3 Tips To Get Free Green Plants
When you love indoor plants, there's no limit! The most beautiful specimens in garden centers can be quite expensive, so you often have to find other solutions to satisfy your passion and green up your home without breaking the bank. We are going to give you 3 tips to obtain free green plants.
1- Multiply your plants
If you already have indoor plants that you love at home, the first of the 3 tips for getting free green plants is to multiply them by division or cuttings.
Gardeners who have a vegetable garden are familiar with the technique of multiplication by division, which can be applied to aromatic plants such as mint... It is possible to easily multiply certain green plants using the same principle, by separating the roots, rhizomes, or bulbs from the mother plant and replanting them in a new pot.
You can do this division when repotting the mother plant in spring. Take the root ball out of the pot and gently separate the roots, rhizomes, or bulbs so as not to kill the mother plant. Also, make sure that each daughter plant has stems with leaves so that it can grow through photosynthesis.
Replant the new plant in potting soil in a not too big pot. Place the pot in a bright room without direct sunlight and keep the substrate moist until the seedling takes root. This method of multiplication works well for sansevieria, maranta, and ZZ plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia).
Propagation is another multiplication technique that allows you to get new green plants for free. Simply take a stem with two or three leaves by cutting it with pruners about 1 cm below a node. Place the obtained cutting in a container filled with water, making sure that the node is completely submerged but no leaves are in contact with the water.
Keep the container in a bright room without direct sunlight and change the water every week. Check the water level to prevent the developing roots from being exposed to air. You can then plant the cutting in soil, making sure to keep the substrate always moist.
Propagation by cuttings works well for tradescantia, Monstera, and pothos, for example.
2- Trading plants
Once you have become an expert in division and propagation of indoor plants, you can resort to a second solution to enrich your collection: plant swapping or green swapping!
This form of swapping between gardeners has grown a lot in the last ten years. It allows you to obtain free green plants by exchanging them for your own plants and cuttings.
In addition to being economical, this trick has the advantage of being friendly and putting you in contact with other gardening enthusiasts who will make you discover new varieties of indoor plants.
To participate in garden swaps and exchange groups, I recommend checking specialized websites for swapping and the Facebook page "Troque ta plante" (link below).
This community of gardeners on Facebook provides plenty of tips for successfully propagating many species. In short, it's a real opportunity for any enthusiast who dreams of having a lot of plants at home!
3- Retrieve and plant fruit seeds.
We don't always think about it, but planting the seeds of the fruits we eat is the last of the 3 tips for getting free green plants.
Almost everyone has tried at some point to sprout an avocado seed to get an avocado tree in a pot. But this fruit is not the only one that can give you a nice free indoor plant...
Here are other fruits and vegetables that can be grown at home:
- Mango by carefully extracting the almond from the central husk of the mango (its fibrous pit).
- Lychee by sprouting the seeds.
- Ginger and turmeric by sprouting the rhizomes.
- Sweet potato by choosing an organic tuber and simply sprouting it in water.
- Pineapple by taking the crown of leaves from a Victoria pineapple, for example.
- Coconut, if you're patient... Its germination takes 3 months, but it's worth it as this fruit can give you a nice indoor palm tree or rather a coconut tree!
Each of these crops requires patience and a specific technique. However, if you have a green thumb, sprouting seeds is a fun and economical way to get new indoor plants for free.
