Buying House Plants - Make Me Cry
I’m working on a project to convert plants grown in soil to expanded clay. Sub-irrigation is not anything new to me and I’m a solid supporter of it. However, my experience with growing in “rock” - LECA - Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggreate is limited. My quest for plant growing experience continues and I’ll be giving you more “test results” in the future.
In the future I’ll report on converting these plants to LECA and growing all in conditions you would face. The goal is to teach you plant care… it’s easier then many think. Plus I want you to enjoy your houseplants more and reduce any maintenance and houseplant bugs.
In order to do this project correctly I wanted to buy houseplants from the same place you may buy them from. So I went over to the seven - yes SEVEN stores of the big box retailers with garden centers - Walmart, Target, Lowe’s and Home Depot.
Sad to say all but Lowe’s on a scale of 1-10 failed! Lowe’s in my opinion was about 8.5. All the others delivered only disappointment. In fact I found it hard to buy any houseplants from them. First the displays for house plants and foliage were terrible. Orchids and bromeliads looked great but the tropical plants and palms looked like second class citizens. Dracaenas were put pot to pot right along with the palms and ferns.
The whole sight frankly made me want to cry as a grower and sad for you as a consumer. Growers spend months growing a great looking plant only to have all that work wiped out with poor handling at the garden center. The best description I can offer for what the foliage looked like would be a called “scratch and dent” and plant trouble ahead.
Kudos to Lowe’s for a well organized garden shop area, drip irrigation for baskets and plants which were not mashed together. Lowe’s also carried varieties others did not touch. For example I could not find ONE Aglaonema at any of the other 6 stores except for Lowe’s. In fact, the plants at my local grocery store looked better!
Enough with my rants. I was able to get some plants from Lowe’s to start the experiements. I’ll keep you posted.
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