Photo: Luis Alvarez (Getty Images)
Houseplants are a great life accessory . They’re an easy way to show you’re an adult while filtering the air in your house. A houseplant provides a spark of green to your surroundings.
Many of us receive a nasty shock when we’re tasked with the wellbeing of another living thing. Houseplants have a way of showing just how unprepared we are for the responsibility. Here are the six steps to buying and killing your first houseplant. Live and learn. Well, you will. The plant won’t.
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Killing A Houseplant
1. Pick the plant.
Go to the store. Get overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. Panic and get the second-cheapest option. It'll probably be fine.
2. Pot your plant.
Forget about this part until you get home. Go back to the store and buy a pot with holes in the bottom for some reason. Spend more money on a base, just in case. Gently move the mass of dirt and leaves from its container to your new pot.
3. Place your plant.
Hopelessly guess at where gets the best sunlight. Put it in a corner you think will give it the best chance at sunlight. Realize after a day or so that it actually doesn't see any sun. Move the pot a couple of feet to the left and hope for the best, because that sucker's heavy.
4. Water your plant.
Diligently water your plant for the first week or so. Carefully measure the amount of water it's getting and evenly spread it throughout the soil. Slowly get worse about this until you're desperately soaking the plant once a month, hoping it clings to life.
5. Research your plant.
While your plant slowly wilts, frantically research everything that can be wrong with your plant. Read about all the diseases and bugs that can eat plants and the bugs you shouldn't care so much about. Who knew plants were so fragile?
6. Buy another plant.
Armed with your new experience and your hard-earned knowledge of botany, go back to the store to get another plant. First time’s not the charm. Second time probably won’t be either. Keep trying and you’ll get there. Or not. Whatever you do, don’t get a dog.