About

The green thumb I never had

People often told me I had a green thumb. I don't believe in that kind of thing. What I do believe is that everything can be understood and explained; sometimes we just lack the tools or the knowledge.

Despite that supposed green thumb, I couldn't keep a Monstera deliciosa alive, in theory one of the easiest plants to grow. And I didn't lose just one. Friends had ready explanations: the plant has bad energy, or it only grows for bad people. Instead of settling for that, I did what I know how to do: I debugged.

The direct cause was root rot. The rot itself most likely had several causes working together:

• The commercial potting soil stayed wet for a long time after watering.
• Paradoxically, watering rarely, which was meant to prevent rot, probably let the root hairs dry out, and the next watering then led to secondary rot.
• The plant didn't get enough light. At a low DLI it uses less water, so the substrate stays wet even longer.

That's how I explain today why monsteras in ordinary supermarket soil can grow beautifully for people who have huge windows.

The one conclusion I drew from those losses: there are no easy plants. We call a plant "easy" when it happens to suit our conditions and the way we care for it.

How I learn

It's hard to debug code in a language you don't know. So I turned to academic botany textbooks, above all Biology of Plants by Raven and co-authors, and to a lesser extent Fizjologia roślin (Plant Physiology) by Kopcewicz, which I still find a hard read. Online, the most valuable material I've found so far is the Gardening in Canada channel on YouTube.

Most plant content online is personal experience and repeated opinion, with little actual botany in it. The information density is usually so low that watching it was simply a waste of my time. This blog is meant to be the opposite: mechanisms, numbers and sources, with my own observations next to them, labelled as observations.

My setup

I have plants all over the flat, but in my office the plants come first, not how the room looks. There's a humidifier, grow bulbs, a deepened windowsill, dedicated plant stands, and temperature and humidity sensors. I check the nutrient solution with an EC meter and with drop tests for pH and general hardness.

RO water is one of the tools that give me full control. I use it mainly to mix the nutrient solution, and sometimes for watering, to flush excess salts out of the substrate.

What I grow

I have about 40 plants. The number changes, and lately it has been going down: I'm running out of space, and I want to focus on what I actually enjoy, which is mostly tropical climbers.

I like plants that can be cut back when they get too big, instead of being given away: climbers on moss poles, and self-heading plants whose top is easy to root in moss or by air layering.

How the posts are made

As a software developer, I study how language models work: how they are built and the principles behind them. I think using them pays off only when you do it consciously, in fields you at least partly understand. An engineering approach, AI, and the basics of botany and biochemistry are, in my view, a great combination for keeping a tropical jungle at home.

On this blog, AI helps me with research, editing and translation. The observations, photos and conclusions are mine.

Where I'm heading

I'm not out to debunk myths. I want to deepen my knowledge so I can surround myself with beautiful plants. Maybe one day I'll tie part of my working life to them too.