• Plant selection
• Good cultural practices
• Watering
• Light
• Temperature
• Fertilizer
• Soil and containers
• Pruning
• Regular plant inspections
• Prompt detection and diagnosis
• Is the problem controllable?
• Is the problem worth treating?
• What kind of treatment should be used?
• Cost effectiveness 

PLANT SELECTION 

     Thoughtful plant selection is the first step one can take towards having healthy plants.  It is very important to match a plant with the planting site.  For example,  putting a plant that requires low humidity in a small enclosed porch that contains a hot tub is bound to be detrimental to the plant.  In this case,  plants should be selected that do well in high humidity environments.  This way, many common pest and disease problems can be avoided.  It is also very important to begin with good quality,  healthy, pest free plants.  If you are unsure of a plants health, my advice to you is not to buy it.  You should feel confident in the quality of any product that you buy because if you bring a diseased or infested plant into your home or garden you are putting your other plants at risk.  Disease resistant or tolerant cultivars are always a good idea too, especially if you have had problems in the past.  Sometimes, it may even be necessary to switch to an alternative species if problems persist. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Selecting House Plants 
     Indoor Plants 
     Factors in Selecting Plants 
     House Plants 

GOOD CULTURAL PRACTICES 

  Watering plants properly contributes a great deal to the health of a plant.  Over or under watering plants is a very common problem, especially for indoor plants.  Most plants need to be thoroughly soaked with tepid water (60-80 degrees F), once a week.  However, sometimes this can be too much water and in some cases not enough.  So, it is essential that you know the watering requirements for all of your plants.  To examine the soil, you need to get approximately two to six inches below the surface.  The surface may often appear to be dry while the inside is still very moist.  It is also important to remove the excess water that drains out of the soil after each watering. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Advice on Watering Plants 
     Watering Indoor Plants 

Proper light conditions are absolutely necessary for the survival of indoor plants.  Light is the energy source for photosynthesis and therefore must be present.  The quality and quantity of light have to be considered when placing a plant indoors.  Is the light quality sufficient enough for photosynthesis to occur and is the quantity of light long or short enough to keep the plant healthy?  When considering landscape plants, light is also important to whether or not a plant will survive.  Some plants require full sun,  while others would shrivel up and die in these conditions.  Therefore, it may be necessary to find a spot that provides partial sun throughout the day, or perhaps a shady area for a plant that needs very little sun. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Light Energy for Plant Growth 
     Indoor Garden Light Systems 

  The ideal temperature for most indoor plants is 60-80 degrees F.  Some can tolerate lower temperatures but are usually not very productive if exposed to them.  Rapid temperature fluctuations will result in poor plant health.  Some of the things that often get over looked are drafts from doorways and heat from registers 
which can cause serious damage.  Exposure to temperatures lower than 45 degrees can also be very detrimental.  Landscape plants are a little more tolerant when it comes to temperature, as long as you know what plants do well in the environment that you live in.  Obviously, a palm tree would not survive in a landscape in Ohio. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Plant Hardiness Zones 
     Heat Stress in Plants 

  If you choose to use a fertilizer, it should be completely soluble and contain Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.  Always dissolve the fertilizer in tepid water and drench the solution through the root mass.  The amount of fertilizer needed is related to the quality of light received by the plant.  So, if you have a plant that is not getting a sufficient amount of light, it will require more fertilizer than a plant that is getting the proper amount of light. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Fertilizing House Plants 
     Fertilizing 
     Fertilizing 

  Soil must be well aerated, yet retain sufficient moisture to maintain health between watering.  If there are not sufficient nutrients in the soil, fertilizer may be necessary to keep plants healthy.  The pH of the soil is also very important, it can be too high or too low for some plants.  Knowing the pH of your soil before purchasing plants can save you a lot of time, money and sweat.  Another factor to consider that is kind of related to soil is what kind of containers are used.  There are several different kinds of containers on the market that basically focus on appearance.  Is it pretty, does it match the rest of your landscape?  Looks are important to most people, I am one of those people.  However, when looking for containers there is one thing that must be present, large and numerous drainage holes.  It is very important that excess water be able to drain out of the soil after a plant is watered. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Premium Potting Soil 
     Containers 

  Last but not least, pruning is also a very important cultural practice when trying to maintain plant health.  If plants are pruned incorrectly they become more susceptible to pests and diseases, not to mention they look really bad too.  Landscape plants usually require more pruning than do indoor plants, they have more room to grow and usually get much larger and unruly.  Most people hire companies to come in when their trees need pruned, but they can usually handle the smaller jobs by themselves.  It takes a little bit of research to learn how to prune correctly and it may be different from plant to plant, but it is necessary to keep plants healthy. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS 
     Pruning Ornamental Plants in the Landscape 
     Follow Proper Pruning Techniques 
     The Pruning Book 

Improper cultural practices can retard growth, weaken plants ability to withstand adverse conditions or pest attacks and enhance disease development. 

INSPECT PLANTS REGULARLY 

    Regular inspections of your plants are absolutely necessary to help you learn what healthy plants should look like so that you know when a problem does arise. 
Early detection makes it so much easier to manage and control a problem.  If plants are not inspected on a regular basis, a problem may go undetected for quite some time and possibly be untreatable when discovered. 

PROMPT DETECTION AND DIAGNOSIS 

     Prompt detection makes it much easier to control or manage a problem.  However, just because you know that something is wrong doesn't fix it.  An accurate diagnosis is the next step in controlling the problem.  There are many services available to help people pinpoint what the problem is, garden centers, retail nurseries and cooperative extension services are usually more than happy to help.  Just make sure to have an ample amount of the plant that shows the problem so they are able to see what's wrong without a doubt.  The next step is to decide what to do about the problem. 

1.  Is the problem controllable?  Sometimes there is just absolutely nothing that you can do to control a problem.  When this happens, the only real option that you have left is to remove the plant and replace it with a new one.  Perhaps with a disease resistant or tolerant cultivar.  If the problem is   controllable than you must chose a treatment. 

2.  Is the problem worth treating?  Next you should consider whether or not the problem is worth treating.  Sometimes it's cheaper just to replace the plant, it definitely takes less time and effort just to put a new healthy plant in and sometimes treatments cannot prevent plant injury.  There are also cases where you may just have to wait it out for a season, some problems do go away on their own. 

3.  What kind of treatment?  If you decide to treat the plant in question, there are several different treatments available.  Sprays are commonly used to get rid of pests, like pesticides.  However, I cannot stress proper use of pesticides enough, read the directions carefully.  They will tell you how to use the pesticide, what kind of protection you may need for yourself and how to store left overs.  Some people do not like to use chemicals, especially on indoor plants.  In these cases a soap and water solution can often be used, however, sometimes all that is needed to correct the problem are proper cultural practices                                                                  .

COST EFFECTIVENESS  

    Plant health care helps to maintain plants so that they are less susceptible to pests and diseases.  It is very inexpensive to care for a plant properly and can save you a lot of money.  Reactive interventions can be very expensive when problems arise, whether it be providing a treatment or having to replace a plant or several plants.  A lot of expense can be avoided if plant health care is followed.  First of all, you must select plants for specific sites, then you must follow proper cultural practices, inspect your plants regularly to detect any problems that may occur early on and then decide whether or not the problem can be treated and how you want to do it.  If all of these steps are followed, you will experience fewer problems and save a little money too.