My plants don’t care about me
3/6/2021
I invest several hours of tender loving care into my houseplants. But they don’t seem to care. I’m stuck in a one-sided relationship.
Plants are ungrateful. I would even go so far and call them the injury-free equivalent of cats. Only if no cacti are involved. You give them water, nutrients, love and care. And sometimes, when no one’s home, you’ll compliment them in a high-pitched baby voice or channel your inner dad with jokes like «green behind the ears». They return your affection with bullying or dying right away. Depending on what they feel like doing. In the end, they drive you crazy.
Here are six things I do for my plants that they don’t care about.
1. Giving them limelight
Sometimes I feel like a high-society mommy holding her kid’s hand and chasing the spotlight at a children’s fashion show. I constantly push, turn or place my green protégés around, just to make sure they get enough light or don’t burn. The result? Leaves so crispy that fries from Burger King would turn green with envy – and once pink calathea stripes faded into creamy white.
2. Constant repotting
If they’re not dying or charring, my plants are growing. And so quickly, that after repotting, there’s hardly time to catch your breath before the next one cries out for a new home for its roots. Compacted soil, drooping leaves, roots greedily growing from the holes of the inner pot. It’s a never-ending cycle. My basement now resembles a garden centre. Indoor and cachepots as far as the eye can see. I search in vain for the right size for the next repotting project. A new one is needed.
3. The right mix
Certain plants grow in the strangest of places under the most unimaginable conditions: between stone slabs, in the desert, I swear I once saw a tree growing in the middle of a lake. My houseplants, on the other hand, are divas. No soil is good enough. The soil I painstakingly mixed with perlite and coconut fibre? Certain death. Well, not quite, but I could swear my plant thinks it’s not the cream of the crop. Or aerial root.
4. From fertilisers to hand-feeding
Last year, I got a tomato cutting from my mother. I was determined to raise it and watered it daily for several weeks. I supported it when necessary. Despite my efforts, I sawed and didn’t reap much. Three tiny tomatoes. One of them rotten. Dreams of tomato salad shattered. My discipline was in vain.
Even my fertiliser calendar, a chart I lovingly designed, in which I enter the fertilisation date for each houseplant individually, left the green creatures cold. In all honesty, I’ve never felt a positive effect from fertilising. The highest level of commitment I’ve made is to my Venus Trap, a carnivorous beauty: I went fly hunting because she was unable to catch anything herself. But as soon as the summer was over, she passed away.
5. War on vermin
Disney’s «A Bug’s Life» was filmed at my house. I’m convinced of that. Spider mites, fungus gnats or who knows what else. My plants invited all kinds of bugs for a party into my home without asking my permission. So every now and then, I go to war, equipped with poisonous tablets for watering, hideous yellow sticky traps and «pest-stop» sprays. The only thing harmed is my hope for a vermin-free life, not the vermin themselves. To this day, I maintain a fungus gnat graveyard in every other plant pot.
6. Beauty procedures
My houseplants don’t get any rain. The dusting, cleaning, and depending on the type of plant, spraying with water is left up to me. A mystery to me is that not even 24 hours after my labour of love, a grey veil covers the leaves again.
After all the work, tears and despair, new leaves or shyly visible offshoots are a ray of hope. A soft thank you whispered into the wind. But the joy is short-lived, as I realise a new leaf means new trouble. Do I dare to grow a new plant from the offshoot? I would have one more roommate to drive me crazy.
It’s like opening Pandora’s box. Nevertheless, I do it. There’s always hope.
Natalie Hemengül
Senior Editor
Natalie.Hemenguel@digitecgalaxus.chAs a massive Disney fan, I see the world through rose-tinted glasses. I worship series from the 90s and consider mermaids a religion. When I’m not dancing in glitter rain, I’m either hanging out at pyjama parties or sitting at my make-up table. P.S. I love you, bacon, garlic and onions.
