Houseplant Care: The Essential Equipment You Need

The beginner houseplant lover who visits her garden supply store is certainly going to be overwhelmed at the huge number and variety of indoor garden equipment she is going to find on sale for takin care of her houseplants. There are literally hundreds of different kinds of tools, like rakes and sprayers, on the market. If almost all of them can be useful, only a small number of them are essential for houseplant care.

If you are not scared off by the huge number of different tools available, you will often tend to buy more tools than you really need, or at the very least more than you are convinced you need. It's very common for a beginner who has let herself get carried away, to realize after a couple of months that the only uses she can find for the expensive decorative pots she bought was as the base of a home-made lamp. We certainly don’t want this to happen to you.

In fact, other than the pots you need, you can cultivate an indoor garden with no particular equipment. However, if you start off with the basic tools described below, you can be confident that you will be equipped for every houseplant care eventuality. All the equipment mentioned here are easily available in any garden supply store. The beginner houseplant lover can get everything she needs for less than a total of twenty dollars.

Basic Houseplant Care Tools

There is no reason that you can't start home gardening and do a good job at it without buying some of the expensive tools you can found in the market. For example, did you know that a simple kitchen fork can be used instead of a cultivator, and that you can use an old teapot to water your houseplants?

It is true that the professional tools designed to fulfill the specific functions for which they were made are a great deal more efficient than their homemade substitutes. In addition, we firmly believe that in the long run you will be happier with professionally-made tools because they last longer, make your work easier, and wear better.

The most convenient trowel you can get is one that is less than 3" at the top of the blade since most common houseplants grow in relatively small pots. Furthermore, they are inexpensive and easily available.

The next piece of equipment you will need are bulb sprayers. They are are used to wet the foliage of most houseplants and come in different sizes. For taking care of houseplant, you should buy the smallest kind available. You can replace a bulb sprayer with an atomizer such as the ones sold to spray medicine or perfume although it won't be as efficient as a bulb sprayer.

Another home gardening tool you will need are watering cans. Again, these come in every size and shape you can image. Howeverr, we can say without doubt the best kind available on the market today is the type with the long thin spout. Why? Because it is especially useful in watering around the base of plants whose foliage should not be wetted, such as in the case of the Saintpaulia or African Violet.

Finally, either you are a beginner or seasoned home gardener, you should have at hand a ball of light twine to use for example in tying up climbing houseplants and in tying back the unruly plant.