Corn Plant

This plant was bought from the Home Depot garden center and we have had this for close to eight years now. This is another excellent house plant with beautiful, green leaves with veins running down the length. The original stem died but we were lucky to get this new growth early on and this is now the dominant feature in the plant.

I have placed this plant by an eastern window and it gets filtered sunlight in the mornings all year round. You will notice that the leaves have brown tips, which are caused by using regular tap water; the plant is very sensitive to chlorine (a fact that I learnt recently) and I am switching to filing the watering can overnight to water this plant to prevent any further damage to the leaves.

 

This plant too is an air purifier and this is just one more reason to have this plant in the house

The technical information on the plant is (source, the internet):

Common Name: Corn Plant or Corn Dracaena
Scientific Name: Dracaena Massangeana
Lighting: Low
Watering: Moderate

This is a beautiful and very hardy indoor plant and requires minimal attention apart from the weekly watering and monthly fertilization that I provide all my plants. This scheduled watering isn’t really recommended but I check the soil for dampness before I water to judge how much to water the plant. 

Watering: on a weekly basis I check the dampness of the soil to determine if watering is needed and am starting to use water standing from the night before to remove the chlorine and thus repair the leaf tips.

Fertilizer: this is done usually on a monthly basis using a standard plant food available in stores; if I miss a month, I don’t fret but during a year I try to get at least 9 fertilizations to keep my plants happy and healthy.

This plant is supposed to be easy to propagate, but I haven’t tried it so far; maybe if it gets taller and looks out of proportion with the house, then I will experiment with it; otherwise it stays as is.

Good looking, easy to grow, very tolerant of any abuse / neglect, plus the plant gives back to the house by cleaning the air … what more can we hope for?

Ponytail Palm tree

This is a plant that I bought from Costco about five years ago. Their garden center is easily one of the best that I have seen; the plants and trees are all in prime health and the pricing is always competitive for similar plants. My wife and I fell in love with the plant and the planter at first sight and have never regretted our impulse to buy.

This sits in our family room by the south-facing window and receives filtered sunlight round the year (courtesy of the net curtains) and its health and well-being is visible by the steady growth of its leaves and their luscious green color. We periodically trim the leaves from the bottom to keep the length within check and this keeps them looking beautiful and healthy, Other than this, the only other maintenance that I do to this plant is pull off the dying leaves as they turn yellow or brown.

The technical information on this plant is (source Wikipedia):

Beaucarnea recurvata (elephant's foot, ponytail palm) is a species of plant in the family Asparagaceae, native to the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and San Luis Potosí in eastern Mexico. Despite its common name, it is not closely related to the true palms (Arecaceae). It was discovered in Mexico by a Frenchman in 1870, becoming popular in Europe and worldwide as an ornamental plant.

This plant is also called an "Elephant's Foot Palm" and is a very low maintenance plant to grow indoors. My schedule for care is as follows:

Watering: on a weekly basis; it took me a while to understand the watering needs of the plant as initially I tended to over water this. However, the unglazed pot came to my rescue and I realized my mistake when the pot started to seep the excess water. Normally I check the dampness of the soil to determine if watering is needed, but there is a beautiful layer of white marble stones on the soil that I don’t want to disturb and spoil.

Fertilizer: this is done usually on a monthly basis using a standard plant food available in stores; if I miss a month, I don’t fret but during a year I try to get at least 9 fertilizations to keep my plants happy and healthy.

I have been tempted to propagate the plant by cutting off the one shoot on the stem and root it, but have yet to muster the courage to do so. The plant is still in the original pot that I bought it in and because the roots don’t have much place to grow, it hasn’t grown any taller; just the leaves keep growing longer and more beautiful!!!