Used to hate ferns indoors until one humid bathroom changed my mind

I spent like 5 years telling every new plant person to avoid ferns because they always dropped leaves and looked scraggly in my living room. Then last winter I put a Boston fern on the edge of my bathtub where it gets steam from hot showers every day. Within 3 months it doubled in size and started putting out fronds like crazy. Now I have 4 different fern types in that bathroom and none of them crisp up the way my living room ones did. Has anyone else found a specific spot that changed how a plant works for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

cole_flores441mo ago

Put that Boston fern right in the stream of a hot shower for 5 minutes once a week... that's what really kicked mine into overdrive and stopped all the crispy tips. The steam alone wasn't cutting it until I started letting the water actually hit the pot and fronds a little bit. Just make sure the pot drains well so it's not sitting in a puddle afterward.

riverh491mo ago

My calathea was basically dying in my bedroom until I put it right next to a kitchen window that gets 30 minutes of direct morning sun... now it's pushing out new leaves every week and nobody told me they could actually handle that much light.

angelarivera1mo ago

Right? All these plant people online screaming about "no direct sun ever" but here we are catching my calathea in a full-on sunbeam and it's thriving like it's on vacation. Guess nobody told the leaves they're supposed to be dramatic and crispy. I swear half the "rules" are just gatekeeping by people who want to feel superior about their low-light setups. Maybe next week I'll try putting my fern in the microwave for 10 seconds, see if that's the real secret.