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?