Let's Groom Our Plants

All plants not just show plants need to be groomed on a regular bases. With this page of my corner of the web you will get a quick lesson in grooming plants for show or just to look nice around the house. First, will be a list of equipment that you will need to assemble to do the grooming with and then next will be a step by step procedure to follow when grooming your plant. As with all of my pages there are links to various other pages containing photos of the item to better explain what I am referring to. As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words".

  • Sea Wool sponge - the best place to purchase these is in the crafts department of Wal-Mart, they are sold in a package containing different sizes and textures.
  • Soft brush - either a small paint brush or a makeup brush
  • Tool to remove suckers - a ceramic cleaning tool is the best that I have found
  • Small spray bottle - with plain warm water that you have added one drop of dish detergent to
  • A second small spray bottle - either a different color or some how marked so you can tell it from the other one in this one we will have just plain warm water

Procedure:

  1. First thing that we need to do is to remove all the suckers with the ceramic cleaning tool. The little curved end works wonders for this. We also need to check and see if there is any remaining dead bloom stalks that we might have missed before.
  2. With our brush we are going to remove any dust or foreign particles that may have settled on the leaves. When doing this it is best to support the leaf from underneath with the other hand.
  3. Now that we have removed our suckers and any dust that might have drifted onto our leaves let's take the spray bottle that has the drop of detergent added and spray our plant. Spray the plant until it is fairly damp now settle back and let the detergent and water do it's job, that is loosen the dust and particles that we were unable to remove with the brush.
  4. Now take the spray bottle with just plain water and lightly mist the plant once again, take the sea wool sponge that you have dampened and gently wipe the leaves of the plant to remove the moisture and dust. I like to keep a small bowl of warm water to rinse the sea wool sponge in between leaves.
  5. That does it we now have one well groomed plant. Just remember do not put the plant back on the plant shelf under the lights until the leaves have totally dried, if they are not totally dry they may develop tiny brown spots
Good luck and enjoy your freshly groomed plant!!