or hedge clippers and cut it off right at the soil line. It will
regrow and probably be stronger than ever.
2) Fruit trees - Almost every piece of fresh fruit that you eat has some sort of seeds inside
it. These are even easier to grow than avocados. Just plant several of them in moist dirt,
keep them moist and clip away all the weak ones once they start to grow. Oranges and
apples grow pretty well. Grapefruits grow fantastically. Tropical fruits can be pretty hit-
or-miss. Keep in mind that you will want to grow fruits that originally came from actual
trees. Hardwood trees generally need less light than other plants and will be a little more
conducive to growing indoors. (Make sure that you use fresh fruit for this.
I once spent two months trying to get the pit from a pickled plum to grow - a fact that my
girlfriend never let me forget and ultimately led to a messy break-up - but that's another
story...)
3) Roots From the Grocery Store - Many of the roots that you find in the produce
department at the grocery store grow into great houseplants, ginger, sweet potatoes and
horseradish, for instance. Just plant them, water them and forget them.
4) Dandelions - If you've ever tried to get rid of dandelions, you know how
tough they are. Try growing one in a pot on your desk at work. It will look hip and funky,
with the added bonus of aggravating your boss's hayfever. They do well with minimal
watering; just give them a deep pot to accommodate their roots.
5) Clippings From Other Plants - I have a friend who carries a pair of scissors with her
when her husband takes her out to eat, so she can steal clippings from the plants at
restaurants. Nobody is suggesting that you go to those depraved lengths, but
you can get good results by snipping small sections of the houseplants of friends and family
and planting them in soil or something called "propagating medium" that you can get from
your garden center. Make sure that you clip below the joint where leaves connect with the
stalk. Spider plants do particularly well from clippings.
If all else fails - most supermarkets sell small, potted cactuses ("cacti?") for very little. If
you repot one of them into a larger container and remember to feed it once a year and
water it every few weeks, you will be able to have the satisfaction of keeping
something alive.
