6 "Must-Have" Houseplants -- And If They're Actually Worth Purchasing

hi everyone my name is nick and today i'm going to talk about some plants that are considered to be must-haves by the house plant community and i'm going to give you guys my own personal opinion on whether or not i think they're actually worth purchasing it seems every week there are more and more plants that are considered to be must-haves on social media however i'm going to be highlighting six today that have been heavily sought after for at least the past couple years so the first one i'm going to talk about today is this little cutie right here so this is a monstera ad in sony i commonly referred to as the swiss cheese vine i believe and this is one that really started to gain a lot of popularity probably like four or five years ago right at the beginning of the house plant trend becoming a little bit more popular and this is one that a couple of years ago was a lot more difficult to get and definitely a lot more money than it cost now it definitely wasn't on the higher end of the spectrum that some of those house plants can be there was nobody spending over a hundred dollars on a four six or eight inch pot of monstera add and sony eye but still it was one that was a little bit more harder to come by nowadays you can walk into practically any houseplant store or a big box store or probably even your grocery store and you're probably going to go ahead and find a nice full pot of this for a very decent price this is one that i purchased just a couple months ago i believe from uh the local farmer's market here in philadelphia and it's just so cute i already have a couple of these in my home but this little four-inch pot was just calling out for me and it's been growing really really well now i'm holding this little vine up so it looks a little bit fuller but you can see it's starting to trail down now which i really enjoy because this plant has so many different ways that you can grow it you might often see it just sold in hanging baskets and the vines starting to trail down but you might also see it growing on like moss poles or trellises where the plant is starting to climb up that setting like it's a tree trunk and you might start to notice that as the leaves grow higher and higher up whatever support it's growing up that those leaves start to get larger which is really nice as that's how this plant grows in nature it finds a tree to climb up and the higher it grows on the tree the more the leaves mature and they get larger and many more holes or fenestrations in the leaves which is just what this plant is most notable for as i was saying these used to cost a lot more than they do now i'd say like a couple years ago these only were offered in like six or eight inch hanging baskets and they were like you know 40 50 maybe maybe a little bit more than that depending on where you're buying them from but nowadays i like i said i go to my local farmers market and they have some really beautiful four-inch pots and i think this was sold there for like six dollars which is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to prices but uh how could i not buy this for six dollars that's adorable but this is definitely a house plant that's considered to be must-haves that i would absolutely say yes is worth it there are so many others that are not quite nearly as worth it but this is one that just keeps on giving you can constantly propagate it as you can see it has these little root nublets along the stem here that if i were to just chop this off and put it in water it would root up and i could start another house plant for myself give it to a friend just make my pot fuller you know there's so many things i can do with it so definitely one that i recommend i would just be wary as since this can be a little bit more popular online sometimes i'm sure there are a couple sellers out there who are trying to get a pretty penny for it but nowadays this plant is basically as inexpensive as apothose or syndapsis and hopefully it stays that way as it's just such a beautiful houseplant and it's one that kind of proves how plants can be harder to find and more expensive at one point and then just become run-of-the-mill at some point but i still think that this plant is just as exciting as it was a couple years ago the next one i want to talk about today is a little wonky looking as i have had this one for probably three or four years now this is a watermelon peperomia or a peperomia algeria and it's known for just these beautiful round leaves most of them around some of them have kind of been on the struggle busts every now and again but they have these beautiful round leaves that have this wonderful silver variegation and lines throughout the leaves that resemble a watermelon and that's why this plant was most popular and this i would say is probably the first peperomia to really gain a lot of attention which is exciting for me because i have a soft spot for pepperonis and i love it when they get a little bit more uh sought after um this one i had a lot more success with this in my last apartment i was growing this up on a shelf like the entirety of the time that i had it right next to a south-facing window but it was kind of shaded as it was like right next to the south facing window and it just grew so beautiful there but um it seems i mean it's doing fine here it's not doing terrible but it seemed to like that natural light a little bit better than um this artificial light that i'm giving it although this has been a very popular house plant for the last couple years it fortunately has never really carried a large price tag you can find these in like larger hanging baskets these days i've been seeing them at some house plant stores and like six chugging baskets with these giant leaves and they are aren't expensive they're still like 30 40 maybe 50 for those hanging baskets however in my own experience i would say skip it i know they're big and beautiful however i've tried growing out one of those before and they don't seem to ever grow the big leaves in the home i mean this is case in point right here i've had this one for almost four years and it is still just tiny little leaves that are you know no bigger than like two inches across you can see how mine has grown over the years with these two little central stalks that are kind of reminiscent of like a pilea pepperoni oils but they don't hold weight nearly as well as you can see they're kind of creeping over the side of the pot which i really enjoy but just from the way that this has grown uh and let alone just the size of the leaves i'm definitely led to believe that these like giant leaf watermelon pepperonis that we see at the stores are just like very juiced up in the greenhouse i don't think they're older at all i still think they're probably not much more than a couple months older than the ones in the four-inch pots but they're just like receiving conditions that it's just really responding to and they are not going to receive those conditions in our home so i'd say you're better safe than sorry with a more inexpensive and manageable four-inch pot and then you can really enjoy the way it grows over time and i think it's really neat how this is now a perfect specimen for like a shelf or something like that obviously i'm growing it on the shelf here but you know typically they're just growing up right out of the pot but they do really do form some nice character over time as they start to fall over and just creep along the side of the pot i guess maybe in nature they'd be like creeping along the forest floor or wherever they're growing and then just starting to like branch out wherever they're reaching out to or breaking off and you know how the conditions are rough out there but i just think this plant's great definitely think this is worth it any plant that's inexpensive and this beautiful and this rewarding is always going to be worth it so we have two worth it plants in a row but i'm not so confident that it's going to stay that way specifically with the next one we're going to be talking about so this is a plant i really don't talk about that often here on youtube and this is a monstera deliciosa uh albo varagata and of course i think this is like the burstijiana i don't know the whole tea with that but this is just a variegated monstera let's call it i know there are so many different kinds this is just the one that has the typical white foliage and wow i really should have dusted this i just pulled it off of one of my trellises so i have to kind of handle it a little bit more carefully than some of my other plants but this um i can't think of a plant that's less worth purchasing than uh this right here do i think it's a beautiful houseplant 100 i grow it in my home like i would be dumb to say this isn't a stupidly beautiful house plant however given its price and its overall overratedness i do think this is a house plant that's a little bit more better when appreciated from afar at like a botanical garden where they can grow their fullest potential and get these giant like three feet across leaves that are just covered in fenestrations i'm not going to be able to do this plant that kind of justice in my home and i traded for this a couple years ago i actually traded believe it or not a rapidophoro tetraprima cutting for this because this was way before rapidophora was being cultivated however this plant sells for a stupid amount of money i don't know what like this size plant right here would be selling for probably not as much as some of the ones with the larger more developed leaves but those things you know going well into the thousands i think maybe the um varagata or the alba varagata is probably one of the more lesser expensive varieties but not expensive is not the word for this plant because it's still ridiculously expensive it's still going to be at least a couple hundred dollars at the minimum maybe like you'd be lucky to find like just a node that's leafless or wet stick as they call them sometimes for like less than 100 which i i mean 100 nobody should be buying the wet sticks but even a node can be kind of risky as you might be purchasing an inactive node and there's just really no way of knowing unless it's already rooted when you purchase it so i would be very wary with purchasing this plant in fact i would just say don't purchase this plant um help let's drive down the market let's stop having people selling their plants for thousands of dollars because it's just not worth it and then i feel like this is like the catalyst right here to all these other plants that are selling for like stupid amounts of money like i was saying i don't remember like in 2017 any houseplant costing over a thousand dollars other than like the philodendron spirit of sancti even a monstera albo would probably be like 200 300 like a nice full plant at the time but now everything has just shifted anything or everything variegated and not common is selling on ebay for like over ten thousand dollars which i think we can all agree is stupid and i'm personally curious on who is spending the money on these plants if they're not like botanical gardens out there who are just collecting for like the point of you know growing the plant but we're not going to get into this topic that's that's a that's a heated topic right there anyway no this plan is 100 not worth it is it easy to grow if you get your hands on it 100 it's a monstera monster delicious are like extremely easy house plants to grow does this plant grow very very slowly yes i've taken a cutting off of this plant i think i traded a cutting of this for like my white princess philodendron a couple years ago maybe a year i don't know how long ago it was doesn't really matter but it's taken its time growing back um i'm fortunate to have the amount of leaves i have on it now as like i said it is a ridiculously slow growing plant i myself really don't see me getting more than like two leaves on this plant a year three maximum if it's growing to its fullest potential of course it depends on how long you've had the plant too i always say that adage the first year they sleep the second year they creep the third year of their leap so maybe this plant just hasn't gotten lethal for me yet maybe it will soon i would love to see some more leaves on this plant as it being a very you know highly sought after plant i do try to take good care of it but you know there's only so much i can do when it only grows two or three leaves me for me a year the only saving grace that this plant has is that you could of course propagate it very easily and trade for it but if you are gonna do that please do it ethically don't be an about it uh just don't be selling any wet sticks on the internet it's just not ethical and do your research is all i'm asking do your research and maybe just don't buy variegated monstera but if you have to have it you have to have it but um there are so many better things that you could be spending your money on alrighty so this oh gosh this one looks so wimpy i so apologize so this is my begonia immaculata believe it or not i've had this one for like two or three years now this is one that i would put outside along with many of my other begonias i would put them outside for like the last two years at my old apartment because i had a courtyard i don't have that option anymore and this plant is not taking to my home as well as it was the outside space because i was putting it outside i would find me bringing this back in in like the winter around the winter time and it would die back a little bit some of those leaves that have been flourishing outside in the perfect conditions would kind of die off and then i would put it back out in the springtime so this one hasn't had that option after the winter to go back outside and live its fullest potential so it is looking a little wimpy although it is definitely coming back slowly but surely so i'm just trying to justify the appearance of this house plant however begonia immaculata is a begonia that looks so similar to so many other begonias i think the uh the gimmicks of this house plant maybe are that the leaves are a little bit larger and that they do have this like crimson color on the backside of the leaves which is fabulous i will admit i do absolutely love that you guys know i'm a sucker for plants that have different color leaves on the backside however my only beef with this house plant is that there are so many other begonias that look so similar to it that are probably a little bit more easier to grow and probably a little bit more deserving of that must-have spot but i don't know i don't know what was the reason why this is the begonia that everybody wants in fact i feel like there are probably so many beginner house plant gardeners not throwing shade i mean kind of but who don't grow begonias but they have a begonia maculata in their home you know what i mean so it's a gorgeous houseplant i remember when i first started getting these in at the houseplant store they were so popular i had to put like a one per person minimum on i would like put them on a table right when we opened people would like flock to the table and i would only put like half of them out and then i have to put the other half out because people were like be so picky picking through the houseplants you know what i mean it was uh i don't miss it i do miss things about working at the store but most things like that i do not miss but uh this is just one of the ones i remember was like would clear off it would be like five minutes after the store opened and all of the begonia immaculates would be gone whether i got five or twenty of them they would all be gone and people would be asking for them after like 10 minutes and then like they're gone i'm sorry i don't know what to tell you oh gosh do not miss it but uh this uh like i said just so many other options out there so this is what i would say is kind of worth it i understand it's a great beautiful houseplant it's got so many little nuances and characteristics that i absolutely love there are just plenty of other begonias out there that are much more worth it and not going to have the price markup that the begonia immaculata normally has and i also have this lovely little cebu blue pothos right here another must-have probably the pothos that is the most highly sought after on the market so this is a pipernum pinedum cebu blue which is a little bit different than the standard epipen orion which is what uh pretty much every other pothos that we're referring to as the common name um is which is maybe why this house plant is a little bit more highly sought after i wouldn't be surprised if that's the case realistically it's probably just these gorgeous blue leaves that really stand out amongst the rest that are also really dusty i do such a bad job at dusting my house plants you guys but um sibley blue pathos has come such a far away in terms of being like very similar to monster adam sonia i one of those house plants that was just like really hard to get your hands on at one point this one in particular like i feel like a couple years ago you would no doubt be able to walk into a house pen store and every now and again be able to find a monster adam sonia there was no way in hell you were going to find the siblings a couple years ago this is one that just started to pop up probably like about a year ago at least in the market in my area and it was very difficult to get i remember there would be such a limited quantity from the growers and now nowadays you can walk into practically any house pen store and they have a ton of them because it is a and a pepper numb or apothose and they do grow very quickly and they're very very easy to propagate so it seems now the market is practically flooded with cebu blue pathos so i'd say now more than ever yes this plant is completely worth uh purchasing before i mean it wasn't not worth purchasing i remember i got really lucky a couple years ago and i found like a really full hanging basket for like ten dollars at one of my local big box stores and i was completely shocked because i was like what is this doing here but uh nowadays the local growers have all gotten their hands on them and they're all starting to grow them out which is fantastic because now the price has dropped what used to be like thirty or forty dollars is probably like fifteen or twenty maybe twenty five dollars maximum now for a nice full four inch pot so it's so great to see that just like the monster and sonia like i mentioned however it makes sense that these two plants are ones that like are readily available now because they were gaining popularity and it just so happens that they grow like weeds and they're ridiculously easy to propagate versus the monstera deliciosa alba varagata which grows like i said like two or three leaves a year and while super easy to propagate is definitely not nearly as much to build up stock as it not only grows slow but if you cut that thing to propagate it's gonna take a long time to regrow another leaf after that so definitely one of those ones right here that makes a lot of sense so if there are any other plants at the top of your mind that you're like wow that plant grows really fast but it's really expensive just wait a couple years um speaking of which i think the last one i'm going to talk about today is a primary example of that and that is the philodendron arubasin's pink princess now i have to say i accidentally fried this thing a little bit i put it in my east-facing windows when i moved into this apartment which was perfectly fine back in the late winter or early spring when i moved here but i didn't even realize that that sun got very harsh very fast and i pulled out the window under the water and it has some of these little like marks on the leaves which is okay as this plant grows very fast like i said so i can deal with the brown spots for now but um just something to be wary of it really did not take long for it to fry a little bit and it really just annihilated the pink portions of this house plant but i can look past it because i got really lucky with this plant a couple years ago well i technically did not get lucky at all it just wasn't worth a lot of money a couple years ago i purchased this for eight dollars back in like 2017 one of my first uh videos that i did here on youtube and it's like i said i did not get lucky these were just not expensive house pants i would say probably maximum you would be spending 25 on a pink princess back then but the thing was that they just weren't you know being grown it wasn't a house plant that was uh being propagated and grown commercially so that's why i just wasn't really available at the time even though it wasn't expensive as many of these house plants as i've been mentioning were not really expensive whatsoever just a couple years ago but some of these have just really skyrocketed in hype and price and all of the above ever since the house plant trends took off this is one that has really fallen that pink princess philodendron was anything anybody wanted i remember i would get called literally once a day when i first started working at the houseplant store probably in like 2018 and people will just call always being like do you have variegated monstera pink princess full dungeon and i felt bad but i couldn't help but laugh sometimes because i would hear it so often it's like no you're not gonna find it nobody has it everyone wants to nobody's growing it however the growers are listening and so people are growing it now in my area of the united states you can go into practically any houseplant store and you will find them in four inch pots but they're not cheap i think the most inexpensive price i've seen for them thus far has been like 90 and then i've seen that the growers have also been selling the reverted pink princesses for like half the price of that although i mean it's not gonna grow pink so there's no reason to buy it it's not even really worth half the price in my opinion uh as the plant isn't even worth the 90 that i've seen at the bare minimum so yeah i personally do not think pink princess is worth it but that's for right now i i do see this plant falling down in price perhaps next year maybe that 90 or 100 dollars will be 50 or 60 dollars and then maybe 30 or 40. i do see this plant falling drastically in price in due time but it's going to take time for them to grow out the plant more the availability to grow the demand to die down you know there's so many things economics class do you guys remember that in high school anyway it has to do with this pink princess right here and many of the other plants that we're uh talking about today as they really do follow that supply and demand trend and uh this is just the best prime example of that they should be talking about pink princess in economics class i think it's it literally is such a good example of that but uh if you do get your hands on this plant or if you do spend the money on this plant rest assured it is a ridiculously easy plant to grow just don't pry it like i did in my window a grow light will do perfectly fine or maybe a couple feet away from a bright window or maybe inside a north facing window if that's what you're working with but yeah a very very easy house plan to grow it's a quick enough grower i've cut mine i have another one in my home that's right next to me on the floor here that i cut back all the time and regrow it which is how i literally got both of these here if you guys recall from that video i did a while back so it's a very easy house plant to grow you should have no problems with it it's just the fact that it costs so much money and it's so expensive simply because of the demand that people are so crazy about this and i have to ask like what sets this pink plant apart from some other pink plants like a pink syngonium or a pink vitonia there are so many other wonderful pink housemates a pink ugly enema a pink ugly nemo like literally looks better than the pink princess filament i would be daring enough to say that so i'm just wondering what's what's the deal why are people so obsessed with this pink plant and why are others that are just like four to ten dollars just not as exciting is it the price that makes it so exciting i i don't get it anyway that's gonna do it for today's video uh must have house plants and whether or not i think they're worth it uh spoiler alert most of them aren't worth it actually that's not true i did say three of them are worth it oh no that's not true i said three of them were worth it so i guess most of them were worth it it's just some of them are really not worth it at least right now so hang in there like i said the price of all these is going to change we can really take a note from the monstera and sonyi and the subelepathos and even looking back even further the pile of pepperoides the must-have plant of the past that people don't even seem to care about anymore so trends happen prices change so just something to keep in mind but thank you guys so much i would love to talk more about these must-have plants and talk about my opinions it's kind of fun so thanks again for joining me today if you don't already follow me on instagram at philly foliage subscribe to my channel and i will see you guys in my next video have a great day

Channel: Nick Pileggi

Views: 75,440

Rating: 4.9436145 out of 5

Keywords: philodendron, must have, must-have, nick pileggi, phillyfoliage, monstera, albo, variegata, variagata, variegated, variagated, pink, princess, begonia, maculata, cebu, blue, pothos, epipremnum, epiprenum, adansonii, adansoni, adasonii, adasoni, peperomia, peperonia, pepperomia, watermelon

Id: yGfihdZ6BMA

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021