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Been diving deep into lawn care recently. There's a TON, literally hundreds, of products you can spread on your lawn. There's 250 days of the growing season to apply those hundreds of products on. And does it work? Well, this internet comment written by so and so says it does, and their lawn is beautiful, but which of the 15 things they're doing are most pivotal? Or is it multivariate and all the parameters matter and affect and interact with each other?
Unfortunately, I believe it's the latter complex case. pH matters a lot, that affects fertilization uptake, but so does soil bacteria and organic matter, lack of bugs and diseases, proper moisture, and the physical act of cutting the grass is an art and skill, not a mere chore.
Oof, plants need a lot of variables to be in the right ranges, and with soil and watering and weather, it's a lot of fluctuation on top of it all.
This is a problem all over, from health advice to cooking to skincare, lawn care, etc. etc. etc.
A complex system with many variables and optimum points trying to be solved with anecdotes, magical cures, and "good for you" products.
In general I think the size of the controversy tends to be inversely proportional to the size of the effect.
This seems to apply to a lot of things, from how many reps you do in the gym to how you apply thermal paste to a CPU to how best to cook a steak. It's not that you can't mess these things up, but there does seem to be a rather large number of methods that work pretty well, and the difference in effect between "pretty well" and "optimal" seems overall to be small enough to allow for controversy.
I think a lab soil test ($20 or so) and following the basics of weed control (Google “triangle weed control”) and soil amendments as guided by the test will get you a 90-95th percentile lawn without tons of agonizing effort or much expense.
Add irrigation and you’ll be at 97+%-ile.
The frustration I have with my lawn hobby is that it looks “great” to most visitors but I know all the flaws and where I’ve still got improvements to make.
You might enjoy this Guardian article on the ever-increasing efforts spent on improving grass pitches used for football: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jun/15/silicon-val....
All our neighbors use lawn companies and apply fertilizer and pesticides constantly. They don't have soil anymore. It's mid to light brown dirt. At some point, we watched a video of a Gabe Brown presentation (author of From Dirt to Soil). Our new, hold-my-beer, "game" is to do as little as possible to our lawn - other than keeping it long - while still having it greener than everyone else. One factor that turns out to be critical is encouraging clover. Clover apparently fixes nitrogen, so a good grass/clover mix can be remarkably low maintenance.
…and when one isn’t working on one’s lawn, there are always cast iron pans that need seasoning.
> Or is it multivariate and all the parameters matter and affect and interact with each other?
I've been saying this a lot lately (in different forms):
Reality is not a single variable problem; it's a multivariate puzzle which is never as simple as a single cause -> effect scenario.
This applies to absolutely everything these days, from growing plants to politics. In many ways this is the failure of the internet/social media. Everything tends towards simple single variable explanations that are never, ever, in alignment with reality. And yet, entire populations become divided along these simple lines. Even when talking about how to grow a lawn.
Somewhere in your state may be a university that can give advice on what works well locally. e.g.
My main question is, how many of these products are actually safe to be using to grow food? How many contain heavy metals or dangerous particles that just haven't been tested for?
I was confused by all the products also, until a family that owned a landscaping company moved in next door to me.
Their yard was basically a dirt lot with no grass. A month or so later and it was a lush green landscape.
It seemed like all they did was cover the yard completely with manure. After seeing their success I did the same and my yard turned green too.
Was it the manure? Yes, but also no. I moved across country and manure doesn't work like it used to. It was really the expert knowledge that did it.
If you find some good resources can you post them/links. It’s so hard to find good informative websites that I can burn days scouring the internet for decent repositorys.
Followed a bunch of advise.
Ended up with a yard of mud for a month. Was the eye sore of the neighborhood. Then it exploded. Lush beautiful grass that would not stop.
Had to mow it 2-3 times a week until winter.
In my experience lawn care is mostly getting the amount of water/sun right and not beating it up too much.
Caring for a houseplant is like caring for a baby. There are things that work, and things that don't, but not necessarily for your baby. You won't really know what's going on unless you pay close attention to it. And if it seems unhappy, you won't really know how to make it happy until you try a few things out.
Baby advice and houseplant advice isn't "bad", it's just subjective.
also: my houseplants don't get big because I don't take care of them! the ones I left outside "to die" have grown substantially... i even left a bunch of succulents outside, that were sitting in pots with no drainage, overflowing with water for 6 months.... they're fine. they "should" be dead as doornails. shrug
Had friends in Hawaii. They had such beautiful indoor orchids that I commented on their green thumbs... to which their response was, "Oh no, we kill them inside and then put them outside to recover and bring back in the ones that are blooming".
Fortunately my babies have survived much better than my houseplants. My wife and I managed to kill a succulent arrangement by underwatering it.
The Aussie national public broadcaster, the ABC, has the fantastic Gardening Australia show that has been going for 32 years (in its current format). It's not too pretentious and is full of great technical pragmatic tips from knowledgeable professional horticulturalists and experienced amateurs. You might like this series on indoor plants as we call houseplants. https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/the-great-indoors--containe...
Caring for houseplants is quite hard. I have 8 and my friend recently gave up his job to grow Bonsai trees full time. The amount I learned from him was quite interesting, I almost felt dumb by the end. My plants do fine, but they could've been doing way better.
For my Bonsais, I didn't know that they should be given filtered water. The Bay area has particularly nasty water, so immediately my plants were getting spots. Second, when you repot in the summers, the soil should be aligned to where you're growing. Third, East facing windows that cliff the sun at the hottest part of the day are imperative. I then asked him, "Wait, I can't leave them in the same spot all year?" and his immediate reply was, "Hell no, not unless you plan to layer shades in front of them, but I bet that's not why you put them where you did." For watering guidance, he said, "Stick your finger into the soil down to the knuckle, if it's dry, water them. If it's still wet, let it dry out."
Keeping plants alive is relatively easy; helping them thrive is another matter entirely.
Trees and plants in the wild are watered by rain. Don't use the stuff out of your tap/faucet. Chlorine is great for killing off bacteria in stagnant water in pipes and so on but not so good for your plants. They don't care about Legionnaires etc that kills us lot off. Your plants want the raw stuff out of the sky so get a water butt and feed it from your house roof.
In the wild, plants are not surrounded by walls, floors and ceilings. They are, however, surrounded by other plants and trees that are trying to out compete them for the basics - water and sunlight.
Indoors the basics are: Water: rainwater only, unless it runs out then tap for a few days at most. Moist but not wet. Light: Some but not direct all day.
Now, some plants prefer more or less eg a Venus fly trap prefers constantly wet roots and direct hard sunshine. A orchid might like 7-14 days of drought and then a good dampening for a day or so (never static water).
It really isn't rocket science. You just have to remember that plants never evolved to live inside houses. Your mate that said "For watering guidance ..." is spot on. Just make it rain water and not tap if you can.
> the soil should be aligned to where you're growing.
What does it mean to align soil?
>The Bay area has particularly nasty water
Isn't Hetch Hetchy water some of the cleanest?
I think that's true about surviving versus thriving. I have a bonsai nursery and 'bonsai' is one area where there is a lot of serious interest. Lots of disagreements but a much higher rate of expert knowledge. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves what we want from our plants and adapt accordingly. Sometimes simple is better even when the results are less spectacular
> The Bay area has particularly nasty water
Bafflingly wrong, at least for the large majority of the Bay Area. It's Sierra runoff with very low TDS, hardness, or alkalinity.
Maybe your particular area has issues, but to generalize that to the bay area is objectively wrong.
Acidify your tap water with cooking vinegar - it helps.
I have, and have had, numerous thriving houseplants. My largest plants right now are about five feet tall. I also have three orchids that do wonderfully, a selection of cacti, etc. I do still kill plants from time to time but it's rare. In any case, I don't really agree with much of the advice in this thread. In order, the most important things IMHO are:
1) Caring: you actually have to care about the plants. This requires that you notice how they are doing and if they aren't "happy", taking action to try and improve their environment.
2) Light: if the light is bad, you're screwed. People keep talking about overwatering but not providing plants with enough light is just as bad and probably worse. Plants indoor get far less light than they do outdoors. If you have a very sunny room, in most cases the only way plants will do poorly is by totally neglecting to water them.
3) Water: not particularly difficult. With most plants you only need to water when the soil is completely dry. What I would especially suggest you do if you are starting out with houseplants is to purchase plants that show, by virtue of their foliage drooping, if they don't have enough water. The leaves of a peace lily will droop. The leaves of devil's ivy will start looking floppy. I've noticed that my spider plant's leaves seem to become paler. Some plants (e.g. ones that look like palm trees) will lose their foliage, starting at the bottom.
In any case, if you have a plant like this, it is visibly telling you it needs water, so it's not hard to comply. It can also serve as a sort of canary in the coal mine for your other plants.
That's honestly about it. I repot the occasional plant, and sometimes I do a little light fertilizing. But if you have a plant that is doing poorly, my advice in almost all cases is simple: ensure it gets more light, and don't water it until it's totally dried out.
> To get an even better answer, ask a better question: ‘I water my sansevieria (snake plant) about once a week, and it’s not in direct sun. I’ve had it for six months and it was nice when I got it. But now the tips are brown, what am I doing wrong?’
Hmm where have i seen that before... oh, here:
As I was reading this all I could think was that this should be popped up before any stackoverflow post is allowed to be submitted.
I agree with the author that we need to see more examples of larger, older plants to get an idea of what our lil plant bbs could be someday. Fortunately there are some great Facebook groups for different genera, and of course there’s https://www.reddit.com/r/matureplants/
Reddit is the only major site that still gets away with outrageously shitty engineering. There’s no possible way to follow this link on iOS. The link shows only a link to open in app but they’re so shitty that it opens the app in the app store not the actual app.
Recently visited a local botanical garden and saw their mature Ficus lyrata (Fiddle lead fig) and was astounded to see mine at 6 feet tall was merely a juvenile branch on the entire tree.
The author has also a good point in that maturing plants is a lot of work and as they become more of themselves they become more than, imo, what people would consider aesthetically appropriate.
M.deiciosa is a hot plant right now and maybe in these 5+1 apartments someone will live in one long enough to let it really start branching up and out and taking up a valuable amount of living real estate. It also has these, to my fiancee, 'penile' roots that are to her unsightly.
They make me feel more alive seeing the plant thrive and do its thing.
That’s a good link: seeing what plants can become really encourages more interest in keeping them healthy
Biggest problem for indoor plants is lack of light. Get a cheap photometer and check. Eyes are terrible at judging light intensity.. if the plant never gets light sufficient for basic metabolism, it will die sooner or later. Bare minimum full shade is like 10000 lux.. indoor lighting often doesn't get above 1000.
And the good news is 4 foot LED tube lights are cheap, inexpensive to run and easy to mount with just two-sided tape. It’s a simple DIY project to mount LED tubes on the underside of a table and put that table on top of another table…and you can grow whatever you like. Plants won’t just survive but actually thrive and flower. Doesn’t look half-bad either.
I dunno, the advice I get from my houseplants always seems spot on...
What's that you say? Off topic? Yea I agree, but...
As a systems and network administrator I know that the vast majority of outages are human initiated. Maintenance gone bad. Simple mistakes such as unplugging the wrong cable. Stupid stuff. Sometimes thresholds such as disk usage or other resources get exceeded or a part just wears out and breaks, but usually it's us stupid humans fucking something up with our own hands where it would have been just fine if you had left it alone.
So there's your servers are houseplants advice. Stop touching them. Stop doing stuff. Leave it alone.
Of course that's impossible. We have to get new plants installed and have to find that equilibrium they like to thrive.
But when you find it, leave them the fuck alone and don't break it.
Tl;dr: Lots of houseplants die. The end.
Anyway, since you are here: You may kill your plants with tap water. Plants evolved to get demineralized rainwater. The salts of tap water will build up in the soil, slowly poisoning the plant. Additionally the pot is also the plant’s potty: It disposes excess minerals and waste through the roots, and expects the rain to flush it away.
It’s best to water your plants with demineralized water, but you can also use (old) boiled and cooled down water, which lost at least some CO2 and consequently fell out calcium. In any case, if you water your plant, do so thoroughly, until water comes out at the bottom. Let it collect for a few minutes and then dispose it. Do not let it reabsorb! This will help the plant getting rid of salts and also helps not getting the soil soaking wet.
Btw. this is also why irrigation is a problem for food security. Using straight underground water for crops in hot regions will only work for a few years, until the soil is dead for good….
Edit: Oh yeah, and IIRC the snake plants leaf tips are crucial for growth. They may be hurt from handling in the store and will consequently not grow in length anymore. Not sure it has anything to do with watering at all. My snake plant got “store leaves”, which haven’t changed at all over the years, got brown just at the very end, and new leaves, which are almost double the length and totally healthy. Maybe a brown tip is just the normal display of a leaf without a head (cell).
Fun fact: Did you know snake plants store “sun energy” at daylight, and then do the rest of photosynthesis at night? So they do not lose water due to evaporation as much, when opening their pores for gas exchange! Pretty cool, eh?!
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about plants is: they only need water (and light).
Yes plants need water, but they can't grow on water alone. They need all kinds of minerals that are in the soil. When those are gone the plant will die. When you repot plants you add fresh soil so you also add minerals. But when you don't repot you need to add those minerals once in a while.
Tip for aquarium owners: a lot of plants benefit from the 'dirt' in dirty aquarium water.
An also lesser known fact is that there is a huge symbiosis between bacteria, fungi and the roots. So in fact you also need to keep them alive.
And of course: in what other domains is this issue present?
I've read the part about roots several times and don't understand it. Is there some intermediate level of actionable advice between "water once a week" and this? If anyone can explain it to me in a way that makes sense to a programmer it would be much appreciated. I do have multi-year surviving house plants but worry about their roots.
> This comes about by having the roots well distributed in free-draining soil so that water and oxygen can feed the plant. From this you can infer there might be a problem If water runs right through the pot, and/or you squeeze the pot at its base and it’s rock solid. If so, take the pot off and have a look. From this you can also infer that, repotting into a much larger pot will just leave the roots buried in a mound of cold, wet soil, far from any roots. You might also see that a root-bound plant might not even need to be repotted, or can be repotted back into the same pot.
Orchids are notoriously hard for us, we’ve managed to kill several of them. I guess mostly due to over watering.
The most bewildering tip I always see and often hear recited is that a plant likes it to be moved/rotated. Like wtf, which plant gets rotated in nature???
Generally, some people like to think they know better what the plant needs than itself.
I went from being talked in to overcaring to the probable most careless approach. My plants get water when the soil is dry. That's it.
Gladly, I also ended up stopping to interfere with e.g. how they grow and I've now noticed that they started to look "wild" and healthy.
Done right, it's a beautiful display of nature.
My 2 huge plants (ficus benjamina, 15 years old, grown from 1 tiny branch, and aglaonema, ~40 years old and survived one freezing): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FC7tsGGWEAkInx1?format=jpg
This fellow cuts through a lot of the bullshit on his blog/newsletter.
Unfortunately, there’s often a lack of good evidence except from industrial agriculture.
When it comes to houseplants you just have to ask my mom and you will know everything that’s to be known. If there is a problem she needs maybe 10 seconds to take a look and give you the solution.
How often should houseplants be fertilized? Is miracle grow box accurate or do they tell you to use more than you need to get you to use more?
house plant care is not that hard to automate (talking about water/feeding)... of course if you are doing bonsai culture, you will have to manually trim it (but I grew bonsai pepper plants with minimal care... no fruits yet though)
In the cannabis world It's because of 'Broscience'.