It’s always a welcome surprise when a book lives up to its name. After all, it’s hard to sum up everything about a book in just a few words. The Houseplant Handbook: Basic Growing Techniques and a Directory of 300 Everyday Houseplants is everything that its name suggests.
Chock full of basic and more advanced indoor gardening techniques;
The Houseplant Handbook gives you everything you need to grow a healthy, prolific, eye-catching indoor garden. Author David Squire is a horticulturist and prolific garden author, who combines his expertise in both areas to provide you with a true handbook meant to walk you through just about any indoor gardening scenario.
In this complete guide of houseplant care you’ll find instructions and clear explanations for a wide variety of gardening techniques. The 224-page book teaches you houseplant growing basics, like lighting and temperature, as well as watering and humidity and feeding. There’s a section on repotting with step-by-step instructions, including photos. And you’ll discover tips for supporting your houseplants, as well as pruning them.
If you want to increase your indoor garden without having to buy new plants, Squire includes instructions on every possible way to propagate houseplants. Learn how to sow houseplant seeds and which houseplants can be grown from seed. These include wax begonia, cyclamen,
impatiens and
coleus.
The Houseplant Handbook has an extensive section on growing houseplants from a variety of cuttings. Simple instructions with photos show you how to take every type of cutting possible, including stem-tip cuttings, leaf-stem cuttings, leaf-petiole cuttings, whole- and cross-leaf cuttings and horizontal and vertical cane cuttings. You’ll even learn how to grow cuttings from cactus and succulents, and which plants can be grown from runners and plantlets.
If your houseplants have become root bound, Squire shows you how to successfully divide and replant them. The book lists the various houseplants suitable for dividing, including cast-iron plant, peacock plant, spider plant, various ferns and
peace lily. And if a houseplant has become too tall or unwieldy, the book takes you through how to air layer the plant.
The comprehensive plant directory section of
The Houseplant Handbookincludes 300 plants. This invaluable reference features photos of each houseplant with growth habit information, care instructions and how to propagate the plant.
Julie Bawden-Davis is a garden writer and master gardener, who since 1985 has written for publications such as Organic Gardening, The American Gardener, Wildflower, Better Homes and Gardens and The Los Angeles Times. She is the author of 10 books, including Reader’s Digest Flower Gardening, Fairy Gardening, The Strawberry Story Series, and Indoor Gardening the Organic Way, and is the founder of HealthyHouseplants.com. Her backyard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.
