All you need to know about Calathea

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to swedish plant guys in this video we'll give you all you need to know about the calathea calathea calathea well in the studio we have five different varieties but no matter what type of variety of calathea you have everything in this video will apply to those varieties this video is based on our 20 years experience of taking care of indoor plants now with that said we often choose not to use this plant in our indoor landscaping projects and the reason is that it is a very tough plant it can survive almost anything however if you make a mistake with this plant it will show you directly that means that it will not look as good as you want it to look other indoor tropical plants are a little bit more forgiving than the calathea as usual we will divide this video up into four parts you have the purchase the planting the placement and the care of the plant so if you want to skip forward you can however we always recommend you to watch the entire video to get all you need to know please like subscribe and leave a comment down below that really helps this channel a lot follow us on facebook and instagram where you can get sneak previews on upcoming videos so starting off with the purchase now we have to say this this is not a plan for the beginner so if you're going out to buy your first plant for your new house your new home this is not the plant for you and the reason is that it is a high maintenance plant if you make any type of mistake it will show it directly and it will have a plant that is not looking as it's thriving the calathea is native to the rain forests of brazil now that has a big part in how to care for this plant so we will get back to that later on now the common name for this plant is the living plant or sometimes even the prayer plant now prayer plants are more specifically marantas however the calatheas are a member of the marantose family so the prayer plant could also apply to this but the living plant and the prayer plant is referring to all of these moving their leaves according to the circadian rhythm now the circadian rhythm is the 24 hour of light and heat during the day and night so they actually move the leaves according to the light and temperature so at night time they have the leaves almost standing straight up like this but during the day they move the leaves down like this and then they move it up again now they do that by increasing and decreasing the pressure on the nodes of the leaves here so they can move it upside up and down now it's important to know that when you buy this plant because if you buy it in the morning or if you buy it in the evening the leaves can have different positions and that is just natural like i said in the beginning there are a ton of different varieties of calatheas i have five different here in the studio so we go through which types these are but just choose the one that fits you personally which one you think is the most beautiful or just mix them up because that is also a perfect thing in your living room or in your house now the first one we have here is the calathea machoyana and that is this one here it's also called the peacock plant which has this very roundish leaves on it and the backs of the leaves are also a little bit purple as well very very nice looking and then we have the calathea roofibaba which i have here which also have a little bit of that purple on the backs of the leaf this one is actually called the wave star and that is of course because the leaves have these very wavy edges on them then we have the calathea lancifuga which is this one here also called the rattlesnake calathea and it's very much like the roofie barber here but it also have these added patterns on the leaves as well so it looks a little bit different then we have the calathea ornotta also called the pinstripe calathea which have these really really nice stripes on the leaves that are white or also a little bit purple as well and that some of them have a lot of purple some of them have a lot of the white so it's really really nice to look at and they also have this dark purple-ish undersides of the leaves so depending on if it's night or day you will see more or less of the purple of these plants the last one we have here is the kalasia musaika also called the network and that is of course referring to the leaves here where you have this really really nice network of dark versus light green on the leaves now this calathea is not purple on the on the back side of the leaves so you have a ton of different varieties of color and very variations of color on the undersides of the leaves on the upper sides of the leaves and also all different types of forms of the leaves you have round you have long as well so the calathea is a big big family with a lot of different types now when you go out to buy your first calathea i recommend you to knock off the pot of the calathea and look at the roots so you do that very very carefully so that you don't hurt the plant and that so that the shop will not get mad at you as well but you can take grab a hold of the plant like this just very very carefully just push the pot a little bit on the sides so you can feel that it's actually letting go of the soil and then you can take it out of the container now the leaves should the roots should look something like this they should be white but older roots can also be a little bit duller in color and if we look at the underside here we can also see the rhizomes because the calathea actually grows and propagates through what we call rhizomes or underground stems and that is what you can see here in these thicker parts of the roots so when it propagates it grows out new rhizomes and it gets wider and wider now a lot of the calatheas actually never gets to be very tall this is a very tall calathea and it will probably only get a little bit taller however they will get really really wide so you have to know that when you're buying this plant that it will not get tall but it will get really really white over time in the shop also take a look at the leaves they should not have any black spots on them no brown edges no brown tips no yellow leaves no yellow stems you want this plant to look perfect when you buy it because if you see any type of problem on it then you that could only get worse when you get it home so make sure that it looks flawless when you buy it and also choose your if you have let's say 10 different types of rattles 10 different rattlesnakes in the shop choose the one that has the most amount of starters or the most amount of leaves coming out of the soil so that it is as thick as possible when you buy it that will also give you the advantage of a healthy and strong plant another thing to look for on the leaves is that take a look on the back side of the leaves and what you're looking for are what looks like small small spider webs those are actually spider mites they are pests and they very often attack the calathea so take a look on the underside of the leaves make sure that there are no evidence of spider mites on your plant when you take it home now the calathea does flower but it rarely flowers indoors so you'd never buy this for the flowers but it could happen and there are varieties that actually will flower like the calathea cotta that actually flowers even indoors but we buy this plant mainly for the very vibrant colors and the different shapes of the leaves so when you buy this plant and it's time to take it home make sure that it's not cold outside they react quite quickly to colder temperatures so if it is below 16 degrees celsius or 60 degrees fahrenheit then make sure that the shop wrap it in something paper or plastic but that you cover it so that it doesn't get affected by the cold so moving on to planting when you get this plant to your house or apartment we recommend you to wait for a repot at least one year now if you have a plant that is really bulging you can see that it has a lot of roots then maybe you can repot but otherwise if it looks something like this you have a lot of roots but not in the entire pot then wait for it now the reason for that is that it has been a lot of things has been happening in the small lifespan of these small plots it has been moved from the growers to the shop then moved again from the shop to your home now we wait for the repot so that it can adjust itself to the new environment and by doing that you're actually helping it to become stronger and giving it the opportunity to start growing in your house so when should you repot well we recommend at least every two years maybe every three years depending on the size of a pot and depending on how large you want your calathea to be because if you put this in a very wide pot those small rhizomes will start to shoot out and it will get wider and wider so and most of us don't have a ton of room in our homes so if you want to keep it a little bit smaller for a little bit longer then we recommend you to every time you repot just move up one or two sizes in the pot and then you wait two years and then you move up again now you could put this in a larger pot directly however it is our experience if you do that what can happen is all of that soil can absorb a little bit too much water and hold that water for a very long period of time which could damage the roots but i know also that it can work so if you it to grow and just be wide then you place it in a big wide pot when we repot we can use any type of normal standard planting soil but it has a tendency to absorb and hold too much water so what what we recommend you to do is to mix up that standard planting soil with either thomas or perlites whatever you can get a hold of a mixture of eighty percent of soil and twenty percent of perlite or pumice is perfect for this plant because then you get that good drainage because it you it drinks a lot of water but it does not like to stand in water so you need good drainage that takes away all of that excess water it also works fine to plant your calathea in hummus now what we call pure pumice we have a video all you need to know about pumice we'll put a link to that up there if you want to know more it works perfectly with the calatheas just make sure that the promise you use you mix it up with something that has a good cation exchange capacity cec because this is a plant that needs quite a lot of nutrients and if you don't have the capacity to hold that nutrients inside of that pumice you can get problems so mix it up with for instance vermiculite or with clay and you will have that cut out a cat iron exchange capacity and it will work perfectly another way to plant this is in a self-watering system and that works perfectly that might even be the best way to plant a calathea because that means that you will have access to water all the time but not too much water because all of the excess water will go down into the water reservoir now we have a video showing you how to create your own self-watering systems you can go and watch that as well that works perfectly for the calathea moving on to the placements of your calathea this plant likes to live in an environment where it has at least 22 to 24 degrees celsius or 72 to 75 degrees fahrenheit if you go below that you could get problems if you go above that you could also get problems so if you are around those temperatures it will thrive and it will like it so where should you put your calathea in your home well we found that the perfect direction here in the northern hemisphere is to put it in a northern facing window because this plant wants to have medium to bright indirect sunlight as soon as direct sunlight hits the leaves on this plant you can get problems so a northern facing window means that you will get light but never direct sunlight you can also place it in an eastern or western facing window as well but make sure that the direct sunlight doesn't hit it too long during the day if it does move it in to the room a little bit or make sure that it's standing let's say behind a curtain or something that takes away that direct sunlight if you only have a southern facing window in your home make sure to move your calathea into the room so it gets light but no direct sunlight now also concerning light the more light you give this plant not direct sunlight but in direct sunlight the more it will grow so if you want it to stay a little bit smaller then give move it a little bit deeper into the room it still needs light but if you give it a little bit less light it will not grow as fast now one of maybe the most important things concerning calatheas calatheas is humidity as i said in the beginning this is native to the rainforest of the brazil where it has a lot of humidity so you need to have at least 40 percent of humidity in your home for this plant to thrive it actually likes it if it is 50 or higher but here in the southern parts of sweden that is actually quite hard to get but if you know that your home gets really dry let's say in wintertime as we can have here in sweden if it goes below 40 percent we can have even below 30 percent here in sweden if it goes below those 40 percent you will get problems so you could get problems with this what happens is that the leaves will start to show directly you will get brown tips of the leaves you can get brown edges of the entire leaf as well and they can also start to curl now when they start to curl themselves around the leaves like this it is usually a humidity problem if you see that if you get brown anywhere on the leaves on the edges or the tips or if it starts to curl like that make sure to raise the humidity in your room now there are many different ways you can do that the most expensive way is to buy a humidifier that raises the humidity in the entire room now if you don't cannot afford a humidifier or if you don't want to spend that money then what you can do is actually one way is to bundle the plants together in wintertime if you put them close together like this in one area of the room they will actually help each other to raise the humidity around themselves however if you get pests or any other problems that can also mean that you get them on all of your plants just know that as well but that raises the humidity around them another way is actually to put to take a larger saucer just a couple of centimeters high put some gravel or stones or anything on that saucer then you place your calathea on the saucer and you add water to that saucer you do not want the calathea to have access to that water what you want is for that water around the plant to evaporate and thereby increasing the humidity around your plant it's a very very simple way that works another thing that can create problems for you are windows in wintertime if you know that you have windows that get quite cold or if you know that you have windows that has a draft or if you open the windows during wintertime make sure to move your calatheas calatheas to another spot during winter because they will get damaged directly if if the temperature goes below or if it gets that cold draught so move them somewhere else in the winter time another thing to avoid is of course those really really hot and dry radiators so if you have it standing on a windowsill and you have a radiator underneath that you know gets really hot in the winter that can also be a problem here so make sure that you cover the plant with something so that it doesn't get that direct warmth from underneath or you move it to somewhere else where it's not in the direct way of that warm heat otherwise the leaves will get damaged directly so moving on to the care of the plant as i said in the beginning this is a high maintenance plot but there are a lot of things you can do to try and make it easier for you one thing is concerning the amount of water you give this plant now the calatheas wants to have access to water all the time but it should never stand in water what i mean by that is that you want to keep the soil just evenly moist at all times but it should never ever stand in water so one way of doing that is actually when you water this if you have the drainage holes in the bottom you can actually take it to your sink or to your bathroom bathroom and water it and let the excess water go out of the pot then you know that it's evenly moist and then you can use just use your fingers to feel the soil and when the soil is dry around two and a half centimeters or one inch down into the pot it's time to water it again now in the winter time if you know that you have that a little bit drier air in your home then you should let it dry out a little bit more so in the winter time you could even let it dry out five centimeters down into the soil or two inches instead of one so let it dry out a little bit more during winter time because this is a plant that goes a little bit dormant uh over winter now we have a video that tells you everything you need to know about dormancy if you don't know what that is you can go and watch that later now if you give your calathea too much water if it's standing in water you can get problems the first thing you'll notice if you give it too much water is that the leaves will start to become yellow and also some of the stems as well can also start to become yellow if you see that that's an indication of too much water if it's standing in water you could get root rot and it will show you that almost immediately by giving you black spots on the leaves often it often times it's in to the leaves it's not the edges of the leaves it's actually in the middle of the leaves it would just appear to be round black spots on the leaves that is an indication of root rot if you get root rot then you re-pot your plant and you make sure to take away those affected roots you can see those roots because they smell bad they are almost black just take them away leave the uninjured roots and repot your plant and you could actually save the plant from that but if you get yellow leaves it's an indication of too much water if you give it not enough water what happens then well the first thing that can happen is that the plant starts to wilter a little bit it starts to hang like this and as i said in the beginning these plants actually move their leaves during the day but if you notice that in the evenings it's not moving the leaves upward like this they're still hanging down like this that is an indication that you haven't given your calathea enough water so start watering it a little bit more frequently not more water just more frequently to keep it evenly moist another thing that can happen and will happen quite quickly is that you will get brown tips of the leaves and or brown edges and this is the reason why this plant is high maintenance because if you make a mistake it will show it directly and when it does it usually happens a lot so if you give it a little bit too much water a lot of the leaves start to get yellow if you're not watering it enough a lot of the leaves will get brown tips brown edges and it will just look bad and those brown tips and edges will never go back to being green again so you have a calathea that just looks bad that's why it's high maintenance you need to make sure that it gets exactly what it wants then it thrives it grows fast and it looks good but if you make a mistake then you pay for it now one thing you can do if you get those brown tips or brown edges if you've made a mistake and some of the leaves just looks bad you can cut away the entire leaf if you want to if you still have a full big plant or you can trim the leaves just use a sharp scissor make sure that it's clean so that you're not transferring any bacteria to the leaf but then you can just trim the edges and trim off that brown and then it will look fine again but make sure that you rectify what you've been doing wrong to the plant trimming just trimming it will not help the plant you will just get new burnt edges now those burnt edges can also arrive if you hit the leaves with direct sunlight but usually that will mean that it will get first it will get a little bit shaded in color and then entire leaves will just turn dry brown um so there's a little bit difference between direct sunlight and not enough water now another thing that can happen to your calathea if you're not watering it enough is that the leaves can start to curl if you see them starting to curl it could be a humidity problem but it can also be not enough water so if you see that on your plants then what i recommend you to do is just take it to your sink take it to your bathroom make sure to give it a nice good soak with water and then you just let the excess water go out of the pot so and if you see that the leaves start to uncurl then you know that you've rectified that problem and make sure to increase the frequency of when you water your calathea and that problem will just go away we recommend you to shower your calatheas with water at least once a month the reason for that is that we want to get rid of the dust because a lot of the dust in the air will settle on the leaves and they will hinder the photosynthesis of this plot so by just showering it in your bathtub or in the sink or just outside if you want to spray it with some water or shower it with some water you get rid of that dust now you can just if you do not want that water to hit the soil you can put something to cover the soil up so you don't get too much water for your roots but do that once a month and that is not an issue now we do not shower the plant to raise the humidity once a month will not help the humidity if you want to shower it for the humidity you need to do that at least once a day perhaps a couple of times a day but shower to get rid of the dust on the leaves now another thing people tend to do is that they mist their plants they're not rinsing the leaves off with water they're actually misting it with a spray bottle and that is also because they want to raise the humidity around the plot like i said before if you're not doing that every day what happens is that you missed it you raise the humidity for a little for a short period of time and then it goes dry again then you go in and missed it a week later you raise the humidity for a short period of time then it goes dry dry again that high humidity low humidity high humidity low humidity will actually damage your calathea and you can get problems from this so if you're misting and missed at least every day to raise the humidity around your plants otherwise don't do it try and raise the humidity in the entire room instead or just use any other of the tips we gave you earlier so continuing on to pruning as i said in the beginning this is not a plant that gets to be very tall it lives on the bottom of the rainforest floor and it gets wide instead if you think that some of your leaves here actually gets to be too wide you can just prune them off just cut them off down at the base or a little bit higher it really doesn't matter you can take away that entire leaf that you think is too high but otherwise what will happen is that it will start to grow and get become wider so if you do not want that you can actually prune the newer leaves that are coming out of the soil making the plant wider just cut them off at the base at the soil base here this will trigger the rhizome underneath to just continue growing but you will slow down that process a little bit you're not hurting the plant in any way you're just preventing it to grow now you could also propagate it and you propagate it by separating those rhizomes those thick soil bound roots so you take your plant out of the pot and you make sure that each new divided piece of this plant has to have these um thick rhizomes if they don't it will die over time because it in these small rhizomes there it's actually storing all the nutrients a lot of the water is in these small thick rhizomes so you propagate this by dividing the plant and making sure that you have rice ups in every new plot moving on to fertilizing your calatheas or nutrients for your calatheas this is a plant that actually wants quite a lot of fertilization what i mean by that is that you need to follow the instructions on the fertilizer that you are buying i'm not saying that you should add more than that you need to add the correct amount of the fertilization you are buying and using and it needs that because if you're not get if it's not getting enough nutrients you will see that a lot of the color on the leaves will start to fade as it can by direct sunlight as well but they will start to fade if your plant looks a little bit shaded or faded in color it could be a nutrient deficiency problem what we do to rectify this it's that make sure that when it is active during its active period from here in the north northern hemisphere that is from march to october around you add fertilizer as it says on the box if you do that you will never get a problem of nutrient deficiency but if you get a problem then you can start adding those nutrients and it will rectify that problem now depending on which type of fertilizer you use you will add the nutrients every one or two weeks and that is also depending on which way you water your plant if you have it in a self-watering container a self-watering system you're maybe only watering it every every month once a month then you should add those nutrients or the fertilizer every time but if you have it like this on a windowsill and you're watering it maybe every other day or every three days or something then once a week or every other week you should add fertilizer to that water but as i said follow the instructions on the fertilization you're using moving on to pests this is also one of the reasons that we rarely use this plant in our indoor landscaping projects because it has a tendency to get tests if it's not getting exactly what it wants as soon as it has some form of a problem it's as if it's sending out a signal to all the pests that come on i i'm not feeling well just hit me and it does and usually it's spider mites that is the most common pest that we have had on the calatheas that we've taken care of over all of these years so what to do if you get that well first of all it is an indication of something is wrong you're either watering it wrong you're not giving it enough light or you're giving it too much light or you're not giving it fertilizer or you're giving it too much fertilizer you don't have enough humidity in your room or you have too much emitted humidity in your room you can get pests so try and find out what the real problem is to why you got those pests then you can take care of the pests luckily spider mites are quite easy to take care of you could go out and buy a pesticide just follow the instructions usually you spray the plants with some form of chemical two or three times during around a week and then that will get rid of all the pests but you can also take this plant outside or into your bathroom into your bathtub and you can rinse it off with water and you do that every day for two weeks if you do that you will get rid of the spider mites he will get rid of all those eggs that will hatch because every time you shower it with water they will just be knocked off the plant and go down the sink two weeks and your problem will probably be gone when you do this make sure to cover the soil because you do not want to water this every day every day when you're showering it so make sure to cover the soil as good as you can and you won't have any problems now this is of course the most natural and most environmental friendly way of taking getting rid of those spider mites and that is also what we recommend now a really good thing about the calathea is that they are not poisonous they're not poisonous for humans and are not poisonous for pets so this is a plant that you can have in your house and not worry about about it with that said of course you should never let your dog or cat or a child or anything bite and eat any of the leaves on this plant but if they do it's not that big of an issue just call your local authorities tell them what's happened and they can react to it but usually it's not a problem because it is not poisonous in that way now a lot in this video is about how high maintenance and picky this plant is but i want to leave you by saying that if you follow all the instructions in this video if you give this plant all of those things that high humidity that evenly moist watering just keeping you away from pests making sure to get rid of the pests placing it correctly then you have a plant that will live for a long long time it will thrive it will grow it will just look great but react directly as soon as you see any problems just follow our instructions and you will be fine thank you so much for watching if you like this video please give it a thumbs up that really helps our channel a lot if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet please do hit the bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new follow us on facebook and instagram where you can get sneak previews on upcoming videos and sometimes a little bit more now until next time hi dawn

Channel: Swedish Plantguys

Views: 327,080

Keywords: Calathea, Plant care, Care of, Calatheas, Verities, Of, On, Indoor plants, Swedish, Plant guys, Repotting, Purchase a, Planting, Placing, Placement, Best, Watering a, How to, Plant, Care for a, Best help, Expert on, Rainforest plant, Growing, All you need to know about Calathea, Calathea makoyana, “Peacock plant”, Calathea rufibarba “Wavestar”, Calathea lancifolia “Rattlesnake”, Calathea ornata “Pin-stripe”, Calathea musaica “Network”, Houseplants, The Living plant, Prayer plant

Id: oUSOe2-s_ZI

Length: 39min 26sec (2366 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021