What I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Got My First Plant

My first houseplant was a peace lily. It came in a little 4-inch pot from the grocery store. I was convinced I would kill it within a month.

I did kill it, but it took three months.

Since then, I've killed maybe a dozen more plants, but I've also kept a lot alive. And looking back, most of my early failures came down to a handful of misunderstandings that nobody bothered to correct.

Here's everything I wish someone had told me when I started.

Plants are not decorations

This sounds obvious, but it took me a while to actually internalize it.

When I got that first peace lily, I put it on a shelf in my bedroom because it looked nice there. The shelf was in a dark corner, far from any window. The plant lasted about a month before it started looking miserable.

Plants need light. Not just a little bit of light. Actual light, from a window, ideally for several hours a day.

The amount of light in a spot can be tricky to judge. Our eyes adjust really well to dim rooms, so a corner that looks reasonably bright to us might be practically dark to a plant.

A good rule of thumb: if you couldn't comfortably read a book there without turning on a lamp, it's probably too dark for most plants.

Most advice is generic (and therefore wrong)

Every plant care label says basically the same thing: "bright indirect light, water when top inch is dry, average humidity." That's like a recipe that says "cook until done."

The problem is that your specific plant in your specific home will have its own needs. My monstera in my dim north-facing apartment needs water less often than the exact same type of plant would in a bright, sunny living room.

Generic advice is a starting point, not a rulebook. You have to observe your actual plant and adjust based on what you see.

Overwatering is worse than underwatering

I overwatered every single plant I owned for the first two years. I thought I was being attentive. I was actually drowning them.

Here's the thing nobody told me: roots need oxygen. When soil is constantly wet, roots suffocate and start to rot. And once root rot sets in, it's really hard to reverse.

An underwatered plant looks sad, but water it thoroughly and it'll usually bounce back within hours. An overwatered plant might look fine for weeks while the roots quietly turn to mush below the surface.

Now I always err on the side of waiting longer between waterings. If I'm not sure whether a plant needs water, I wait a day or two and check again.

The finger test works

Forget moisture meters and watering schedules. The most reliable way to know if a plant needs water is to stick your finger into the soil.

Push your finger an inch or two into the dirt. If it's dry, water. If it's moist, wait.

This takes two seconds and works for almost every plant. The only exception is succulents and cacti, which should dry out completely between waterings (not just the top inch).

I resisted doing this for a long time because it seemed too simple. I wanted a more sophisticated system. But honestly, this works better than anything else I've tried.

Drainage is not optional

Every beginner wants to put plants in cute pots without drainage holes. It seems like such a small thing. Just be careful with watering, right?

Wrong. Pots without drainage are a recipe for root rot.

When you water a plant, excess water needs somewhere to go. Without drainage holes, it pools at the bottom of the pot and keeps the roots constantly wet. Even if you're careful, you will eventually overwater.

There are workarounds (keeping the plant in a nursery pot inside a decorative pot, using a layer of rocks at the bottom, etc.), but for beginners, I'd say just use pots with holes. It's so much easier.

Light is food

I used to think of light as optional, something that made plants grow faster if they got it. That's wrong. Light is how plants make energy. Without enough light, they slowly starve.

This is why my peace lily died in that dark corner. It wasn't getting enough light to sustain itself, so it gradually used up its reserves and withered.

Most houseplants come from tropical forests where they grow under tree canopy. They don't want harsh direct sun (that will burn their leaves), but they do want bright, filtered light for most of the day.

The spot next to a window, or a few feet back from a sunny window, is usually ideal. The dark corner of a room far from any window is usually death.

Some plants are much easier than others

My second plant was a calathea. It was beautiful. It was also incredibly difficult to keep alive.

Calatheas want specific humidity levels, specific water quality, specific light conditions. They throw tantrums if anything is off. They're drama queens. I had no business owning one as a beginner.

If you're just starting out, get plants that are known to be forgiving. Pothos, snake plants, spider plants, ZZ plants. These can handle irregular watering, varying light, and general neglect without immediately dying.

Once you can keep a pothos alive for six months, then maybe try something more demanding.

Symptoms don't tell you everything

Yellow leaves can mean overwatering. Or underwatering. Or too much light. Or not enough light. Or a nutrient deficiency. Or just natural aging.

Brown leaf tips can mean low humidity. Or fertilizer burn. Or underwatering. Or a draft.

Drooping can mean the plant is thirsty. Or drowning. Or stressed from a temperature change.

The symptoms rarely tell you what's wrong on their own. You have to think about what you've been doing, what's changed recently, and check the soil and roots if needed.

This is frustrating, but it's just how plants work. There's no app that will diagnose problems perfectly (though tracking your care habits can help narrow down the cause when something goes wrong).

Keep track of what you do

This is the single best advice I can give.

Most problems happen because you can't remember what you've been doing. Did you water that plant three days ago or last week? Was it getting fertilizer regularly or did you forget for a couple months?

When you track your watering and fertilizing, you have actual data to work with. If a plant starts looking bad, you can look back and see if you've been watering too much, too little, or at weird intervals.

I use an app called Beflore for this because it's quick (I just tap a widget on my home screen), but honestly even a simple notebook would work. The method doesn't matter as much as the consistency.

Progress is slow and that's okay

Plants don't change much from day to day. A new leaf might take weeks to unfurl. Improvements from better care take time to show.

When I first started, I'd hover over my plants constantly, looking for signs of growth. Every tiny spot or imperfect leaf sent me into a spiral of googling. I'd move plants around, change watering schedules, try different things, all within the span of a few days.

This is counterproductive. Plants need consistency and time to adjust. If you change something, give it a few weeks before deciding it's not working.

The people with beautiful, thriving plant collections didn't get there overnight. They got there through years of learning their specific plants in their specific homes.

You will kill plants

Accept this now and it'll hurt less later.

Even experienced plant people kill plants. Sometimes a plant was sick when you bought it. Sometimes conditions in your home just don't work for that species. Sometimes you mess up despite your best intentions.

I've killed maybe 15 plants since I started. My current collection is around 25, most of which have been alive for over a year. That's a lot of failures on the way to whatever success I have now.

Every dead plant teaches you something, even if the lesson is just "don't buy that type of plant again."