Hello there and pardon me, but I’ve seen you’re very knowledgeable about plants and if I may would like to pick your brain for a second. I’ve been thinking of getting a plant to add some life to my room but I’m not sure what would be best. The big issue is I work as a pet sitter and am often not home because I do overnight work days at a time. I don’t want to kill anything bc I’m not there. Do you have any suggestions of a good plant that might be okay with that in mind?
The good news about Plants is that they don’t get lonely if you’re away for a while. They’re very content like that. Also, you’re FAR more likely to kill a plant by over-watering it than letting it alone for a days. If you can give me some more information about the following, i can give you recommendations:
How much light does the room you’re intending to put the plant in? (even if it’s “none” we have options)
How hot/cold does it get in the place you’re putting the plant? There are more hot-and-cold-tolerant plants.
How much “grooming” are you willing to do? there are lots of blooming plants that do well indoors, but they tend to shed leaves and drop dead flowers, so they need to be picked up after.
Are there any animals in the house? lots of houseplants can be toxic to cats and dogs, and they WILL get into them, but there are nontoxic ones.
Did you want fruit? becuase that may be an option!
Thank you for responding! Now to your points and questions:
1. The room has a single big window that allows for a lot of natural light to come into the room.
2. I keep the room at a comfortable 78 degrees because I am a lizard who can’t handle the cold. That fluctuates a bit in the “colder” months because Florida temperatures always go up and down day to day from cold to chilly to summer temperatures but it stays pretty steadily at 78.
3. I’m willing to do as much grooming as possible because having a flowering plant would be ideal but I would not say no to succulents.
4. There are cats in the house.
5. Fruit would be lovely but is not a necessity.
Oh hey, nearly ideal growing conditions! Ok since you have cats, here are some cat-safe plants that will do fine in Florida if you forget to water them for a week:
SPIDER PLANT
Perfectly safe for cats (Unless they have epilepsy, then pretty much NO houseplants are safe), study enough to stand being batted, eaten or peed in. GREAT for cleaning the air and dumping oxygen into a room. Prefers indirect sunlight and a hanging pot, but will do fine on the end of a bookcase or w/e.
CHRISTMAS CACTUS
This is *technically* a succulent but it’ll FINE if you aren’t home to water it for a week. Flowers once or twice a year, usually somewhere between November and February, tends to not trigger allergies. Doesn’t scrub the air but it’s pretty and hard to kill.
ARCERA PALM
This one really loves florida in general actually. Lots of greenery, cleans the air, difficult to kill and hardly ever sheds leaves. Way more drought-tolerant than I was expecting- I left one on the porch for a month in summer and it got sarcastic with me but didn’t die.
CITRUS TREE
YES, you can grow citrus indoors! Lemons, limes, oranges, kumquat, grapefruit and tangerines are all citrus, and even very small trees will set fruit! The flowers smell nice, and this tree is pretty representative of what yeild I’ve gotten before. They even make a thing called a “cocktail Tree” which is several varieties of citrus grafted together into one plant. Since you live in florida, you can even keep it out on the porch all year, if you like.
They DO need to be fed citrus food once a year and watered a lot, and can get infested with pests more easily than most plants, so stay on top of cleaning if it starts to look sad. And if you want fruit, you will have to leave it outside or otherwise expose it to bees when it’s blooming.
DWARF POMEGRANATE
Dwarf Pom is a cute lil plant that flowers, tolerates not being watered, and if you have two of them and let them hang out with bees- will make cute, totally edible mini-pomegranates. They DO need a lot of sunlight, and shed a lot of leaves. Like citrus, you can either let it get root-bound and stunt it’s size into a bonsai, or you can dig a hole in the yard and plant them. It Won’t be happy if a cat knocks it over and eats it tho.
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