Houseplant Tips

By KnowYourPlant editorial team. Last updated: June 17, 2026. Knowing when to repot is one of those things that sounds obvious until you’re actually standing over a plant, trying to decide if it’s genuinely cramped or just looking a little dramatic. Most people repot too early, too often, or for the wrong reasons. A fair number also wait too long, then wonder why their plant stopped growing. The real problem is that the usual signs you’ll read about – roots at the drainage hole, slow growth, soil drying out fast – are real but incomplete. They show up in guides without context, and that missing context is what sends a healthy plant into unnecessary repot stress, or leaves a struggling one stuck in a pot it’s outgrown. ...

How to Clean Plant Leaves: Methods That Actually Work Most of us notice it at the same moment: the afternoon light hits your monstera or fiddle-leaf fig just right, and you realize the leaves are coated in a fine grey film you somehow never noticed before. Knowing how to clean plant leaves properly is one of those small-but-real care habits that makes a noticeable difference over time, both for how your plants look and how well they actually grow. ...

Hydrogen Peroxide for Plants: How to Use It Safely You have tiny flies circling your favourite plant, or you just noticed the roots looked off during a repot. Before you buy anything special, check your medicine cabinet. There is a good chance the answer is already there. Hydrogen peroxide is one of those quietly useful tools that experienced growers reach for early, not as a magic fix, but as a simple, low-cost way to deal with fungus gnats, root rot, and contaminated soil before things spiral further. It is cheap, widely available, leaves no chemical residue, and works fast. ...

You’re standing in a garden center, or maybe scrolling through a plant shop online, and you see two plants side by side. Both have heart-shaped green leaves. Both trail beautifully. Both are labelled with names that don’t quite match what you remember. This is the pothos vs philodendron puzzle, and it trips up almost everyone at some point. Here’s the useful part: you do not need a botany lesson to solve it. You need a few reliable checks for the plant in front of you, then a simple answer to the care question that usually follows: can you water it the same way, and which one fits your room better? Nurseries sometimes don’t help matters; mislabelling is common enough that you cannot always trust the tag in the pot. Once you know what to look for, though, you’ll never mix them up again. ...