Not Another Jungle: Comprehensive Care for Extraordinary Houseplants

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Detailed chapters on light, water, humidity, fertilizer, variegation, propagation, and pests and diseases have you covered so you can confidently care for all your houseplants. Understanding their natural habitats empowers you to create the optimum environment in your own home so your plants will thrive.Combining detailed care advice and stunning imagery on a wide range of plants, including Monstera and Anthurium, with a special focus on desirable and unusual varieties Tony: Every day, every day, every single day. Someone asked to buy this entire plant, which is my mother plant, which I wouldn't sell. I grew that from a rotting node so it's got a bit of a place in my heart. They offered me tens and tens of thousands of pounds for it. Tony: Current is Monstera Velvet Peru. We know it was collected in Peru, so we know that. We know it's a Monstera, looks velvet. There we go!

Tony: It needs a repot. It's been in that pot since I got it, when it was a lot smaller. It's only recently, this year, it's started putting out some new growth. This is one of Tony's biggest bugbears, who says home-made fertilisers are “a total waste of food or total waste of time. Sometimes it can actually create a negative impact on the plant". Tony: Yes! You look closely at your pot, no matter what medium you use, and there's going to be some form of life in there. Again, this is from outside, it's so important to nurture that ecosystem in the pot because it helps the soil structure, it helps roots absorb nutrients. Repeated pesticide use, whether that be natural or synthetic, is not only killing the pests but it's killing the ecosystem in your pot, which is eventually going to have a detrimental effect on your plant overall. Tony: It's still up in the air, yes. There's a lot of different thoughts on that. I mean, Borsigiana isn't a recognised name. It was just invented, but use it if you like because people know what you're talking about, but I'd say the easiest thing is just to do small-form and large-form right now. I've grown both of them in the same situations, from nodes, and they act completely differently. They fenestrate in different ways, they grow at a different rate as well, even from nodes which are sort of the same maturity. So, in my eyes, they are two different forms of Deliciosa but, for instance, I have six different forms of Monstera adansonii subspecies Laniata. That sounds very specific, but every region has a different version of it, so it's not crazy to think that there might be two, or even more, subspecies of Deliciosa, like that was thought as a subspecies of Deliciosa at the moment.

It was really, that was one of my favourite parts of the book, were the photoshoots and preparing the plants for the shoot as well. I mean, it wasn't all smooth sailing because if you can imagine for instance the variegated Rhaphidophora tetrasperma, not many of them at the time weren't many of them around. For the book I showed how it stem propagate that so I have to have that plant ready in all different stages of the propagation from it being first cut to the shoot to it's first leaf. All for that one day. And same with begonia leaf cuttings, I basically had to make like 50 of them two weeks apart to make sure I had one in each stage of its development for the step by step. So it's a lot of work. Jane: Yes, exactly. You're Mr Aroid! You have a greenhouse in your house, in this new house, you have a greenhouse, kind of, in your house, we'll go and look at. Lots of people are putting in IKEA cabinets and things, but for those of us who aren't at that stage yet, or don't have the room, or the inclination for that, what are the Aroids that really will do well in - that's a very difficult thing to describe, "an average home" - but just what are the real toughies that we can rely on to do well?

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Jane: You can fix that with lots of modern bulbs and things, it just depends whether you want to invest in that technology or how you want your home to look and the aesthetic you're trying to create. Jane: I was going to say they look like they're starting to reshoot. We'll get into a bit more, sort of really geeky stuff in a little bit of Patreon content, but that's the unicorn that we've all heard about. It's never Obliqua, but here we are, it is Obliqua, so what's the story behind your getting hold of the Obliqua? Jane: I think that's really interesting. I think that outside approach, bringing that inside does bring a different perspective. Can you talk a bit more about that, in terms of how that plays out, in terms of things like pests and watering? Tony: So the majority of Aroids, even the things I have in the greenhouse, could be acclimated to grow in the home. They're not going to grow as fast, or as big, or as reliably, and you might get some more problems, you might have to manage watering a little bit more, but they really can be acclimated to most, I say, average houses, but some houses have 30% humidity and some have 70%, some have a lot of light and some have none. So there's two avenues you can go down; you either choose a plant that you like and then you create the conditions it's going to thrive in, so you can give it artificial light if you have to, you can give it more humidity if you have to or you figure out the kind of space and conditions you can offer and find plants to fit that. So there's two different ways you can go about it, neither is right or wrong. I think it's just really important to find out what your plant needs and make sure you're giving it.