Plants are just as popular as furniture when one is deciding on furniture and soft furnishings.
Aside from the aesthetic value plants provide your home with, there are also health benefits – grade school science class tells us that plants cleanse the air through utilizing the carbon dioxide and producing more oxygen. Here is some important information on how to care for your indoor plants to gain the optimum health and aesthetic benefits.

Lighting

Most indoor plants need good lighting. You can provide this through natural lighting in the room of your choice or there must be electric lighting. Darker leaved plants usually don't need as much light as others.

Here are the varieties of plants (usually those that only require medium to low light) that are known to be suitable for indoor gardening:

a. Philodendrons
b. Boston ferns
c. African violets
d. Cyclamens
e. Creeping Fig

Watering

A common mistake most people make in indoor gardening is they tend to over-water the plants, which may lead to rotting roots.  Make sure to research the type of plant you have, because each kind of plant varies on their watering needs.

Potting

Choose good quality and attractive container for your indoor plants. Make sure that the pot is clean before placing your new plant into it to prevent infection and to encourage healthy growth.

Humidity

In indoor gardening, humidity is a big issue.  The amount of moisture in the air has effect on the growth of the plants. During mornings, you could spray the plants with water for their much-needed moisture. Make sure the leaves don't get covered in dust.

Fertilization

Just like watering, fertilizing depends on the type of plant.  If you have managed to supply your indoor garden with the right amount of light, water and humidity, fertilization may not need much attention. A good indoor fertilizer can be bought from most home depot or hardware stores. Orchids need the special fertilizer available.

A lot of people stick a fake tree in a corner, dust the leaves off every week, and call it indoor gardening, but indoor gardening has grown into much more than that lately.  There are also a lot of people that thinks plants belong and should stay inside, but there are many reasons for starting an indoor garden.  For instance, plants don’t only remove carbon dioxide from the air, they also remove many poisonous toxins and pollutants as well.  Indoor gardening will result in beautiful decoration in your house as well as cleaner air.

When picking out plants for indoor gardening, make sure the plants are adaptable and will be able to thrive in the conditions and setting in your house.  Consider how much time you will be able to spend caring for the plants, how much light your house offers, and also how much money you want to spend on your indoor garden.  If you are on a low budget, start with seeds or cuttings.  If you have a little more money to dish out you can buy a plant that is already grown.  Another thing to consider is if you want a plant that can be displayed all year or just for a season.     Herb gardens are a good thing for indoor gardening; they are both attractive and edible.  They will grow pretty quick and you won’t have to wait a long time to see results.  Some popular herbs, especially for cooking, are chives, dill, sage, thyme, and oregano.

When indoor gardening, consider the amount of experience you have before choosing a plant.  There are some plants that are stronger and harder to kill and therefore better for a novice gardener.  Examples are Fatsia, Cyperus, Scandens, Popular Succulents, Coleus, and Bromeliads.

Some things, such as the basic rules of maintaining plants, are different in indoor gardening that in a regular outdoor setting.  Since plants won’t get the sunlight they do outdoors, lighting is essential.  You need to know exactly how much light your plants need and pick plants that only need medium to low light, such as ferns or Philodendrons, unless you plan to supply artificial lighting.  If you buy a plant already grown, wherever you get it probably has better lighting than your house so you will need to “condition” your plant and gradually reduce the light it receives.  Once you get the plant inside, make sure and rotate the plant to encourage upright growth.

Just because you are indoor gardening, don’t think the plants don’t have to have water; they still do.  How often you water, once again, depends on what type of plant you have.  Make sure the water can drain out of the bottom of the pot and try to use water that is about the same as the temperature of the room.  Also pay attention to temperature in your house in order to ensure healthy plants.  A 10-15 degree range won’t hurt any plants, but rapid changes could cause damage.

Indoor gardening is not all that difficult; in fact, it is pretty much the same as outdoor.  There are even some advantages to indoor gardening.  For example, you won’t have to worry as much about bugs and insects bothering your plants.  You also won’t have to worry about wind or frost reeking havoc on your garden.

Sometimes we are much troubled with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but one of which you must be careful.

This question is constantly being asked, 'How can I tell what insect is doing the destructive work?' Well, you can tell partly by the work done, and partly by seeing the insect itself. This latter thing is not always so easy to accomplish. I had cutworms one season and never saw one. I saw only the work done. If stalks of tender plants are cut clean off be pretty sure the cutworm is abroad. What does he look like? Well, that is a hard question because his family is a large one. Should you see sometime a grayish striped caterpillar, you may know it is a cutworm. But because of its habit of resting in the ground during the day and working by night, it is difficult to catch sight of one. The cutworm is around early in the season ready to cut the flower stalks of the hyacinths. When the peas come on a bit later, he is ready for them. A very good way to block him off is to put paper collars, or tin ones, about the plants. These collars should be about an inch away from the plant.

Of course, plant lice are more common. Those we see are often green in colour. But they may be red, yellow or brown. Lice are easy enough to find since they are always clinging to their host. As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food, and one is pretty sure to find them. But the biting insects do their work, and then go hide. That makes them much more difficult to deal with.

Rose slugs do great damage to the rose bushes. They eat out the body of the leaves, so that just the veining is left. They are soft-bodied, green above and yellow below.

A beetle, the striped beetle, attacks young melons and squash leaves. It eats the leaf by riddling out holes in it. This beetle, as its name implies, is striped. The back is black with yellow stripes running lengthwise.

Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps. Do you see the good of cleaning up rubbish? The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will disturb them, and up they'll poke to see what the matter is.

Beside these most common of pests, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants. Discouraging, is it not? Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants. In the flower garden lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles the vegetable garden takes the prize. If we were going into fruit to any extent, perhaps the vegetable garden would have to resign in favour of the fruit garden.

A common pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a large yellowish or greenish striped worm. Its work is to eat into the young fruit.

A great, light green caterpillar is found on celery. This caterpillar may be told by the black bands, one on each ring or segment of its body.

The squash bug may be told by its brown body, which is long and slender, and by the disagreeable odour from it when killed. The potato bug is another fellow to look out for. It is a beetle with yellow and black stripes down its crusty back. The little green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most common of garden pests by name.

If we could garden without any interference from the pests which attack plants, then indeed gardening would be a simple matter. But all the time we must watch out for these little foes little in size, but tremendous in the havoc they make.

As human illness may often be prevented by healthful conditions, so pests may be kept away by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste are lodging places for the breeding of insects. I do not think a compost pile will do the harm, but unkempt, uncared-for spots seem to invite trouble.

There are certain helps to keeping pests down. The constant stirring up of the soil by earthworms is an aid in keeping the soil open to air and water. Many of our common birds feed upon insects. The sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds who help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too. And toads are wonders in the number of insects they can consume at one meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us.

Each gardener should try to make her or his garden into a place attractive to birds and toads. A good birdhouse, grain sprinkled about in early spring, a water-place, are invitations for birds to stay a while in your garden. If you wish toads, fix things up for them too. During a hot summer day a toad likes to rest in the shade. By night he is ready to go forth to eat but not to kill, since toads prefer live food. How can one "fix up" for toads? Well, one thing to do is to prepare a retreat, quiet, dark and damp. A few stones of some size underneath the shade of a shrub with perhaps a carpeting of damp leaves, would appear very fine to a toad.

There are two general classes of insects known by the way they do their work. One kind gnaws at the plant really taking pieces of it into its system. This kind of insect has a mouth fitted to do this work. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are of this sort. The other kind sucks the juices from a plant. This, in some ways, is the worst sort. Plant lice belong here, as do mosquitoes, which prey on us. All the scale insects fasten themselves on plants, and suck out the life of the plants.

Now can we fight these chaps? The gnawing fellows may be caught with poison sprayed upon plants, which they take into their bodies with the plant. The Bordeaux mixture which is a poison sprayed upon plants for this purpose.

In the other case the only thing is to attack the insect direct. So certain insecticides, as they are called, are sprayed on the plant to fall upon the insect. They do a deadly work of attacking, in one way or another, the body of the insect.

Whether you live in a city apartment or you have snow in the ground, it is not reason enough not to enjoy having an herb garden of your own. Growing herbs indoors is just as easy as growing them outside in a garden. Indoor herb plants have the same needs as those grown outside. They need proper sunlight and a well-drained soil mix.

Choose a south or west bay window. You don’t need extensive home renovations to do this. Even though herbs have different light requirements, most herbs would need the most sunlight they can get. Herbs would need about 5-6 hours of exposure to the sun. If light is limited, make sure you rotate your plants so everyone gets a fair stab at growth. You don’t want to have stunted plants at the end of the year. During the winter, you can get fluorescent lamps or “grow lamps” to substitute for the lack of sunlight. Remember to place your herbs in a spot where there is no experience in extreme temperatures – don’t put below your heater or near a stove.

When planting your herbs, make sure the soil is not too rich by mixing two parts of potting soil and one part coarse sand or perlite. Add a cut of ground limestone for every bushel of soil. An allowance of an inch of gravel should be given at the bottom of each clay or ceramic pot to ensure proper drainage.

Watering your herbs is just as important as providing them with enough sunlight. Each herb has different watering needs but it is important to always keep the soil damp. You can use a little plate or container that matches the pot to absorb any excess water, so don’t be afraid to put a little water in everyday especially when you live in an over-heated apartment. Make sure you just damp the soil – soaking the soil can cause the roots to rot especially when the sprouts appear.

There are different sort of herbs. Annual herbs can be kept indoors for the whole year. However, it is much better for perennial herbs to be placed outdoors during the summer. To do this, fill your pot with soil up to its rim. You may want to keep it in a protected location like a porch or patio.

If you bring your plants outside your window for a time, make sure you bring them indoors before the chill comes to avoid loss of foliage and plant damage. Some herbs benefit from a light frost – on mint, chives and tarragon. Chilling them sort of puts them to sleep making them renewed and fresh.

It is easy to maintain an indoor herb garden if you plan it out carefully. Make sure you give your plants periodic light feeding. It is best if you can change pots annually. Seasonal moves for perennial plants are recommended. Consider each plant’s watering needs but still keep them damp for a general rule.

Herbs and herb gardens have recently caught the fancy of the people worldwide.  And more so, herbs are not restricted to be grown and enjoyed by a privileged few with large outdoor gardens or sprawling terraces.   Herbs can be grown indoors in your balcony or on the window shelf in pots.

Generally speaking growing herbs is nothing short of an adventure.   Right from the time you sow the seeds to watering them into saplings, herbs have caught the imagination of people where you can enjoy growing a plant and enjoy its produces in the form of leaves, barks, fruits or roots. Herbs are known since time immemorial for their culinary, medicinal and spiritual values amongst many.

It is not at all difficult to grow herbs by yourself.   All you need are a few tips and general guidelines as to how to grow own herb garden; and you will find nothing can be more satisfying than sowing, harvesting and using herb plants from your own herb garden.   All you must keep in mind is the conditions favorable for each particular herb.

While many herbs are most suitable when grown in an outdoor herb garden, there are also many herbs which can be grown in pots indoors. But make sure that they receive appropriate sir and sunlight. Just as it been seen in herb plants like parsley, basil and chervil which finds shade for one part of the day favorable for its growth; unlike, woody herbs such as rosemary thyme and sage which prefer a sunny location.

Growing herbs is a passion as well as an art. There were times when monks and nuns planted herbs in an attempt to induce spiritual and medicinal power of the herbs.   Then there were the monastic herb gardens since Renaissance Europe, which later converted to botanical gardens with the advent of renaissance in medical and botanical sciences.

However, when we speak of modern herb gardens, we are referring to herb gardening which may be exclusively functional or may be ornamental.   The impending trust of people in of alternative medicine is also encouraging people to grow and use fresh herbs – as the best sensitive medicine with the least side effect.

But before you start off growing herbs, make your priorities clear on why, which and how you wish to develop your own herb garden.   Do you want to grow culinary herbs to indulge on its aromatic flavors in your recipes; or explore a business opportunity by growing medicinal herbs?   But, all in all cultivating an herb garden is a great idea and an adventurous one too.

Have you decided to go all natural?  All natural diet, all natural pet food, all natural medicines, natural insect control, and all natural gardening have become the wave of the present and future.  Many people think something is new just because it hasn't been in the spotlight.  But natural alternatives have been around for years.  They just didn't receive their kudos because of the convenience people prefer from leading busy lives.  Most have found, though, that convenience can be damaging to our environment.

Convenience has hurt our rivers and roadsides because of packaging being tossed away carelessly.  Convenience has hurt our family time because of lost time preparing food, eating at the family dinner table, and gardening together.  Convenience has hurt our ozone layer.  This doesn't mean convenience is bad; it is what you make it.  If you allow anything to take over your life it can turn into a negative.

Natural insecticides take a little more effort to use if you make them yourself.  They take a little more time because they can require multiple uses and degrade quicker.  But the rewards you reap from preparing your own natural insecticides can be great.  It will give you something to discuss with others at family reunions, club events, and when traveling.  You can join people in discussions on the internet about organic gardening and natural insecticides.  You can increase awareness of the benefits so that others are prompted to engage in the use of natural insecticides.  You can help promote a healthier world, a healthier family life, ways to make the most out of your garden and landscaping.  You can even save money by making your own natural insecticides.

There are rules to follow, of course, like mixing properly.  If you mix the wrong ingredients you could either cause more harm or even be wasting your time if the items use cancel out each other's effectiveness.  You should understand how to use what you make, how much is safe, what plants or insects will be affected in a negative way so as not to harm the good ones, how to avoid foaming, how to store and for how long.

Prevention is always best.  But because it isn't always possible, taking safe alternatives to treatment is the next best thing.  People have become disgusted with rising prices, so they decide they can do better if they just make their own products.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing.  If you don't research and educate yourself, you could be doing more harm than good.  Some mistakenly assume that natural means safe, and they neglect to learn about the effects and proper uses of natural insecticides.

Cooking is a way to kill harmful bacteria in some instances.  But the heat from cooking can destroy the active ingredients of some of your homemade insecticides.  Also, the water you use can destroy the effectiveness.  If you have hard well water, there may be certain minerals that cause a problem.  So, if you decide to make your own, know how to prepare them properly.