Title: The New Plant Parent: Develop Your Green Thumb and Care for Your House-Plant Family
Author: Darryl Cheng
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (Just OK.)
Review:
Due to the lockdown, I am home all the time now so I decided to take gardening more seriously. I got a few plant books from Amazon and this one popped up in the “Customers who bought this item also bought” section. The reviews were good, so I picked this one up too.
The New Plant Parent: Develop Your Green Thumb and Care for Your House-Plant Family is divided into two parts: Caring for Plants and House Plant Journal. I used to believe that I was a bad plant mom because my plants would lose leaves or change shape. But thanks to Cheng, I now know that those are signs that the plant is adapting to their new environment. I also used to be afraid of expanding my plant collections because I would not be able to remember the specific light and water needs of each plant. But because of this book, I now know that I should instead be observing individual plants to understand their needs. While I still have a hard time determining how much water my plants need, I am beginning to understand when my plants need more or less light.
The one thing that annoyed me about this book is that Cheng mentions multiple times that people should not grow plants as decor but then proceeds to talk about what pot color or where to position the plant in the house to make it more aesthetically pleasing. These tips undermine his original message. I think he should write about plant decoration in a separate part of the book or visit the topic in another book. I also did not find the second half of the book useful because it was focused on specific plants such as jade plant, money tree, peace lily, etc. I do not currently have any of those plants and I am also not planning to expand my current collection, so I ended up skimming through this part. Nonetheless, Cheng did a good job covering the basics of plant care. He included a lot of photos and a few charts to visually explain the concepts explored in the book. Thus, I think this is a good starter book for budding plant enthusiasts.
Highlights:
- “…length of time a plant can be enjoyed, as opposed to how long it can survive, the plant’s subjective life span.”
- “These plants accomplish everlasting life in two different ways: first, by preserving aesthetic qualities throughout their life span (some with pruning, some without), and second, by producing offshoots…”
- “Focus on understanding your environment, do the best you can for your house plants, and let nature take its course. Those are the hallmarks of a ‘green thumb.’”
- “…you do not pour in a volume of water greater than a third of the volume of the soil.”