Today’s Solutions: December 18, 2025

When a plant is outdoors and surrounded by 360-degrees of sunlight, its auxin (plant hormone) levels are evenly distributed, and it can grow straight up towards the sky. But when you put a houseplant indoors by a bright window, it only gets light from one side.

This causes the plant to grow towards the light, something that is known as phototropism. When this happens, it can leave little patches of exposed soil behind and make the plant look lopsided and sad. Fortunately, there’s a simple fix for this: just rotate it.

When a plant is leaning, it’s telling us that it’s exhausted from using all that energy to grow in one direction. That’s why it’s essential that you rotate your houseplants every once in a while to make sure that their auxin gets evenly distributed.

One simple way to go about doing this is by giving your plants a little quarter-turn every time you give them water. That way, the plant gets light from all sides and grow upwards to create a little canopy.

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