While Lucky Bamboo is easy to take care of and does not require much attention, here’s the secret to growing healthy Lucky Bamboo indoors!
Popular for good feng shui, bringing luck, good health, and prosperity into the household, Lucky Bamboo is often grown indoors and also makes for quintessential housewarming gifts. It is well sought after by houseplant lovers and gardeners alike because of the ease with which one can manipulate its shape into swirls and braided stalks, complete with their simple, smallish leaves. While it is low maintenance, you might feel a little lost about its care if you are growing it for the first time. So, here’s the top secret to growing healthy, lucky bamboo indoors.
Secret to Growing Healthy Lucky Bamboo Indoors
1. Choose A Healthy Sapling
The Lucky Bamboo is well-reputed for being virtually indestructible, making this great for beginners and those who forget to water their plants. While choosing a healthy sapling must sound pretty obvious, you cannot ignore the importance of this when trying to grow a lush, green, robust plant. Buy the sapling from a reputed nursery and check the color, which should be a bright green. If you find that a sapling has a fading green color or the stems are yellow, that could mean trouble.
In that case, even if you fulfill every care requirement of your Lucky Bamboo, you might be quite underwhelmed with the lower-than-average health condition of your plant as it grows. This just proves that no matter how easy the plant is to maintain, your work will inevitably become more difficult if the quality of the saplings is bad.
2. Remember to Change Water Weekly
The best part about the lucky bamboo is that you don’t even need soil to grow it healthily; you can simply grow it in water!
While you can use pebbles and an inch of water in a container to grow lucky bamboo, you must be careful of certain things. First and foremost, since lucky bamboo is quite sensitive to chemicals such as chlorine, commonly found in tap water, you should go for bottled or distilled water when growing this plant. If you have no other option than to use tap water, leave it out for 24 hours before using it, as that will make the chlorine evaporate.
Most importantly, you must change the water weekly when growing the lucky bamboo to ensure robust, healthy growth and prevent diseases and odors. When using water as a growing medium, you must also ensure that water completely covers the plant’s roots. Top it off every two to seven days to ensure optimum growing conditions.
Note: If the tap water you use has high fluoride levels, leaving it out for 24 hours will not work, as fluoride does not evaporate and can be toxic to your plant. In such a case, you must use bottled water.
3. Provide Rich, Moist Medium When Growing in Soil
When using soil instead of water as a growing medium for your lucky bamboo, it should be organically rich, well-drained soil. While excess water must drain out, the soil mix you use should also have good water-retentive properties, as lucky bamboo needs moist soil for healthy growth. To meet these conditions, you must also choose a container with the right drainage holes.
When growing your lucky bamboo in soil, you should only water when the top inch of the soil is dry, as too much water can negatively affect the plant’s health and growth.
4. Provide Dappled Sunlight As Under a Forest Canopy
The lucky bamboo, like almost all other houseplants, likes bright, filtered sunlight, similar to what it might get under a rainforest canopy. This plant is actually more tolerant of lower light levels than bright, direct light. Unless you do want scorched leaves with edges of brown on your lucky bamboo, you must avoid direct sunlight at all costs and keep your plant near a bright window obscured with a sheer curtain.
However, if you see your lucky bamboo beginning to stretch or the bright green color fading, that would indicate that the plant is not receiving enough light. The first thing you can do in this case is provide artificial light; the lucky bamboo thrives quite well in that. If the lighting is ideal, you might need to rotate your plant more often to provide it with more evenly distributed light.
In case of higher or lower light levels, if the leaves of your lucky bamboo do look yellow or dead, you must remove them so that the plant can focus its energy on newer, healthier growth.
5. Keet the Air Humid
Lucky bamboo needs warmer temperatures above 20°C at all times and does not thrive in lower temperatures. In fact, it prefers a temperature range of 65–95°F (18–35°C). You must ensure that your plant is not near any hot or cold drafts, such as near a heating vent, air conditioner, or even a drafty window. You must be especially vigilant about this in the winter as your plant might otherwise suffer from cold damage.
In terms of humidity levels, lucky bamboo does quite well in average humidity, being quite comfortable indoors in homes and offices. You will not have to worry about changing the humidity levels in your place at all.
6. Snip Away the Unsightly Parts
Though you don’t need to run around with your pruning shears behind your lucky bamboo all the time, your plant will definitely benefit from occasional pruning. Without a haircut for a long time, your plant might become top-heavy and tend to lose any intricate shapes that it might have had. So, trimming will help preserve your lucky bamboo’s beautiful shape.
Be careful not to cut off the main stalk of the bamboo when pruning; instead, you must carefully snip off the offshoots within an inch or two of the main stem. Soon, you will start seeing newer shoots that ultimately contribute to a fuller and healthier appearance.
7. Do Not Fertilize a Lot
To grow a healthy lucky bamboo indoors, you only need to feed your plant a single drop of liquid fertilizer monthly! This is actually enough for most lucky bamboo arrangements. If you want to go the extra mile, you could invest in a specialized lucky bamboo fertilizer and follow the manufacturer’s instructions when feeding your plant. As you see red roots on your lucky bamboo through the glass container, don’t freak out! This actually means that your lucky bamboo is really healthy.
8. Keep An Eye Out For Pests
The nastiest thing that can happen to ruin the health of your plant is a pest infestation. If you ever find your lucky bamboo looking yellow in certain parts of the leaves and stems, that could be a sign that your plant is sick. Similar to other houseplants, the lucky bamboo is susceptible to spider mites, green aphids, and mealybugs. You might even find fungal infections manifesting as grey fuzz on your plant. The good news is these can be treated easily if caught early.
Mealybugs, spider mites, and moldy spots can be removed with mild liquid soap or dish detergent and water. You can also clean the entire plant with rubbing alcohol to get rid of these pesky insects.
