If you are thinking about trying to get into gardening, there has never been a better time to do so. With the casual and gradual destruction of the planet by human hands, anything you can do to encourage the ecosystems in your area is bound to be a positive step in the right direction. What’s more, growing plants and tending to a garden is a therapeutic and extremely enjoyable way to spend your time, and the kind of thing that you might want to try and make the most of if you can. If you hope to Grow Healthy Plants, it’s helpful to know what they need and what they don’t like. And for that to be made a little easier, it might be a good idea to look into some of the myths surrounding growing plants which might need demolishing.

Plants Need Plenty Of Light

The idea that plants always need a lot of light is not always correct. The truth is that how much they need differs greatly from plant to plant and species to species.

There are technically plants which need no Sunlight at all, these are 'Holoparasitic plants' (parasites that entirely depend on their hosts for all nutrients and energy). A good example is Orobanche. You are unlikely to be growing these varities in your home, however there are countless plants which grow best only with a little indirect light. A lot of plants actually prefer to have very little sun and that is how they grow best. If you want to make sure that you are growing all of your plants well, you need to focus on planting them in the best positions for their sun needs, rather than just trying to get them all to have as much sun as possible.

Plants Need Soil

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If you are thinking back to your school biology lessons, you would be forgiven for thinking that plants always need soil to grow healthily. However, this is not actually the case. Putting aside for a moment the fact that there are water-based plants like lilies and irises, it’s still just not the case that you necessarily need to use soil in order to grow healthy plants anywhere in the world. If you want to grow plants indoors or in a sensitive environment, for instance, then you can think about using hydroponics. The word hydroponics comes from the Latin for ‘working water’, and is a way of growing plants without soil.

Plants Need Regular Watering

While there’s no doubt that all plants need watering to some extent, although of course that extent varies from plant to plant again. But there is a common misunderstanding surrounding how often plants should be watered, and this is something that you need to look into if you are hoping to grow your plants as healthily as possible. In general for most plants you are likely to grow, you will find that it is more effective and healthier for them if you water them about once or twice a week, deeply. That is better than a shallow watering every day.