Ever wondered why some people seem to have 'green thumbs'? In this episode, we share my personal plant stories and talk about origins of a so-called 'green thumb.' Spoiler alert: it's not a magical trait you're born with, but a skill that blossoms with practice and patience.
Join the circle of plant lovers as 'Growing With Carla' becomes your go-to companion in the quest for plant fun! I'm all ears for your tales of floral triumphs and the lessons learned from the ones that returned to the earth. Don't be shy; reach out with your stories and snapshots on Instagram or via my link tree. While I can't promise to catch every leaf that falls in my inbox, especially on platforms outside the podcasting giants, your experiences are the compost that enriches this community. Together, let's nurture our collective passion for greenery, share the love, and remember—every day presents an opportunity to not only grow our plants but to cultivate our craft and camaraderie in the garden of life.
0:00 Intro 0:07 Developing Your Green Thumb 0:14 Plant Update 2:30 Origin of the phrase "green thumb" 4:37 Growing With Carla 5:20 Observation 6:57 Understanding your plant's needs 9:27 Experimentation & Learning from failures 12:16 Developing Intuition 13:16 Continuous Learning 13:50 Closing 15:08 Outro
Ever wondered why some people seem to have 'green thumbs'? In this episode, we share my personal plant stories and talk about origins of a so-called 'green thumb.' Spoiler alert: it's not a magical trait you're born with, but a skill that blossoms with practice and patience.
Join the circle of plant lovers as 'Growing With Carla' becomes your go-to companion in the quest for plant fun! I'm all ears for your tales of floral triumphs and the lessons learned from the ones that returned to the earth. Don't be shy; reach out with your stories and snapshots on Instagram or via my link tree. While I can't promise to catch every leaf that falls in my inbox, especially on platforms outside the podcasting giants, your experiences are the compost that enriches this community. Together, let's nurture our collective passion for greenery, share the love, and remember—every day presents an opportunity to not only grow our plants but to cultivate our craft and camaraderie in the garden of life.
0:00 Intro 0:07 Developing Your Green Thumb 0:14 Plant Update 2:30 Origin of the phrase "green thumb" 4:37 Growing With Carla 5:20 Observation 6:57 Understanding your plant's needs 9:27 Experimentation & Learning from failures 12:16 Developing Intuition 13:16 Continuous Learning 13:50 Closing 15:08 Outro
Hey there, welcome back to my garden. I'm really excited. This is the first episode where we actually have content, and I kind of want to start off with a plant update, specifically my plants. I guess I don't have anyone else's to share, so I'm going to tell you about mine. If you do want to tell me about your plants, though, I'm on Instagram at GrowingWithCarla Send me pictures, tag them. I don't know what kind of hashtag we'll use yet, but we'll see what the community comes up with, like maybe hashtag plant life, or I don't know. We'll see.
Carla:
But for my plants, I have some great news about that mini Monstera that I mentioned in the intro episode last time. So I had to repot it because right now it's in a self-watering pot, but I learned the hard way that you should never water them from the top. So the top was very moist the whole time and I actually had a mushroom growing on it from my regular just plant potting mix, so I completely emptied it out. I rinsed off the roots, because I didn't want any of those spores coming along to the clean pot. Rinse it off, clean it out, put new soil in it, and it's doing much happier now. But there's two new little sprouts growing out of it. I'm so happy I've had it for it's got to be two months now and it's finally. It's finally growing. So those cuttings I got off Etsy they were were amazing. I'm so happy. The other plants too. My regular Monstera also has two new leaves. They're still all curled up. I actually use one of those terracotta stakes that you can put a recycled plastic bottle or a wine bottle on top to auto water it. It's got two brand new leaves coming right out of the middle. It's exciting. And my African violets they got these beautiful pink flowers. I highly recommend the African violet self-watering terracotta pots as well ceramic pots. That thing has been a lifesaver for making that plant grow so well. So that's my plant updates, at least all the ones that I've had big changes since last week.
Carla:
Today I wanted to talk about green thumbs, though. So we hear this a lot like oh you have such an amazing green thumb, and a lot of the times people think that it's this like innate ability, that people have to just be amazing at keeping their plants alive. But this is kind of a myth. People work really hard to become great at keeping their plants alive and flourishing. But let's talk about the origin of that phrase first. So according to Merriam-Webster, it's the unusual ability to make plants grow. According to dictionarycom, they changed the wordings just a little bit to exceptional ability From Quora. Their answer is a green hand is a beginner at something who makes beginner mistakes, but having a green thumb means that you can grow anything. Having a green thumb means that you can grow anything.
Carla:
There was another couple sources, one that I found where they were talking about the. They found a source from the Old Farmer's Almanac. So there are three potential sources that Old Farmer's Almanac mentions. The first one is about King Edward I of England, who loved fresh green peas so much that he hired a bunch of serfs to just shell peas for him all day, and whoever had the greenest thumb from shelling peas for him he would give a reward. Potential source was repeatedly handling clay pots encrusted with algae will stain a gardener's thumb and fingers green, which is true. And the last one I feel is more the source, because I've experienced to myself just chlorophyll in general. Working with plants and cutting them will stain your hands and your fingers as well, and I've definitely had that in my life. So that's what I want to go with, but let me know what you think could be the original source or if there's any other sources out there that I haven't mentioned.
Carla:
But my story of getting a green thumb it was definitely earned. It was not something that came easy to me. I have killed so many plants. It's a little bit funny because I feel a lot of the problem that people have when they're getting into their gardening career or their plant hobby is that they want the beautiful, most expensive plants right away and they're absolutely gorgeous. I can totally understand why. I've done it myself. But then these plants are really hard to maintain and they're they just. They die on you so easily if you don't know what you're doing. So that's where we kind of get into what I feel are the main points about I don't want to say earning your green thumb, but creating your own green thumb.
Carla:
This is very much a long process and it takes a lot of active involvement and wanting to know more about your plants. So the first part about it is observation, just by spending time with your plants each day, looking at them, like even if you don't have to water them or provide them with fertilizer just look at your plants every day. Does it look different than yesterday? Does it have any new spots? Are there new leaves coming? Does it seem to be wilting? A little Like I have a crispy wave plant who, if he's low on water, he will droop like a drama queen, and so just a few minutes after getting water, he perks right back up. It's funny Looking at the color of the plants the bright, vibrant green that you're expecting, or maybe are they a little bit dull.
Carla:
Are they the bright, vibrant green that you're expecting, or maybe are they a little bit dull? Are they turning yellow? And then the overall health of the plant. I saw mushrooms growing out of my self-watering mini Monstera pod. I'm like I really don't want to grow mushrooms in this and I didn't want it to affect the plant either, because I don't know how temperamental this plant is. Just yet. I've been keeping it alive and thankfully it hasn't had any leaves go bad, but I didn't want to risk it. So just keeping an eye and observing your plants every day so that you can get a pattern of what they look like, what they're supposed to look like.
Carla:
The next part is understanding your plant's needs. So this is where those little placards or those little inserts that come in your seedlings pots, like if you're getting fresh petunias or brand new pot of violas or whatever, or even your little starter plant for tomatoes, those little cards that come in them that sit in the dirt. It's important to read those, but also remember that it doesn't contain all the information. Like it'll say bright light, indirect light, preferred shady areas. They're good to get you started, but if you, if this is a plant that especially costs a little bit more than just going to Lowe's or Home Depot and getting a $2 seedling, then you're going to want to learn more about its specific sunlight needs, and it's how often you need to fertilize it, how often it needs to be repotted, what kind of water or how much water it needs, how often it needs the water, what kind of temperatures does it prefer, how much airflow does it need.
Carla:
So just getting started definitely observing your plants and then just knowing their basic needs based on information out there, I would definitely recommend looking at online sources and any free sources that you can get, first before paying for any books, but grabbing some reading material to learn more about your plants. So when I get a new plant, one of the first things I do is I put it into my plant app. In this case I'm using Gregg not sponsored, but I love their app and I have a link to it so you can see my collection of plants in my link tree, which will be in the show notes as well. But it's great because adding a plant to it automatically gives me some information about that plant, and they have a really handy tool where I can set where in the room it is and what kind of light it's getting, and it'll tell me if it needs to be closer to the window or farther from the window, and if I don't have window space, then I might need to get a grow light. So definitely check out any kind of resources that you can get that help tell you more about that plant. That way, as you're observing it, you can realize okay, I'm giving it enough water, I'm giving it enough light, maybe something else is off.
Carla:
And that's where it comes into the next part, which is experimentation and learning from your failures. It is totally okay to fail when it comes to plants. I know that we all love our green, leafy babies, but sometimes they just don't make it, and sometimes it's not even our fault. If you have pets, that's another topic for another day. But you have to make sure that some of your plants are safe for pets, because I know when I first got my spider plant, the dog liked to chew on it a lot, and now I don't have a spider plant.
Carla:
But don't be afraid to try new things with your plants. Like I have a pothos who was eight feet long and desperately in need of a haircut, so I also wanted to give some cuttings to some friends. So I took a bunch of cuttings, took the time to repot him and he's looking much happier now. And I have a ton of cuttings that are just sitting on water and they have roots two to three inches long already. So I'm just trying to find a place to add them. I took a couple of the cuttings and added them back to the original pot so that it looked a little bit more full.
Carla:
Some plants I have a really hard time keeping up with the watering schedule, and so this is where that Greg app comes into play too, because it'll remind me when I need to water some plants. And so when I have a reminder to go and water one of my plants, I generally go and check all of my plants and then I'll just update all the plants that I looked at. But I find that some of my plants I need to water more often and so I had this beautiful little flower thing. I can't remember the name. It made these beautiful white flowers. It was constantly sad looking, but once I moved it to a self-watering pot it has grown immensely. It absolutely loves being able to drink as much as it wants to and it's already got some flower buds starting to come back, which is amazing.
Carla:
But don't be afraid to try new things. Like I saw a. It looks kind of like a chia pet pot, but like the adult version, so that you can fill it with water, but they were growing their orchids on it. I'm like that's such a cool idea. I kind of want to try it, because I have really bad luck with orchids right now and that'll be another episode because there is so much to unpack about orchids. But trying different things with how your plants are growing If it's not happy doing it one way, definitely change it up and try and see if it's happier going another way.
Carla:
And all of this kind of ties into building your intuition about your plants. Like I mean, they're your green leafy babies. You build an intuition about your children, about your pets, your fur babies. You can build an intuition about your plants as well, and you'll just look over, glance like, oh, my Munstera looks a little unhappy today, let me check the water. Or, oh, there's so many yellow leaves on my pothos, I wonder what's going on. Or that soil doesn't look quite right. I wonder if it needs to be repotted. Or, oh my gosh, those roots are sticking up. It's growing a lot. I think it's time to get them in a bigger pot.
Carla:
But just trusting your instinct about what you've known, what you've learned, the pattern of your plants, can go a long ways. But the more you work with your plants, the easier it becomes to take care of them. But the biggest thing that can help you the most with developing your green thumb is continuous learning. Be curious about your pets, about your plants. Be curious about what's growing in your garden. Be curious about the things that could happen to your plants. Curious about what's growing in your garden, be curious about the things that could happen to your plants. Read up on them, find articles, blog posts, youtube videos, podcasts like this one. Find things that tell you more about them, because knowledge is power and in this case, that power helps you grow really beautiful plants, and that's the best part about it, honestly. So these are all the parts about growing your own green thumb.
Carla:
It's not something magical that people just get. It's something that takes time and appreciation and learning and being curious, and it's really not that difficult. This may sound like a lot, but it's little steps every single day. Start with one plant, watch it for a while, watch it grow, take notes, start a plant journal. I love to actually take pictures of my plants and I have a sprocket photo sticker printer and I'll print them out on that and stick it in my journal and write a little blurb like today I repotted this and then watch it for a couple of days. Okay, okay, now that it's been a few days, it seems to be happier. Or, oh my gosh, my Christmas cactus is producing a new flower and it's freaking February, like it should have been doing this two months ago. But yeah, that's the biggest deal about growing your own green thumb is it takes time, it takes patience, but most of all, it takes being curious and wanting to continue working with your plants.
Carla:
So what do you guys think? How else Do you have any cool stories about your own green thumb experiences? Do you have any plant failure stories that you want to share? What are some big tips and tricks that you've learned in your plant experiences? I would love to hear your questions and comments. On my link tree, there is an option to send me a message. Or you can leave pictures and comments and tag me on Instagram at growingwithcarla, or you can leave comments on your favorite podcasting service.
Carla:
I can't guarantee I will see all of those. If it's like the top five where to listen to this podcast, I'll be checking those for sure, but otherwise, leave me a message and I'll get back to you when I'm able. I'm so thankful that you made it to this part of the episode. Honestly, if you enjoyed what you've listened to, then please share it with those that you love, those that you like or those that you just tolerate, that also enjoy plants. I would really appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a message. All right, everyone Be safe, make wise choices and thank you for spending part of your day with me. I really appreciate it.