Air plants are my new favorite botanical pal. They’re amazing little beings that do not require soil to grow, so your options for choosing a container for them to call home are only limited by your imagination. Depending on the species, the amount of sunlight they require can vary, but their overall care is pretty simple: mist or soak the plant as needed for the species and provide conditions that will allow them to dry off. That’s it.
I’ve admired air plants from afar for a long time, I even had one as a kid but didn’t realize it, I thought the plant was fake so I never watered it. Not surprisingly, it died, but even then it literally took years for that to happen. Now that I know what I’m getting into, I recently brought two air plants home with me as part of an overhaul of my front porch. I had two of these lovely hanging copper bowls that I thrifted three years ago for $2 each. I had no idea what I would use them for at the time, but I couldn’t pass them up. When I hung them up on the wall of my porch I immediately thought: AIR PLANTS.

I went to my local nursery to view their selection, and to my surprise it was pretty extensive. If that’s not the case at your local nursery, because they don’t need soil, you can shop for these beauties online. Amazing, right?

I opted for two capitata peach plants. I filled the copper bowls with rocks from my own yard (New England soil, for the win!) to elevate the plants so they would sit nicely on the rim of each container, and here is the final result:

The plants live in a North facing environment, and the windows are frosted, so they get very filtered light, but they get it all day long. So far they’ve been extremely easy to care for. They are doing fine being misted (and by that I mean I take them over to the sink and flick water on them from the faucet) every couple of days. They’re supposed to be fairly drought tolerant, so if I forget to water them it doesn’t do any damage. The porch is mostly windows and has zero insulation, so I’ll need to find a winter home for them inside once it gets regularly below 60° out there. I have yet to do the monthly 20 minute soak in water, but it’s raining today so I’m going to collect a bowlful and give these guys the royal treatment this week. You can read more about the care of capitata peach plants here.

 

 

 

 

 

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