Shea Simmons
Dedicated plant parents likely have a set watering schedule and know the perfect amount of sunlight their plants need. However, there’s one plant care step you might be missing.
Cleaning your plants is crucial to helping them grow to their full potential. Wiping down your plants rids their leaves of the dirt, dust, and debris from around your home that lands and collects there.
While this might not seem like a big deal, when too much accumulates, it can block sunlight from penetrating the plants. This means they can’t initiate photosynthesis as well, which is the process by which they convert light energy into chemical energy to feed themselves.
Also, while you likely try to keep your home as clean as possible, there’s no way to know which pollutants or irritants could land on your plants. Those particles could penetrate the leaves leading to a bacterial or fungal infection.
The good news is, though, cleaning your plants is an easy task you can incorporate into your watering schedule.
Once a week, or every other week, use a moist towel to gently wipe down the leaves and remove dust. If you want to make things especially easy, though, you can use this recent viral hack for cleaning faux plants on your real greenery.
Ciara Benko (@thejungleupstairs) uses a pair of white cotton gloves to gently wipe down plants. The cotton traps any dust or particles on the leaves. When you use gloves instead of a towel, you can wrap your entire hand around the leaves, which cleans both the top and underside at the same time.
Again, this hack was originally intended for faux plants, but, as long as you’re careful, there’s no reason it won’t work on the real deal, as well.
If you’ve been skipping cleaning your plants, now is the time to add this task to your watering routine.
[Via First for Women]
