The plant doesn’t get enough light, so its stems stretches long and its leaves stay tiny. Or maybe it’s sitting on some dark north-facing shelf, out of sight, out of mind, and you bought it because it’s handsome in the catalog.
And then you feel guilty if you don’t water it, so you overwater it, but in fact it’s probably not the water that’s the issue at all, but light. Not feeding it isn’t what most plants indoors suffer from; what they suffer from is a mismatch between their need for light and yours.
How to Choose the Right Spot for Your Plants
A useful unit of measurement for indoors are foot-candles (see chart above). Foot-candles is a useful unit of measurement for indoors, unlike “full sun” guides which is useless advice when you’re standing in a hallway with no windows. Indoors light differ from outdoors. It’s diffuse; it comes to you via glass. As you step away from the window, the light drop quickly. Knowing that shifts in light levels will enable you to keep plant alive.
First examine your windows. Start by looking at your windows. In the northern hemisphere, a north-facing window is a low-light zone. In the northern hemisphere, that’s a low-light window. Slow-growing plants that thrives on little light include snake plant or ZZ plants. That’s not where you’d put a fiddle leaf fig. It won’t get enough light.
People tend to think all windows are created equal; they’re not. East is good (gentle morning light). That’s great for things like spider plants or pothos, which is tropical plants. They recieve some light first thing in the day and then don’t have to deal with the afternoon heat.
Bright light comes from south-facing windows. Herbs (such as basil), succulents and jade plant wants their intensity; they’ll sicken without it. But too much direct sunlight will scorch the tender foliage of other plants, causing browning. To get an idea, look at the chart; many of these plants requires more than 1000 foot-candles. A thousand sounds like a lot when you’re talking about foot-candles, but then look at your herb or jade plant growing happy on the window sill. Not sure? Put up a sheer curtain. It diffuses glare while keeping enough brightness.
Second: There is an oft-overlooked timing issue. Yes, light level is important, but so is how long a plant gets it. Even if your plant’s location is bright, it might only recieve two hours of useful sunlight. This could happen because shade falls on the sill for part of the day or clouds prevent full sun, meaning it isn’t getting what it needs. Many tropicals wants ten to twelve hours of bright light per day. With short days in winter, even a citrus tree with a sunny south-facing window may not get enough overall daylight each day.
When you find yourself in this scenario, extra lighting can be your friend. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Adding just an hour or two of extra light with an LED grow light will fill in the gap between what the plant requires and what it gets from the window. When the day’s time frame is limited, adding to that natural light will help. Don’t mistake it for replacing natural light.
It makes taking care of them easy. No more guesswork. No more transplanting because a leaf turns yellow. See the room? Read the light? Choose a plant right for that lighting situation. That snake plant in the dark corner isn’t sick; it’s happy there. That jade plant is on the sunny window ledge. It’s content, not stressed.
Match the light to the plant. The rest of the how-to-care-for-it follows. Happy plants don’t need babysitting. Just good placement.
Next time you’re thinking about adding another houseplant, first examine the windows. Then consult the chart. Your perfect plant is already waiting for you in your home; in the proper place.