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Growing Healthy Houseplants

Ellen Zachos

3.89 · Rating details · 19 ratings · 5 reviews

This concise guide shows novice houseplant owners exactly how to keep indoor plants alive and healthy. Gardening expert Ellen Zachos helps you choose the right plants in the first place and then shows you how to care for them, outlining what each kind needs in terms of location, sunlight, water, and fertilizer. She also explains when plants should be repotted (and how to d

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Paperback, 128 pages

Published December 16th 2014 by Storey Publishing, LLC

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Oct 03, 2019 Nathan Albright rated it really liked it

Shelves: challenge-2019

If this book was not an astounding read, it was at least a solid one whose merits are easy to appreciate. A great many of us (myself included) are not particularly confident about our skills in dealing with plants, whether in gardens or in the house, and a book like this is certainly a good one when it comes to encouraging people on how they can better take care of plants so as to not feel that they are cursed with a black thumb when they simply lack knowledge and experience in how to deal wise If this book was not an astounding read, it was at least a solid one whose merits are easy to appreciate. A great many of us (myself included) are not particularly confident about our skills in dealing with plants, whether in gardens or in the house, and a book like this is certainly a good one when it comes to encouraging people on how they can better take care of plants so as to not feel that they are cursed with a black thumb when they simply lack knowledge and experience in how to deal wisely with growing plants indoors. The author, with text and black and white drawings, seeks to use this book as a way of encouraging people to grow plants and manage to understand the way that plants attempt to communicate through the way they appear in hopes that people will be able to respond effectively and grow some plants indoors. The author also believes that growing plants indoors is a great way to spruce up a place and make it appear much more beautiful as well as much more alive, and that seems a fair judgement.

This book is a slim one at just over 100 page sand is divided into three parts. Before this, though, the book begins with a preface and an introduction that encourages the reader to learn how to speak plant. After this, the first part of the book deals with some essentials to being able to deal with plants (1), such as knowing how much light is enough, mastering watering and humidity levels, using the right growing medium for one's plants, and appropriate fertilization. After that the author discusses the daily care of plants (2), including some cool tools, repotting, good grooming, propagation of new plants, dealing with plants while one is on vacation, managing pests, and diseases. After that the book continues with a discussion of how someone can design an indoor garden (3), with a discussion about the importance of display before the author shows off various foliage, flowering plants, trees, and cacti that are shown roughly one to a page with species name and a black and white drawing of them included along with a paragraph of information about each plant. The book then ends with an index that is easy to use for those who want to look at one page in particular.

This book is aimed at an audience that is looking for a practical guide to self-reliance in a way that, as the publisher says, encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment, and this book certainly lives up to those expectations. Not only is the advice generally quite intriguing but it is also advice that limits the use of toxins and encourages a gentle treatment of plants to seek to overcome pests, provide appropriate watering, and encourage the development of beautiful indoor gardens. To be sure, the book is highly ambitious in seeking to do so in such a slim fashion when so many other books exist with far more colorful photos and techniques that this book does not deal with, but if you want a serviceable and somewhat plainspoken guide this is certainly one that can be easily recommended to the reader. This book is by no means flashy but it does its job and does it well, and if one can listen to its advice it is likely that one will be able to grow quite a few plants to one's own personal satisfaction and pleasure, even if one is a long way from being a professional at it. ...more

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Aug 28, 2017 bartosz rated it liked it

Shelves: owned-books

I love reading up on topics that are close to my heart, and I've been looking for a good on indoor gardening for quite a while now. Unfortunately, finding recommendations was harder than I thought, so I decided to get Growing Healthy Houseplants by Ellen Zachos more-or-less on a whim.

The book is small and covers lighting, watering, soil and fertilization, repotting, managing pests and diseases, and also describes some common houseplants. One of my hopes in getting this book was that even if the ...more

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Nov 17, 2014 Online Eccentric Librarian rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, non-fiction

More reviews at the Online Eccentric Librarian http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Growing Healthy Houseplants is another great title in the Storey Basics line of how-to books. As with most of the series, this volume is to the point, informative, and uses illustrations rather than photographs.

The book is broken down into three parts: Essentials (light, water and humidity, growing medium/soil, fertilization); Daily Care (tools, re-potting, grooming, propagation, vacation, pests); and Designing the Indoor Garden (display, foliage, flowering plants, trees, cacti).

There is a great introduction to understanding house plants and a very simple recipe for success: accurately evaluate light, choosing the right plant for that light, watering techniques, and then allowing it to grow. Small sections discussing vocabulary (latin, hybrid, etc.) as well as the difference between tropical plant and house plant are useful ways to ensure proper understanding of what we are dealing with when we purchase an indoor plant. This section is only a few pages long so it isn't onerous to read.

The Essentials section is the heart of the book - there's no use in falling in love with a type of houseplant if you don't have the light or environment (read: moisture) it needs. Tips such as the problem with house water, the tools that make the job easier, and how to elevator humidity levels help ensure houseplant success.

Other useful tips include how to care for plants before going on vacation, specifics about the most common indoor plants (which didn't include the African Violet, oddly enough), controlling fungus/mites/and other pests that surprisingly get on houseplants, and displays such as terrariums.

There were some detractions for me: e.g., the author suggests using a photography light meter to assess the light situation (got a photographer friend around?) and when I looked up how to care for my Christmas Cactus, I was told to use 'non soil' but couldn't find what that meant exactly in the essential section except for a reference to potting cacti. It was a bit frustrating.

So in all, an excellent, to the point book on the basics and some in-depth information on having happy, thriving houseplants. ...more

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Nov 29, 2015 Raoum Bani rated it liked it

A good start if you have or would like to have some plants around the house. I didn't know much about indoor plants except not to water them too much and a few plants I knew that could survive my poor knowledge.

Before buying this book, I remember thinking that I could probably just google what's in here. But no! This book covers issues I've never even thought about and taught me how to protect my plants from diseases. It also serves as a great reference before purchasing some plants.

The only t ...more

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Aug 01, 2016 Emily rated it liked it

A very interesting, informative and helpful read about taking care of houseplants. Easy to read and understand. It only had black and white drawings, colored pictures would have been nice, but I was still able to figure out what plants they were talking about.

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