We’ve all done it.

We’ve rolled out of the neighborhood big box home improvement store with a basketful of gorgeous indoor houseplants, carefully settled them into the back-end of the family Volvo, and once home, placed them here and there around the house. We frequently stopped to admire them, congratulating ourselves on how great they looked. And they did look great. For a few days anyway…

Then it started. On one healthy looking specimen the leaves began to drop from the plant all at once, another plant began to look wilted and thirsty even though you watered and watered and watered.

Within weeks, they all looked dreadful, or worse, they were dead, and you’d lost interest entirely. You were left with one beleaguered looking Pothos, and even it wasn’t faring too well at that point.

So what happened? I mean, those little tags they stick in the pot do make it sound so easy, don’t they? When it says, ‘keep watered,’ how hard can that be?

Caring for houseplants is harder than it sounds, actually.

Here's the problem. In order to comply with the cryptic instructions on the tag, one needs a basic understanding of how the plant survives. For example, how do you provide proper water when you don’t understand what that might mean for the plant? But, take heart, with just a few simple bits of information, you should have much better luck.

Let’s start with the basics, because that’s really all it is about for plants. What do plants need? The answer is simple. They need to be able to produce food for themselves through a process called photosynthesis, and in order to do that they need proper lighting, water, and grooming.

Photosynthesis is the process by which a plant produces food for itself.

In order to produce food for itself, the houseplant, influenced by light, ‘breathes in’ carbon dioxide (something we humans exhale) through pores located on the leaf (usually on the underside) called Stomata, and combines it with water taken in primarily through the roots.

This is why the health of the roots and leaves is critical. Because they are the way that the plant absorbs light and water. If either one isn’t functioning right, the plant dies.

The primary colors of light are red, blue, and green. Houseplants absorb red and blue light into a photosynthetic pigment called chlorophyll which reflects green light, hence the color of the plant.

When a houseplant doesn’t get adequate amounts of red or blue light, its growth pattern is affected.

For example, a plant that doesn’t get adequate sunlight, but receives light that is supplemented by incandescent lighting, will live, but the growth will be tall and ‘leggy-looking’. The reason is that incandescent light puts out lots of red light, but very little blue light.

Take a look at the picture of the Ariod Palm to the right. That is a low light plant that receives filtered window light. It is also supplemented by overhead incandescent lighting. Do you see how thin the new stem growth is? Leggy is good on supermodels, but plants? Not so much.

For our purposes, we are going to classify plants into three types. Those needing:

(A) Very Bright Light (sometimes called 'direct light'). These houseplants will prefer a brightly lit location like a west-facing window. This way the plant receives four to six hours of full sun exposure each day.

(B) Medium Light (sometimes called 'indirect light'). These houseplants will prefer a location that is about six feet from a full sun window. This way they can receive bright light for part of the day.

(C) Low Light Houseplants. These houseplants will tolerate being placed 6 feet back from a window or more than 2 feet to the side of a window.

If you want to supplement the light for your indoor houseplants (without getting into grow lights or low-pressure sodium light) use fluorescent lighting. They are best because they are high in blue light which causes the foliage to expand with multiple side shoots and stems will elongate slowly.

The cardinal rule for watering houseplants is this: Err on the side of under-watering.

Over-watering is the most common mistake that new houseplant owners make, and unfortunately, because the roots actually suffocate and die off when over-watered, it is the hardest for a houseplant to come back from.

There are no hard and fast plant watering rules (except, don't over-water!), because, remember: The amount of water a plant needs will depend on the amount of light it is absorbing and its ability to store water in the leaves, stems, etc.

But, as a starting point, we will use the most common language we see on tags that are inserted in the plant pot when we purchase them. For our purposes, we will classify plants into three categories. They are the:

(A) Keep soil moist plants. These plants will be watered when the soil surface is dry to the touch.

(B) Keep soil moderately dry plants. These plants will not be watered until the soil is dry approximately 1/4 of the way through the pot. How do you know? The best way is to get your fingers dirty for this one.

(C) Let Soil Dry between watering plants. These plants will not be watered until the soil is dry approximately 3/4 of the way through the pot.

Remember to use room temperature water, and to water until the soil is completely saturated; you will know because it will come out of the bottom of the pot.

I supplement the 'tag method,' with 'the leaf watching method'. Certain plants (especially houseplants with thin leaves) will let you know when they need water by the way the leaves behave. For example, on plants with long thin leaves, like the cornplant pictured above, the edges will get wavy. On other plants, like the pothos pictured above, the leaves will actually start to fold up when it needs water. The lesson here is that the leaves on a hydrated plant will look and feel differently than a plant that needs water.

Start by using the 'tag method,' but learn the 'leaf-watching-method'. It is more accurate!

Since houseplants absorb light through their leaves, it is imperative that the health of the leaves be considered as well.

If a plant is dusty, then it makes sense that the pores (stomata) would be clogged, and not able to function properly. In addition to being important to the health of the plant, a dusty, ragged plant is not visually appealing either.

For optimum plant care, you will want to perform weekly maintenance to your houseplants and their containers by dusting them, trimming and removing dead or damaged leaves, wiping down the containers and removing debris from the soil surface, saucer or drainage area.

Trim off all dead plant material from the leaves. This keeps them looking attractive and prevents the plant from overworking to support dead growth. For aesthetic purposes, trim the growth to match the shape of the leaf. If the leaf is more than 1/3 damaged, remove the whole thing all the way back to the stalk.

Dust off your houseplants using a regular household feather duster that has been dedicated solely to your plants. Start dusting from the top of the plant and dust your way down. One word of caution: Do not use your duster on a diseased plant as the disease can be spread by the duster, and you will definitely not use any kind of polish.

Wipe down container using a damp rag. Be sure to remove anything that is blocking the container's drainage holes as well, including trash or dead plant material. You will also want to remove all of the stuff that the kids or co-workers have set on top of the soil. I've seen everything from Legos to cigarette butts. If you are using a mulch, you will want to replace any of that material that looks shabby too.