Plants that forgive a beginner

Every plant in the journal carries a difficulty, and easy is not a marketing word. It means the plant will live through the three things a beginner does: putting it in the wrong light, watering it on a schedule rather than by looking, and forgetting it entirely for a fortnight in the middle of a busy month.

Nothing on this page needs humidity you have to provide, a specific window, or a feeding routine. Most of them will do better with all of those, and none of them will die without.

The mistake, and it is always the same one

More first plants are killed by kindness than by neglect. Watering little and often keeps the top of the pot damp and the middle wet, and roots that never get air begin to rot. The plant then wilts, which looks exactly like thirst, so it gets watered again, and that is usually the end.

The test is the soil, not the calendar and not the leaves. Push a finger into the compost to the second knuckle. If it comes out with soil on it and feels cool, wait. If it comes out dry, water until it runs out of the bottom, then empty the saucer. A plant watered properly once a fortnight is in far better shape than one given a splash every other day.

That is what the journal’s log is for. It works out an interval from the plant, the season, the light where it stands and the size of its pot, tells you the day, and shows you the reasoning. It is a reminder to go and look, not an instruction to pour.

What to do in the first month

Leave it where you put it. A new plant will often drop a leaf or two as it adjusts to the light and the dryness of your house, and moving it again starts that over. Two weeks of the same spot tells you more than four moves do.

Do not feed it. Nursery compost carries enough for the first month or two, and feeding a plant that has not settled adds salts to soil the roots are not yet using.

Do not repot it. The pot it came in is almost certainly the right size, and a plant moved into a larger pot sits in a volume of wet compost its roots cannot reach through. Repot when roots come out of the drainage holes, and then only one size up.