How to Take Care of Plants: 5 Efficient Ways

The author shares tips on how to take care of plants the natural way. For those starting to engage in this productive preoccupation to keep food on the table or beautify the home, this article will help you get going.

Although planting is as easy as throwing away seeds or just burying the plant’s stem, ways on how to take care of plants elude many. Many plantitos and plantitas during the pandemic just engage in gardening and planting as refuge in life of confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Plants die because of insufficient knowledge on how to take care of plants. An easy excuse is to say your ineptness is that you have no “green thumb.”

But people having a green thumb is not true. Virtually everyone can plant. It’s just a matter of care for the plants or nurturing them towards whatever purpose you want—to reap their fruits or enjoy their beauty as ornaments to radiate brilliance in your home.

Here are my tips on how to take care of plants in the natural way.

Five (5) Efficient Natural Ways on How to Take Care of Plants

I list the following tips on how to take care of plants during the initial but crucial planting activity.

1. If the sides or the base of the plant’s pot has an opening through something which are predominantly filled or closed, disrupt the order or compactness of the material. Punch the bottom of the pots with a sharp material, e.g. using the tip of your gardening scissor, a cake knife, a cutter or a fork before planting and make just enough drainage of about two tiny holes. This avoids choking your plants with too much water on it.
2. Refill the flowerpot with the soil covering the tiny holes, carefully placing the soil between and around all the roots to eliminate the air from the pockets. Usually, the underground part of seedlings of plants functions for anchorage and food storage.
3. Securely fix the soil. Do it gently to make it conducive to plant growth.
4. Place cut banana peels, along with the fully dried empty eggshells alternately on the soil. This serves as an effective natural fertilizer for your plants.
5. Avoid compacting the soil into a great hard mass. This ensures a better room or space for your plants to move on its own accord, to move about in a continuous motion to go on a different position within the pot.

So how do you ensure you provide the right nutrients and that you supplement an effective natural fertilizer for your plants? I describe in the next section how we did it at home.

5 Steps on How to Make a Natural Fertilizer

The following five steps on how to make a natural fertilizer works efficiently far beyond anything. My family has been applying these steps to enrich the soil the natural way—both in the pots and in the cultivated areas. I list the steps below:

1. After consuming your three (3) table bananas, a very healthy fresh fruit served after a sweet course and is good for a hearty heart—do not just deposit your table banana peels in a garbage can right away. Instead, briskly wash it in just two to four seconds.
2. Divide the three (3) pieces of table banana peels by simply cutting a piece into comparatively five (5) little strips or cubes. Use your kitchen scissors or kitchen knife, or a cutter.
3. Place the sliced table banana peels in a medium-sized jar or in a one (1) litre container pitcher, or a bottle.
4. Mix your dried empty eggshells and blend with one (1) liter of water using a serving spoon or just cover it with its lid and shake gently. Leave the mixture for about 15 to 30 minutes.
5. Sprinkle and moisten your plants with the mixture by watering the solution directly to your plants. Do these on your plants once or twice a week and enjoy the wonderful perks in having an effective way to water plants and an effective natural fertilizer for your plants.

Everyone enjoys eating bananas. Plants amazingly like them, too.

Why Make the Natural Fertilizer?

Because of the very rich nutrients of the banana peel and the empty eggshells alike, it becomes a rich mix of all the nutrients a plant may need. The skin or peels of a table banana are rich enough in essential nutrients like potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Potassium, in particular, serves as an enzyme activator and facilitates plant cooling (Hussein et al., 2019).

The eggshells are rich in calcium. It helps enrich the soil and supplies nutrients in order for plants to grow healthy. The red tomatoes and cabbage quickly rot (in just a matter of a few days) because it lacks the sufficient calcium that it requires for its growth. Yet the calcium deficiency on this concern is being treated by the empty eggshells and table banana peels to a great extent.

It is best if you first dry up the eggshells directly on sunlight or a sunny windowsill for a few days before merging it into your soil for plants. If you boil them or cook them in the oven for a few minutes, the essential nutrients will no longer be maintained.

Five (5) Additional Tips on How to Take Care of Plants

Aside from what I have mentioned in the previous section, here are more tips on how to take care of orchids and other popular ornamental plants.

1. My family has been depositing and or putting the empty eggshells directly unto our plants’ soil in the garden for ages. And it similarly works all the time. Particularly for the ornamental plants, for all varieties of the orchids, for the taro family, for the roses, daisies, dahlias, for vegetables and even for the pine trees. Distinctively, the dried empty eggshells make our plants sturdier, livelier, healthier and the soil more fertile.
2. You may likewise opt to plant your fave orchids at home like vanda, etc. on a coconut husk. Orchids simply love to grow on coconut husk. One of the top reasons the coconut husk or the coconut coir is used for planting is because of its natural capability to keep much of the moisture for longer days without suffocating the plants. It provides a freeway for the air to flow, thus making them grow faster and healthier.
3. Have a small space for your garden? No problem at all. You may even want to plant your own mustard (Brassica hirta), spinach (Spinacia oleracea or alugbati), lady finger (Abelmoschus esculentus or okra), cucumber (Cucumis sativus), potato (Solanum tuberosum), malunggay (Moringa oleifera), camote tops (Ipomoea batatas), water spinach or kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica), eggplant (Solanaceae or Anselmabolandrina), lettuce (Lactuca sativa), romaine lactuca sativa/ longifolia), celery (Apium graveolens), parsley (Apiaceae), ginger (Zingiber officinale), turmeric (Curcuma onga), garlic (Allium sativum), onions (Allium sepa) strawberries (Fragaria ananassa), grapes (Vitis vinifera), on smaller flower pots. You may also plant oranges (Citrus sinensis), apple (Malus domestica), dragon fruit (latin word undatus), plum (Prunus americana), dalandan (Citrus aurantium), calamansi (Citrofortunella microcarpa), lemon (Citrus limonum), papaya (Carica papaya), guava (Psidium guajava), gooseberry or kamias or iba (Cicca acida), and the dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus) on huge flower pots.
4. Make use of your space by planting horizontally and vertically. Use walls also by hanging plants and vines on the walls layer by layer.
5. You may also want to put the smaller pots, smaller plants on your windowsill or panel.

The Joy of Gardening and Planting

Truly, gardening and planting is an enjoyable activity for each and everyone in the community. You can organize a tree planting activity for your community, for the locals and even for your family.

Have fun and meet other people who share the same passion as yours! Gardening and planting activities are an excellent platform to maintain your physical and mental health. It helps you fully cope with the physical, mental and emotional issues and have a healthy balance in your life.

Do it with your kids and reap the benefits your children can derive from the activity. The following video says it all.

I hope you enjoy and apply these tips on how to take care of plants. I have done it so I believe it should work for you.

Specifically for outdoor plants, you might find my article on what species are excellent and how to plant them. I give a link below:

Outdoor Plants: 10 Creative Ways to Plant Them

May God bless you and keep you safe this pandemic. Enjoy my tips!

References

Bandara, G. I. M., Rathnaweera, H. U. I., Jayathma, W. N., Chandrasiri, G. S. P., Malhari, D. N., & Arachchige, U. S. Development of an organic fertilizer instant-cube with pest repellent efficacy (FERTIPEST).

Hussein, H. S., Shaarawy, H. H., Hussien, N. H., & Hawash, S. I. (2019). Preparation of nano-fertilizer blend from banana peels. Bulletin of the National Research Centre, 43(1), 1-9.

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