Raising houseplants can be a difficult task, and sometimes, despite your best efforts, the plant just doesn’t look very healthy. You’ve monitored the light, you’ve been careful to feed it properly, and you’ve been conscientious about watering. Yet something still seems wrong; the plant is listless and dull. What could it be? It is possible that despite all of your precautions, you’ve forgotten one of the most important aspects of houseplant care – proper grooming.
It is easy to overlook grooming when raising houseplants. We would never forget to groom our pets or our ourselves, yet somehow our plants, despite being living creatures, often miss out on being primped and preened. However, proper grooming is not just a nice gesture toward the plant itself, but an important one to its overall health.
Your first step in cleaning up your plant is removing any dead leaves which have fallen to the base of the plant. Dead leaves can not only block the soil from absorbing water properly, but can actually lead to problems with disease, as they can attract both fungi and pests. Be careful when extricating dead leaves not to damage any of the leaves on the lower branches.
Nobody likes dust, and that includes plants, whose leaves are perfect landing pads for dust motes and whose branches are ideal for dust bunnies. Besides making the plant look neglected, dust can cause serious damage to a plant by clogging leaf pores, effectively strangling the plant, and by covering the receptors of the leaf so that it doesn’t absorb sunlight as well.
If your plants are dusty, grab a clean cloth and a damp sponge and get to work. If you’ve been neglectful, and there is a thick coat of dust on the leaves, use the cloth to gently wipe away the dirt before using the damp sponge. Then take the leaf gently in your hand, supporting it from underneath, and carefully wipe the sponge across the leaf surface, removing any remaining dust. Again, carefully and gently! You may use this technique for most plants, but in some cases, such as succulents or other plants with hairy leaves, you can use a toothbrush to remove any excess dirt.
Cleaning the leaves in this way should leave the plant looking shiny and happy, but if you’re still not satisfied, and if you want your plants to really shine, you can polish the leaves. There are a variety of ways to do this – most garden centers sell a number of different leaf polishes. Remember, though, that the plant is a living, breathing thing, and doesn’t like chemicals very much; some plants can’t tolerate polishes at all. In fact, many plant experts recommend not using leaf polishes if you can help it. If you must, try and find an all-natural leaf polish; avoid anything in an aerosol can. Test the polish on a leaf or two, and then wait a few days to see how the plant reacts. If it seems to do okay, it is probably safe to use on the rest of the plant. Just remember not to use it on new leaves or flowers.
Remember that plants, like pets, love attention. It is easy to forget to groom our plants, but you will be surprised how much difference it can make. By cleaning out their soil, wiping off the dust, and polishing the leaves, you will make your plant happy, and it will brighten the whole room.
