About
Houseplant Care is an informational resource with practical guides to caring for indoor plants. The guides explain how to water, how to judge the light in a room, how to choose a potting mix and repot, and how to work out what may be going wrong when a plant looks unwell.
What the site covers
- Care basics: what a potted plant depends on, a simple routine of checks, humidity and temperature, and common beginner mistakes.
- Watering: checking soil moisture, watering thoroughly, bottom watering, and why pots need drainage holes.
- Light: direct, bright indirect and low light, window directions, signs that the light is wrong, and grow lights.
- Soil and repotting: what potting mix is made of, how to tell when a plant needs a new pot, and how to repot it.
- Plant problems: yellow leaves, brown leaf tips, overwatering and underwatering, root rot and pests, each written as a list of things to check.
- Plant guides and seasonal care: beginner guides to a few common houseplants, everyday tasks such as fertilizing and cleaning leaves, winter care, and preparing plants before a vacation.
If you are new to houseplants, begin with Houseplant Care for Beginners, then read How to Water Houseplants, How to Check Soil Moisture and the guide to indoor plant light. Every guide is listed on the Tutorials page.
What this site is, and what it is not
Houseplant Care is general information written for home plant owners. It is not written by certified horticulturists, botanists or plant scientists, and it claims no professional credentials of any kind.
Nothing on the site is a substitute for advice from a local extension service, a qualified plant professional, a veterinarian or a doctor. If you need a firm identification of a plant, a pest or a disease, or advice about a person or an animal that has eaten part of a plant, please go to one of them.
How the guides are written
Each guide explains how to assess the plant, the soil and the conditions it is growing in, and then how to decide what to do. That is the approach throughout the site, because the same symptom can have several causes and the same plant behaves differently in different homes.
- No fixed watering schedules. What a plant needs varies by species, cultivar, environment, season, potting medium and container, so the guides describe what to check before watering and do not tell you to water on a set day.
- Tools and products by type, not brand. A guide may mention a general-purpose indoor potting mix, a moisture meter or a liquid houseplant fertilizer, but it does not name or recommend brands.
- Toxicity information is sourced. Where a guide touches on toxicity to people or pets, it cites an authoritative source for that statement and links to it, so that you can read the original. Houseplants and Pets explains how to look a plant up yourself.
- Illustrations, not diagnostic photos. The images are original illustrations of general care ideas. They are not photographs and are not meant for identifying a particular plant, pest or disease.
What you can rely on
- We do not publish invented reviews, ratings, statistics or testimonials.
- Depths, sizes and times in the guides are starting points. A guide that says “the top inch of the mix” also expects you to adjust for the size of the pot and the kind of plant.
- Guides about plant problems give you things to check, in a sensible order. They do not promise a diagnosis.
- No guide promises that a plant will survive or recover.
- Where a pesticide or fertilizer product comes up, the guide points you to the product label and gives no doses of its own.
Corrections and suggestions
If a step is unclear, a statement looks wrong or a link is broken, please tell us through the Contact page. Mention the name of the guide and the section so the problem can be found quickly. Corrections are always welcome.