Air Plants: Easy and Interesting Plants to Maintain in Your Home
If one of the things you have been putting off while working was updating the interior design of your rooms, retirement could be a great time to dive in. Plants can be a great way to liven up a room and add color, and they are also great as a hobby.
If you are looking to add some greenery to your house in retirement, air plants can be an excellent choice. Air plants don’t require any soil to survive, which makes many of them very easy to take care of. It also makes them excellent accents or centerpieces for rooms. Because they have no roots and don’t need pots, they are versatile as decoration.
What Are Air Plants?
Tillandsia (the scientific name for air plants) mostly come from South America, though there are some that live in southern North America.[1] If you have ever been to Texas, you may have seen Spanish moss growing on trees. Spanish moss is one of the most common air plants in the United States.[2] When in Texas, you may have also noticed clumped green ball-like plants stuck to trees everywhere. Those are air plants too! They are called Small Ball Moss or tillandsia recurvata.[3] You may think they are parasites or seeds, but actually, they are totally harmless to the trees they attach themselves to in order to grow. [4]
How to Take Care of Air Plants
General care for an air plant is easy. Many of them just need to be soaked in water for a few minutes or misted with a spray bottle about once a week. They will also need sunlight, so make sure that you leave them in an area that gets at least some sun during the day.[5]
In general, after flowering, an air plant begins to grow what are called pups. Much like a spider plant or aloe, you can detach these pups and they will grow into full plants on their own. So if you are interested in adding air plants to your botanical collection, all you have to do is break off the pups when they are mature enough to live on their own (usually when they are about the size of ⅓ of the mother plant) [6]
To invest time in this enriching botanical passion, you can’t be worrying every day about if your finances are properly positioned and if your plan is based upon an old set of retirement rules that have since changed. If you are interested in setting up your finances to help you flourish in retirement, [sc name=”comp_review”] to sign up with [sc name=”company_name”] for a complimentary review.
