Plants Indoor and Out

I have a little crawling girl in my house now, which means that I'm also dealing with protecting my house plants from little hands.  I thought this might be a good time to remind you about the benefits of having house plants as well as remind you that spring is a good time to reassess your house plant situation.  I'm also sitting in my house itching for the rain to stop and a few other things to fall into place to I can get outside and start working with my outside plants.  So here's a quick tutorial about indoor plants as well as a few tidbits about outdoor plants.
Indoor:
Even though we hear a lot about smog and outdoor air pollution, the air you breath outside it actually much less polluted than indoor air.  Indoor air is polluted by everything from dust and mold particles to off-gassing from furniture and cleaning products.  One of the easiest and best ways to clean your indoor air is to keep house plants.  There are some plants that are better at cleaning air than others, but all plants will work.  Here is a list of the top 15 houseplants that NASA found to be the best air purifiers.  This link also gives you a picture as well as a little info about each plant.  They're all common plants that are pretty easy to find.  Usually when you buy a plant it will tell you how much sun it needs, so remember, not all plants need to be right in front of a window (this is a tip from the poor plant I scorched in college by putting the poor shade loving plant in direct sunlight).

Spring is also a good time to give a little TLC to the house plants that you already have.   Now is a good time to repot and fertilize plants.  I like to take my big plants, like my money tree and parlor palm outside and spray them down with a hose to dust off the leaves and throughly soak the roots.  It's a good ideal to "rinse" your plants every once in awhile, when  you keep adding water until the water that is coming out of the bottom runs clear.  Tossing them outside in the rain works well for this.

My money tree, Sol Cane and some kind of Dracaena I got for volunteering at the kindergarten center. And Abby, who does the opposite of purify the air.    

Outdoor:
I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about outdoor plants as indoor (and even that's only basic knowledge) but I can tell you what's on my to do list outside.  First, I want to edge my flower beds before I get mulch.  I read on Pineterest to make your beds look more professional, "bank" the edge.  My wonderful mother bough me a straight edger after I "borrowed" hers for a year.  It's a quick way to give your beds a nice clean look.  Mulching helps to keep weeds at bay (duh, I know) but if you have a ton of weeds in your beds you can lay down a layer of newspaper first before you mulch to kill the weeds naturally.  Cardboard also works for this.

I still have those #$%@$ weeds coming up between the bricks in my patio.  So instead of a toxic herbicide that my kids will get on their shoes, track in the house and get all over the floor that Olivia crawls on, not to mention that fact that the toxic smell lingers for days on the patio they're playing on, I'm going to use a more natural weed killer.  There are tons of recipes, but I'm going to use salt, dish soap and vinegar mixed with hot water.  I'm only going to use this on the patio though because it will kill everything, not just weeds.

As for the flowers that I'm going  to put in my beds, I'm just going to follow the recommendations of light needed and zone that is at the nursery.   I'll let Ellie pick, since she really likes to do that part.

I'll leave the whole thing about my vegetable garden for another blog, but my herb garden is just along the side of my house.  I started it a few years ago when my mom got me a single herb plant and I just threw it in willy nilly.  Now I like to have the herbs along the side of the house because they're only kind of hidden, but still fast to grab when I'm.  I usually get rosemary, thyme, dill, basil, cilantro, parsley, chives and mint, but I'm always looking for more herbs to add.  The kids love to go over and pick the leaves to smell them and taste them.  I also planted garlic last fall and it looks like I have some sprouts so hopefully this fall I'll have a few heads of garlic!

The Garlic I planted in the fall in my herb garden.