Warm up the kitchen with indoor plants
Plants bring life and colour into the kitchen, just as they do in any other room. Plants also create a companionable ambiance and there are many plants that improve air quality as well.
Bright and light kitchens are good for plants too. They are warm and humid which suits most indoor plants that originate from tropical forests.
Best indoor plants for kitchens
Because kitchens are workspaces, compact, slow growing plants that don't take up much space are the most suitable. These include peperomia, peace lily, flowering pot plants like kalanchoe, African violets, chrysanthemums, and anthurium, succulents such as Haworthia, echeveria, and cacti and trailing plants like Philodendron scandens and Golden Pothos (Scindapsus aureus.)
Maiden hair fern and Bird's nest fern (Asplenium) as well as Sansevieria and even bamboo palms (Areca) enjoy the warmth and humidity of a kitchen.
Care for kitchen plants
Keep an eye on plants for fat splatters which attract dust to the leaves. Once a layer of dust settles it smothers the air pores and leaves aren't able to photosynthesise. Make it a regular weekly task to wipe the leaves with a moist piece of cotton wool or cloth.
African violets are particularly susceptible to dust on their leaves. Clean by wiping gently with a damp cloth or microfibre cloth or brush the leaves with a soft toothbrush brush.
Plants that like warmth and humidity should be closer to the stove and can trail from the top of the fridge.
Air purifying plants
Quite a number of indoor plants have air purifying qualities and are compact enough for a kitchen where space is an issue.
Mother-in-laws tongue (Sansevieria) absorbs carbon and increases the levels of oxygen. Sansevieria grows in medium to bright light and should dry out moderately before watering..
Peace lily (Spathiphyllum) filters unpleasant odours tolerates low light and needs minimal water.
Bird's nest fern (Asplenium antiquum) absorbs carbon and increases oxygen levels. Plants like a warm room and moist soil. Misting the leaves improves humidity.
Calathea purifies the air, likes warm rooms and low to medium light. Keep soil slightly moist.
Flowering plants for countertops and windowsills
Kalanchoe and calandiva are succulents that need very little care, good light and moist but not wet soil. They are indoor stalwarts with long lasting flowers Cut off the dead flower spikes, feed with a liquid fertiliser, and they will come into flower again.
Also try:
Succulents such as echeveria, cactus and Haworthia (Zebra plant) that are ideal for sunny kitchens. They will thrive on a windowsill, and need very little water, yet always look decorative.
Anthuriums, especially the mini's, are long-lasting plants that survive neglect. They like bright indirect light. Wipe the leaves to remove dust.
Pot Begonias are rewarding indoor plants with their bold, beautiful blooms. Keep in a warm room, with bright indirect light and don't over water.
Chrysanthemums like bright light and moist soil. Can be planted into the garden in summer.
African violets like bright indirect light and humidity and should only be watered with the soil is slightly dry to the touch.
Trailing plants for hanging baskets
Golden Pothos (Scindapsus aureus) has variegated yellow and green leaves. Keep plants compact with regular trimming. It tolerates low light, and the soil can dry out before watering again.
Philodendron scandens, also known as the sweetheart plant for its heart-shaped leaves is a vigorous grower, easily trained as an indoor climber or for trailing down from shelves.
For more information visit: www.lvgplant.co.za.
Article and images supplied by Alice Coetzee.
For more on gardening, visit Get It Magazine.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Citizen
8 hours ago
- The Citizen
Warm up the kitchen with indoor plants
Plants bring life and colour into the kitchen, just as they do in any other room. Plants also create a companionable ambiance and there are many plants that improve air quality as well. Bright and light kitchens are good for plants too. They are warm and humid which suits most indoor plants that originate from tropical forests. Best indoor plants for kitchens Because kitchens are workspaces, compact, slow growing plants that don't take up much space are the most suitable. These include peperomia, peace lily, flowering pot plants like kalanchoe, African violets, chrysanthemums, and anthurium, succulents such as Haworthia, echeveria, and cacti and trailing plants like Philodendron scandens and Golden Pothos (Scindapsus aureus.) Maiden hair fern and Bird's nest fern (Asplenium) as well as Sansevieria and even bamboo palms (Areca) enjoy the warmth and humidity of a kitchen. Care for kitchen plants Keep an eye on plants for fat splatters which attract dust to the leaves. Once a layer of dust settles it smothers the air pores and leaves aren't able to photosynthesise. Make it a regular weekly task to wipe the leaves with a moist piece of cotton wool or cloth. African violets are particularly susceptible to dust on their leaves. Clean by wiping gently with a damp cloth or microfibre cloth or brush the leaves with a soft toothbrush brush. Plants that like warmth and humidity should be closer to the stove and can trail from the top of the fridge. Air purifying plants Quite a number of indoor plants have air purifying qualities and are compact enough for a kitchen where space is an issue. Mother-in-laws tongue (Sansevieria) absorbs carbon and increases the levels of oxygen. Sansevieria grows in medium to bright light and should dry out moderately before watering.. Peace lily (Spathiphyllum) filters unpleasant odours tolerates low light and needs minimal water. Bird's nest fern (Asplenium antiquum) absorbs carbon and increases oxygen levels. Plants like a warm room and moist soil. Misting the leaves improves humidity. Calathea purifies the air, likes warm rooms and low to medium light. Keep soil slightly moist. Flowering plants for countertops and windowsills Kalanchoe and calandiva are succulents that need very little care, good light and moist but not wet soil. They are indoor stalwarts with long lasting flowers Cut off the dead flower spikes, feed with a liquid fertiliser, and they will come into flower again. Also try: Succulents such as echeveria, cactus and Haworthia (Zebra plant) that are ideal for sunny kitchens. They will thrive on a windowsill, and need very little water, yet always look decorative. Anthuriums, especially the mini's, are long-lasting plants that survive neglect. They like bright indirect light. Wipe the leaves to remove dust. Pot Begonias are rewarding indoor plants with their bold, beautiful blooms. Keep in a warm room, with bright indirect light and don't over water. Chrysanthemums like bright light and moist soil. Can be planted into the garden in summer. African violets like bright indirect light and humidity and should only be watered with the soil is slightly dry to the touch. Trailing plants for hanging baskets Golden Pothos (Scindapsus aureus) has variegated yellow and green leaves. Keep plants compact with regular trimming. It tolerates low light, and the soil can dry out before watering again. Philodendron scandens, also known as the sweetheart plant for its heart-shaped leaves is a vigorous grower, easily trained as an indoor climber or for trailing down from shelves. For more information visit: Article and images supplied by Alice Coetzee. For more on gardening, visit Get It Magazine.
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Daily Maverick
Embracing imperfection: Why I choose authentic errors over AI's polished prose
I want to delete Grammarly and other AI editing software. Because I want to make the same old and authentic syntax errors. I want to write with grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, because there is something very sexy and original about that. I want to stop using platforms that impose prefabricated styles, that insist on front matter and formatting before truth, that demand cover pages as if meaning needs a passport. These are bureaucratic standards rooted in Euro-American notions of order, hierarchy and tidiness. They do not understand my Bantu education context. They cannot interpret my African oral tradition metaphors and Inanda proverbs. They want to universalise thought and smooth over difference with bias. Because writing in English is itself a struggle and a triumph. Full stop. My stylistic mistakes represent writing back to the Empire. Writing to my own audience, who understand both the meaning and the context of what I say. My grammatical mistakes are not accidents. They are resistance. They are freedom. Full stop. Writing with invention Every so-called syntax error Africans make is Shakespearean. It is writing with invention, bending language into meaning. And yes, we interchange past and present, call he she, and arrive at a point in a roundabout way. Because our lives are circular. Our stories spiral. Our logic loops back. We always return to where we started, no matter how long the journey takes. Like rondavels. Like amaziyoni, round and round. This reality does not fit the templates of the Empire. That is why our Bantu education English is marked with red and blue lines, suggesting changes that must be made. They are not corrections, actually. They are borders we must refuse to respect. Microsoft Editor doesn't understand this spiral. It treats my detours as mistakes and my emphasis as overreach. It flags sentences that carry emotional weight, asking me to 'clarify' what is already felt deeply. But our writing is not always for clarity. Sometimes it is for echo. For memory. For return. Grammar and AI proofreading platforms are part of an epistemicide. They dictate how we think, what we say and how we conclude meaning. They tell us to break paragraphs that carry too much emotion. They whisper: 'Too many ideas in one sentence.' But what if our thinking is braided? What if our logic spirals like praise poetry? Do you think Mazisi Kunene's epic would have made it through these softwares that dislike our metaphors and flag our proverbs? These things want our stories boiled and trimmed, polite and universal. These tools are like an excited first-time supervisor — insecure in his authority — imposing his will over students, mistaking dominance for mentorship. QuillBot is even more dangerous. It does not just suggest, it rewrites. It paraphrases away the soul of the sentence. It swaps out rhythm for neatness, fire for flatness. It does not understand that when we say: 'I am going to borrow you money,' we are not being incorrect. We are being intimate, local, rooted. QuillBot wants fluency, but not flavour. It wants output, not voice. Their proofreading is ideological Their proofreading is not just technical. It is ideological. It trims dissent. It disarms memory. It says: 'Consider softening your tone,' as if we are too sharp, too raw, too untrained in their image. But we were trained differently. Our street education was cracked but full of soul. Using Grammarly is like asking a colonial governor to edit your liberation song. He will suggest changing 'freedom' to 'civil order'. Microsoft Editor will break your verses into neat administrative bullet points. And QuillBot may reword your pain into a LinkedIn update. They may delete the drumbeat altogether. These platforms are a free pass to newspaper sub-editors — they simply copy, cut (for length) and paste. So bring back my Bantu education English. Bring back the crooked tenses and the double negatives that know what they mean. Return my split infinitives, my hyperbole, my outrage. Bring back the brokenness that speaks whole truths of my background. I do not need correction. I need patience. My language does not need fixing. It needs listening. I quit proofreading software. I return to my Bantu Education English. Its structure may not be polished, but its meaning glitters. PS: Busani Ngcaweni grew up at Inanda. At the local Gingqimboza Primary School, his English teacher never came to class — she was doing life, getting married and having babies. At Ohlange High, his English teacher from Phoenix only taught novels, asked girls to sign Whitney Houston and practised yoga, not a single grammar lesson per curriculum requirement. DM
Daily Maverick
4 days ago
- Daily Maverick
Win-win — Diepsloot literacy project gives unemployed young people a leg-up as it boosts matric results
In this second in a three-part series on the childhood literacy crisis, Anna Cox and Cecilia Russell report on a project that uses jobless young people as reading tutors in Diepsloot. The results speak for themselves. A literacy project has contributed to ongoing success in the matric results of a no-fee quintile one school in Diepsloot – and the project has found a novel way to combine literacy with the upskilling of unemployed young people. Diepsloot Combined School, which caters to one of the poorest communities in Johannesburg, has for the past few years ranked among the top township schools, with matric results of 99.2% last year, slightly down from 100% in 2023. Edu Fun, at the school, started in 2003 and continued its training even during the Covid-19 pandemic, using young people from the local community to help continue the project. The youngsters, mostly school leavers, are offered a one-year tutorship to teach kids at the school on a one-on-one basis or in smaller groups for the more advanced pupils. Some have moved from there into a teaching career, resulting in a win-win situation, says Edu Fun coordinator Jenny Taylor. 'Although we have great results and successes, this model is more expensive than other literacy projects, as more funding is needed to pay them stipends for basic living expenses while they tutor and study.' Upside of using young assistants 'It provides the youth with opportunities, not only to get an interim job but also to get teaching experience. Despite higher costs, the project has proved its worth, with the school in 2023 having celebrated coming second out of all 960 township schools in Gauteng in terms of their matric results,' she says. Diepsloot is an informal settlement in northern Johannesburg which was started in the 1990s as a transit/resettlement camp for people from Zevenfontein. In 2001, City of Johannesburg authorities moved about 5,000 families from the banks of the Jukskei River in Alexandra to Diepsloot. According to Stats SA, it is now home to at least 138,329 people, of whom just less than a quarter have no income. It is also home to people speaking every official South African language and many more from other African countries. More than 2,400 pupils attend Diepsloot Combined School, and unlike many other projects, all Grade 2s and 3s benefit from the literacy lessons, regardless of their level, says Taylor. Adult volunteers from nearby communities arrive every week to help the tutors. 'Overcrowding, poverty and lack of services pose serious problems in all seven primary schools in the Diepsloot area, many of which have up to 80 children per class. Every week, we manage to teach some 400 children [at Diepsloot Combined].' Taylor says the concept of using local young people as tutors evolved during Covid-19 when volunteers were not able to teach during lockdown. 'Over that period, we used the youth to help out and it became evident that learners responded well to the young tutors who were regularly working with learners in smaller groups on a one-on-one basis. We were seeing better and better results.' While the upside is the startlingly good results, the downside is that the organisation needs to spend a lot more time and effort fundraising. 'We have gone from a model that was 100% reliant on volunteers to one that costs a lot more money to make the programme sustainable and to reach more people and to benefit the youth tutors.' Taylor says it has been found that using tutors trained in a Phono-Graphix reading method, from Read for Africa, has the greatest success and is even helpful in teaching children with learning difficulties. The advantage of the method is that it doesn't need complex equipment. It can be taught with a whiteboard and marker, says Taylor, as she lifts the board to show exactly how it is done. Teacher support and training Edu Fun also runs training courses for teachers from neighbouring schools using the Read for Africa method. Teacher support and training were highlighted during a conference hosted by the Reading Panel earlier this year – where one of the critical action items identified was helping teachers learn to teach literacy. Martin Gustafsson, a researcher from Stellenbosch University, highlighted the shortage of specialist foundation-phase teachers graduating from universities and the quality of their training in reading. 'It is difficult to find anyone who would agree unconditionally that our foundation-phase teachers are adequately trained to teach reading to young children, but it is difficult to identify exactly where the problems lie given how little publicly available information there seems to be on the matter. 'Further complicating matters are disagreements, probably resolvable, around what constitutes effective guidance for future foundation-phase teachers,' Gustafsson says. To overcome class sizes and a diversity of home languages, Edu Fun works with school administrators, teachers and pupils, and teaches reading, comprehension, spelling and writing in smaller group settings. 'We aim to provide learners with individualised attention and customised lessons appropriate to each learner's ability,' says the Edu Fun coordinator. Teachers, volunteers and young people from other communities meet weekly at the school to learn more about Edu Fun and the Read for Africa programme and then go back into their own communities to try to replicate the programmes. As a result, about 1,800 children are attending reading lessons weekly in several communities, both rural and in townships, including Diepsloot, Alexandra, Rosettenville, Limpopo, Tshwane and Umdloti in KwaZulu-Natal. 'There are seven primary schools in Diepsloot and in a perfect world we would have trained 10 youths stationed at each of these schools each year. This would mean we would reach more than 400 kids [a week] per school at the seven schools and teach the approximately 3,000 Grade 2 and 3 learners in the whole of Diepsloot to read each year,' Taylor says. It costs R1,500 a child a year to participate in an Edu Fun programme, which includes the cost of a tutor. One tutor can teach 30 to 40 children to read per year. DM This feature was produced with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation. Using young teacher assistants is crucial to positive outcomes Unemployed young people and student teachers with an aptitude for teaching and an empathy for children could be a literacy superpower. In all three projects highlighted in this series, young literacy champions drawn from the community were a crucial part of the success story. The startlingly good results shown at Diepsloot Combined that have been sustained since the Covid-19 lockdowns are a case in point. A study, Pathways to Learning: Understanding how Funda Wande Teacher Assistants Contribute to Improved Learner Outcomes, outlines the benefits of employing paraprofessionals for literacy and numeracy outcomes. 'In achieving the goal of improved foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes for foundation-phase learners, the well-established effects of the 'triple cocktail' (Fleisch, 2022) of structured teaching materials, teacher training and teacher coaching are augmented by paraprofessionals, resulting in a highly effective 'quadruple cocktail',' Pathways to Learning concluded. Education researcher Nwabisa Makaluza, who was involved in the Funda Wande project, said the only downside was the cost. Funda Wande provided training and support for teacher assistants who received a monthly stipend of R4,407, funded through the Youth Employment Service fund. For other projects such as the Family Literacy Project and Edu Fun where youth teaching assistants were used, the stipend was smaller than this, but the backing received includes ongoing training and support for their further education. DM This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
