The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers
Jan 19, 2026 · 1 hr 16 min · 17 segments
On this Best of the Beet episode, we revisit Kevin’s talk with Darryl Cheng of Houseplant Journal. They discuss his book, The New Plant Parent, and rethink the basics of houseplant care. They break…
but unfortunately it doesn't fit nicely onto a card it doesn't wrap itself into a neat little package in terms of verbally so that's probably why we've uh Let it get to this state where we can just say, bright and direct light, and then we let people figure it out on their own.
Yeah, I could see maybe a revised or an updated plant card saying, this must be on a south-facing window minimum, something like that, or can tolerate five feet away from a south-facing window or something like that.
That would be a cooler way to do it, I think, and probably more in line with what you're talking about, yeah?
Maybe if we can go back to the whole human having poor judgment of light, just as a quick kind of mental exercise, although it's something that you can try at home.
It's that, you know, have you ever tried to take a picture of a scene where you look outdoors and there's a nice scenery in the background, but you're standing from inside and you try to expose the camera so that you can get the details outside.
But then when you take the photograph, you notice that the inside details are like completely dark.
So then you change your settings so you can expose to the inside, but the outside now becomes completely washed out.
And then I think some people who are not experienced with cameras would think, oh, my camera's not good enough because it can't get both of them in proper exposure.
But it's actually because your brain is doing like a Photoshop merging of two different exposures and using your memory to merge it so that you perceive both details perfectly fine.
So it's almost like your brain is tricking you and the camera is being objective.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's really well said.
I think a camera is a really good metaphor for it because it's our best example of a mechanical eye, right? That can't quite do it.
Any final common misconceptions about light before we move on to tomorrow's
It's good to put our foot down here and say that light is the most fundamental need for a plant.
Even watering is actually something that's only done in response to a plant that is already getting the right light because photosynthesis doesn't happen unless the light is there to power the reaction.
Yeah, I would agree with that, and I would say it kind of goes back to that going all the way down the rabbit hole of the root causes of things because it would be light, and then from there stems all other care requirements for the plant, watering probably second, I would imagine, and then soil quality and fertility within the soil, nutrition, stuff like that.
How do we then think about it from an indoor gardener perspective?
What I actually ended up doing was I got myself a good light meter, and I was just walking around everywhere and measuring light.
but unfortunately it doesn't fit nicely onto a card it doesn't wrap itself into a neat little package in terms of verbally so that's probably why we've uh Let it get to this state where we can just say, bright and direct light, and then we let people figure it out on their own.
Yeah, I could see maybe a revised or an updated plant card saying, this must be on a south-facing window minimum, something like that, or can tolerate five feet away from a south-facing window or something like that.
That would be a cooler way to do it, I think, and probably more in line with what you're talking about, yeah?
Maybe if we can go back to the whole human having poor judgment of light, just as a quick kind of mental exercise, although it's something that you can try at home.
It's that, you know, have you ever tried to take a picture of a scene where you look outdoors and there's a nice scenery in the background, but you're standing from inside and you try to expose the camera so that you can get the details outside.
But then when you take the photograph, you notice that the inside details are like completely dark.
So then you change your settings so you can expose to the inside, but the outside now becomes completely washed out.
And then I think some people who are not experienced with cameras would think, oh, my camera's not good enough because it can't get both of them in proper exposure.
But it's actually because your brain is doing like a Photoshop merging of two different exposures and using your memory to merge it so that you perceive both details perfectly fine.
So it's almost like your brain is tricking you and the camera is being objective.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's really well said.
I think a camera is a really good metaphor for it because it's our best example of a mechanical eye, right? That can't quite do it.
Any final common misconceptions about light before we move on to tomorrow's
It's good to put our foot down here and say that light is the most fundamental need for a plant.
Even watering is actually something that's only done in response to a plant that is already getting the right light because photosynthesis doesn't happen unless the light is there to power the reaction.
Yeah, I would agree with that, and I would say it kind of goes back to that going all the way down the rabbit hole of the root causes of things because it would be light, and then from there stems all other care requirements for the plant, watering probably second, I would imagine, and then soil quality and fertility within the soil, nutrition, stuff like that.
How do we then think about it from an indoor gardener perspective?
What I actually ended up doing was I got myself a good light meter, and I was just walking around everywhere and measuring light.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.