My honest starter list (and why not fiddle-leafs)
Okay. So we've done water, crust, light, bugs. New topic, and it's the one people ask me about before class even starts. What do I actually buy.
I get it in the parking lot. I get it before we've even sat down. "What should my first plant be." So let's just do this one straight, no build-up.
The list
Pothos. Yes, even though it's the one I killed first. It's still the right answer for most people, I just watered mine like it was a guilt offering instead of a plant. Trailing vine, tolerates low light, tells you when it's thirsty because the leaves go a little soft and droopy. Five bucks at most places. If you kill this one, you've lost five dollars and learned something, that's the whole point of it.
Snake plant. I've talked about Steve before, Harper's snake plant that gets a goodnight every night and outlives everything else in the house. Stiff upright leaves, handles low light, and honestly the main way to kill a snake plant is water. Just don't. Let it dry out most of the way between waterings and it will out-survive your other houseplants and possibly your relationship with them.
ZZ plant. Similar deal. Glossy leaves, looks a little expensive, handles neglect better than almost anything I own. Grows slow, which some people don't love, but slow is fine when you're starting out. You don't need drama yet.
Pothos's cousin, philodendron. If you already have a pothos and want a second thing that looks slightly different but behaves the same, get one of these. Same rules apply. Same forgiving nature.
Peace lily, if you want something that flowers a little and also tells you very clearly when it's thirsty, because the leaves go dramatically limp. I mentioned the fertilizer thing with mine before, brown crispy tips, whole Saturday convinced it was sick before I read the bag and realized I'd basically been feeding it like a teenager. It recovered fine. It's a forgiving plant even when I'm not forgiving myself.
That's the starter five. Cheap, available, hard to kill unless you're really trying, or unless you're me in my kitchen eight years ago.
What's not on the list, on purpose
Fiddle-leaf fig.
I know. I know someone in this room wants one. Jeremiah bought me one for a birthday, the big trendy one everyone had on their shelf a few years back, and it dropped every single leaf within about a month. I was mad about that plant for way longer than is reasonable for a plant. It's finicky about light, finicky about being moved, finicky about being looked at wrong, basically. There are ten other plants that look just as nice and won't punish you for having a life. I will not be talked out of this opinion. Buy one if you want the challenge later, once you've got some plants under your belt and don't mind losing a round. Don't buy one first.
How to actually pick, in the store
Turn the pot over if you can, before it goes home with you. Check the drainage hole isn't caked shut with old soil or roots circling out of it in a solid mat, that's a plant that's been sitting root-bound on a shelf too long.
Look at the leaves, top and underneath, same habit we built a couple weeks back with the spider mites. No webbing, no sticky spots, no little bumps that don't belong there.
And don't spend forty dollars on your first one. I mean this. Get the cheap plant. Get the five-dollar pothos before you get the fancy one from the garden center with the good pot already attached. You're going to make mistakes while you learn the rhythm of watering and light in your own house, and it is so much better to make those mistakes on something cheap.
A small thing I noticed about myself
I started leading music over at Quail Ridge a while back, and somewhere in the middle of teaching this class I caught myself doing the exact same thing I do up there. Same instinct, reading the room, watching for who's tracking and who's checked out, timing the joke so it lands right before people's attention drifts. I noticed it happening in real time one Tuesday and honestly wasn't sure how I felt about it. Not sure I've fully decided. But I think it's part of why I don't just hand you a list on paper and walk away, I want to actually watch what's landing and adjust. So if you catch me pausing for what feels like a beat too long, that's what's happening. I'm reading the room.
Anyway. That's the list, that's the plant I still hold a small grudge against, and that's more or less how I choose what to teach next week too.
Before next time: if you don't own a houseplant yet, go get one off this list, five dollars, nothing fancy, and just get it home and let it sit in whatever spot feels reasonable. We'll figure out if the spot's actually right together.