The Houseplant Handbook

I love it when a book lives up to its name. The Houseplant Handbook: Basic Growing Techniques
and a Directory of 300 Everyday Houseplants does. This 224-page book gives you everything
you need to grow healthy, prolific houseplants and an amazing indoor garden.
The Houseplant Handbook features everything from the basics, like proper watering, feeding
and pruning, to more advanced indoor gardening techniques. The author, David Squire,
combines his horticultural training and indoor gardening experience to teach you a wide variety
of indoor gardening methods.
The step-by-step instructions in The Houseplant Handbook are thorough, understandable and
workable. Along with photos and clear explanations, you can learn how to repot a houseplant.
There are also instructions on creating indoor topiaries, as well as grooming and supporting
houseplants.
One of the most impressive sections of the book is the detailed instructions on propagating
houseplants. You’ll get a great tutorial on every conceivable way of inexpensively increasing
your houseplant collection.
Squire covers sowing seed for houseplant favorites like coleus. He also shows you how to take
every type of cutting imaginable. These include stem-tip cuttings, leaf-stem cuttings, leaf-
petiole cuttings, whole leaf cuttings, leaf-square cuttings, leaf-triangle cuttings, cross-leaf
cuttings, horizontal cane cuttings, vertical cane cuttings, cactus cuttings and small-leaved
succulent cuttings.
Squire also covers when and how to divide houseplants. He includes a list of houseplants
suitable for dividing. He also explains how and when to air-layer—including the plants that are
good to air-layer. And he ends this section with making new plants from houseplants that
create runners and plantlets, like the indoor air-cleaning dynamo, spider plant.
If you’re going on vacation, Squire has a section on caring for your houseplants while you’re not
at home. These include ingenious ideas such as using capillary matting or wicking. These
methods allow your houseplants to absorb moisture when you’re away. He also gives advice for
where to place your plants before you leave home—such as away from drafty, drying areas and
out of direct sunlight.

The Houseplant Handbook’s comprehensive 300-plant directory is thorough, yet to the point.
Complete with color photos of each plant and their descriptions and growth habits, the guide
also gives you important growing advice. You’ll learn the lighting needs of each plant in summer
and winter and how to care for them throughout the year. Squire also shares the propagation
technique for each plant. All in all a thorough houseplant guide.

The Houseplant Handbook. Book review. Learn basic indoor gardening growing techniques,
including how to pot houseplants, how to divide houseplants and how to propagate
houseplants. How to grow houseplant leaf cuttings.
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