Not Another Jungle: Comprehensive Care for Extraordinary Houseplants

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Tony’s desert island plant: Anything from the alocasia family as they produce big leaves which you can shelter under and you can eat the tubers! You're looking at, you're wiping down that plant with great love. That's all I can say about that picture. Tap water is absolutely fine for houseplants. The only exception to that is carnivorous plants, which require rainwater or water from a river or a pond, something like that,” he says, adding that levels of chlorine in tap water are way below any level which would affect your houseplants. In fact, one key element that plants need to grow is chlorine. It is found in the wild and plants use it to grow healthily. Some people boil water, or they’ll leave it out overnight. All that does is concentrate the minerals that are in there because water’s evaporating. If you’ve got rainwater, brilliant! But I grow all my plants, even the very rare ones, using tap water.” Myth: You have to mist

Absolutely, it is a recipe for disaster. We've all been there. We've all been there. Well it's, I'm really excited that this book is come to fruition and is there anything else you want to tell me about it before we end this interview? Is there anything else that we need to immediately turn to on, I mean that the cover we should talk a little bit about the cover. The cover is nice and very you. My spare bedroom that I never go in. It's full of boxes. It's on the windowsill there. It's really cool. It's been down to less than 10 degrees. And in Peninsular Malaysia, it grows on limestone. And the water where I'm from in Northampton is incredibly hard, it's limestone. And I think that really helps.

Overview

Products mentioned: LED lights, Sandwich bags, sphagnum moss and rooting hormone. Dale Foot wool-based seed peat-free compost. Not Another Jungle specialist Houseplant Super Food. Empathy RootGrow. If you enjoy doing it and find it relaxing, then go for it. Just know that if you are trying to increase humidity, it’s not doing that. And it can cause things like fungal problems on the leaf if the water is not drying off,” says Tony. Well thank you, you're bringing a tear to my eye. But I think the thing about books these days is that probably with the world of instant media, we kind of think that, we don't realise the amount of work that goes into these things. We've both worked incredibly hard on this. So tell me what, who is this aimed at? It's called Not Another Jungle, your everything you do is perfectly branded to Not Another Jungle, even down to the fact that the beautiful navy blue end papers are the same colour as your shop. But tell me about who this is for and what you were trying to achieve with this book. And are you happy with it? I'm looking at 90 plus percent humidity here on the care information, I'm thinking, yeah, that's going to be a challenge.

The interactive trail will keep the whole family entertained and raise awareness of the vulnerable status of some of our most-loved animals. With this event being free for all, we hope to ignite imaginations and create long-lasting memories. Mark Mullen, Operations Director at Northampton Town Centre BID Oh I love it. I love being in the shop, it's, I think I, if I could just be in the shop all the time, which to be fair, I pretty much am.Well, that's a great metaphor for the overall amount of hard work that goes into producing a book like this. So congratulations and tell us when it's coming out and presumably available in all good bookstores.

In this episode of Dig It, Peter Brown and Chris Day chat with Tony Le-Britton, passionate houseplant professional and owner of Not Another Jungle shop in Northampton. From humble beginnings growing houseplants in a greenhouse in the house (yes, really!) a childhood ambition fulfilled by appearing on the Gardeners’ World to developing his own special style and flair in helping everyone get connected with indoor plants through his social media channels and brand. Tony chats about his favourite plants, we get to grips with spider plants, top tips on growing indoors and more. So the peaks have to be the plant processes, for me. They're the parts in the book that I knew about, but just writing them and realising just how amazing the plants are around us and the things they're doing without us even knowing. And, and what I'm really proud about is that the people who've read this, so far people in the press that some of them might not even have houseplants. But they're really fascinated by the book, and it's making them stop and say, 'Wow' and then from that you get an appreciation from them. And maybe you want to get a houseplant, or you want to learn about your own house plants a bit more. And that's what it was all about. So they're the they're the peaks for me, because it's not only sharing amazing things, but it was also almost exciting me a little bit more as well. Because as you know, in when you have a lot of plants, it can sometimes just become a bit of a burden or just becomes a lot, right? And it just these little nuggets of really interesting things just inspired me and helped me plough on with the book as well. We're here to talk about this lovely, lovely book. And I feel like we've been on parallel journeys with this, I'm not going to go on about my book, because that's not what this episode is about. But it's really exciting that your book is now a physical thing. How does it feel? My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here. Need a podcast that sates your desire for house plant information, relaxing chat and general leafiness. You're in just the right place. This is on the ledge podcast, and I am your host Jane Perrone. And in this week's show, I visit Tony Le-Britton to find out about his new book, Not another Jungle.

More from Tony Le-Britton shortly but now I'm going to talk a little about my book, Legends Of The Leaf. Now the great thing about these two books, in my humble opinion is that they are really complimentary. They don't cover much of the same ground really because they're very different books, but I think the two of them together give you a really fascinating insight into houseplants. So I hope you'll maybe go out and buy both. But let me tell you, as I've been doing every week in the run up to the launch of my book, another fact from Legends Of The Leaf, this week's fact concerns Dionaea muscipula, the venus flytrap. And the thing about the venus flytrap is, it doesn't really trap flies. Well, not many, certainly when it's growing in its native coastal climbs in North and South Carolina, in the United States. Most of the things it eats, according to people who have done surveys of its traps, are things that dwell on the ground, beetles, spiders, things that crawl rather than things that fly, which kind of makes sense. When you see one of these in the wild, and you see the position of the traps on the ground, it does seem rational that things would be climbing into them rather than flying into them. Well, I have to say it's, there's a lot of gorgeousness in here to enjoy. Were there, was there anything in here that you found really challenging to write about or anything that was particularly enjoyable, or you know, that you really got into that you were flying away with or where where were the peaks and the troughs? Comfrey fertiliser is brilliant, seaweed fertiliser is brilliant, when used outside, because in the soil you have bacteria that can break those nutrients down and make them accessible to the plants. The plants can’t absorb those nutrients that you’re giving them from comfrey on their own. It’s the relationship with the soil bacteria that allows them to absorb them.” He says if you put comfrey fertiliser in your houseplant soil, it can cause a build-up of anaerobic bacteria, root rot and fungus gnats.

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The book busts dozens of myths which its author has researched and debunked on behalf of his expansive plant-loving community. Here are five of the biggest offenders: Myth: Bottom watering is best I'm sure I've seen this on your social media this super, super tiny orchid with this incredible really quite bizarre flower Corybas caudatas. This is something you seem to be particularly fascinated by. I know it's been in your socials. I mean, I'm looking at that and thinking, yeah, it's okay. Well I'm gonna bring you some amazing gesneriads. But you know. What is it about, this is what's fascinating about houseplants, though, is that for one person, something could just spark off this incredible reaction in away, you're absolutely fascinated. And I'm sure when I read the text here, I'll probably be fascinated to. You've literally given me the book about half an hour ago, so I haven't had the chance to read it. But tell me about this particular orchid and why it's in here and what it offers us in terms of being a fascinating plant. But miraculously, its flower opened on the day of the shoot. And the Corybas caudatas is an extremely rare orchid, which my wonderful friend Rogier had bottled it to hold aside and gifted to me a while ago. And he has it and not many people around the world have it at all. In Peninsular Malaysia where it's from, it's thought extinct. There were subsequent trips out there to try and find it and it's never been found again. So I love rare things and I know people shy away from saying I like it because it's rare. A part of this plant's fascination is its rarity, you know, it's incredibly rare. And I grow this on my windowsill in a sandwich bag. And that is what fascinate that's the fascination, also just trying to be successful, but it's so rare and I know Kews been gifted some of this before and it unfortunately died and trying to be successful with this plant, trying to propagate it. That's a huge, not only responsibility, but challenge. And that's why I'm fascinated with it. And then when it flowered for the, for the on the day of the shoot, we were like, 'We have to get this in'. I want to share it with people and show it to people.