All you need to know about Monstera Deliciosa

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to Swedish plant guys today we have a hero called the monstera deliciosa which I have here surrounding me in the studio and this is a plant that is called in Swedish it's called autumns Raven or Adam's rib and I know that in America you also call it the Swiss cheese plants which is all about these big nice leaves on the monstera which looks like a rib cage or it can look like a Swiss cheese with holes in it whichever you prefer now the name monstera deliciosa actually comes from the fruit it can produce a really nice fruits and it looks like a big green pinecone and I've I've heard that it's supposed to taste like a combination of banana mangos and pineapple which sounds fantastic I've never tried it myself but hopefully someday I will now as usual we will divide this video 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 now beginning with the purchase this plant can can be purchased it's purchased in any size in any form you have the small versions like this one it's in a 12 centimeter pots you have a larger version like this one which is in a 27 centimeter pot and you can go even bigger like this one where you have it growing on a plastic tube to support it and it can actually become over 20 meters high this plant so it can become really really big now it's a very very easy to grow plant which means that when you purchase this plant you should look for a couple of things first of all always choose the plant at the grower or where you're going to purchase it that has the most number of stems now if we look at this one I have right here we have one two three stems coming from the soil now if there if this was standing next to another plant that had four stems that's the one I should pick so the more number of stems only means that you will get a fuller and eventually also bigger and nicer plants so you you choose the one that has the most number of stems now also look at how many leaves it has same thing here the number of leaves is can be quite important because you want to have a very nice-looking plant so choose the one that has the most number of leaves on it now usually you buy the monstera for these nice very ribcage like leaves but if you buy it very very small like these ones it doesn't have that Swiss cheese looking leaves yet don't worry because they will come they will come as soon as the plant reaches a surgeon certain a certain age when it when it starts to grow a little bit more it will develop these like this little one here the the latest latest leaf here has gotten these rib cage like leaves none of the others have it so it will produce that you don't have to worry about that and being a very easy to grow plant you can actually purchase this plant in this small size and then let it grow in your house to become as large as you want it to be and then also you don't have to pay very much money for it because it can be quite expensive when it reaches a big a certain size when it comes becomes big it's going to cost you a lot of money so you can buy it very small and let it grow your house it's very easy now as always I want you to check the roots of the plant before you purchase it and the monstera has a very thick very extensive root system so if you should happen to stumble upon a plant that doesn't have that and when you knock off the pot it just falls apart then that's not the plant you want to buy because it should look like this you can see that the the root system has completely covered this small pot and there is almost no soil left because it's that comprehensive and it should look like this and there the root system should be white and there should be a combination of thick roots and small fine roots as well like as you can see here if it doesn't have that then maybe by the plant somewhere else or by another plant that has this nice thick root system also you can check the leaves because this is a plant that wants very high humidity in the air and if it doesn't get that or if it's a a poor quality plant you can have mechanical damage on the leaves now mechanical damage I don't have that on any of my plant areas I can't show you but what usually happens is that the tip of the leaves out on the leaf tip here it turns brown and it dries out so it's a it's very very dry and it just it crumbles when you touch it if it has that type of mechanical damage before you've even purchased the plant then choose another plant it should shouldn't have any of those damages but if you if it if it should get those damages at your home it's not a problem you can deal with it and we will take that up during the care of the plants a little bit later now this plant can't flower but you shouldn't look for any flowers on the plant when you buy it because I've been taking care of plants for over 20 years and I've never seen a monster inside that has flowered it's very very difficult to get it to flower it needs a certain amount of humidity and it needs to be a certain age to really flower and to reduce the fruits and sadly you probably will never get that at home so you can't look for it when you buy the plant you buy the plants for its green nice leaves and not for the flowers or the fruit because you will probably not get them and being said that it needs quite a it needs humidity and it seemed needs heat so it's quite sensitive to cold so when you buy this plant if you buy it in winter time or when you know that it's going to be very windy or cold outside make sure that you put some paper or plastic around it that you that you protect the plant so that that it doesn't get damaged when you drive home or when you take it home is it a warm hot summer day then it's not a problem but if it's in the winter time make sure to protect it moving on to when you get this plant to your home it's time to plant it in something now the monstera can it's not a fuzzy plant it doesn't need that much attention to do it you could keep it in this pot and just put it in an outside pot or a larger container if you don't like this how this looks but you have to think like this if you buy the monstera you usually buy it because you want to have these very big very lush leaves now to get those big lush leaves you need to make sure that the root system really thrives and think like this the bigger the root system the bigger the leaves the plant will produce so what I would do when I get this home is that I would replant this because as you can see it's been standing quite a long time in this small pot and the root system is literally trying to get out of the pot and when it looks like this I should I I would repot it and in a bigger container now the bigger a container the better because you want a big root system however if you put this small plant in a very very large container with a lot of soil in it there is a big chance that when you water it you will give it too much water because the soil would just suck up a lot of water and that will mean that it will push out all of the air for the roots so it could be too much water for the plant so my recommendation to you is to when you reap repot the monster idelicioso you should report it in a bigger pot and then report it again later on in a bigger pot and just add the size to the pot as the root system grows so that you can so that you don't you don't get any problems with the soil taking up too much water now even better is to of course plant this not in soil but in pumice now we have a video if you don't know what promise is we have a video call all you need to know about pomace where we show you how to use promise the right way and all the advantages this will give you but you could also plant this in a self watering system and we also have a video about that that tells you exactly what to do and that is perfect for the monstera because as I told you before it doesn't want much water if it gets too much water the roots will be damaged and they will start to decompose and the plant won't feel good at all and it will not grow and you will not get those big nice leaves so if you plant this in soil you need to have something in in in the pot that helps to drain the water from the soil it can be Laker marbles that you put in the bottom of the pot or it can be gravel or stones or something something that does that makes this soil drain it makes the water drain out of the soil and end up in the bottom of the pot without touching the roots so if you plant it in soil use some sort of soil that has good drainage or make the drainage yourself inside of the pot or use promise or a self watering system now moving on you have reported your monstera and given it every reason to thrive in your home and get a real thick nice root system now where to place it in your home this is a very easy to care for plant so it can be placed almost anywhere so best placement I think should be in a northern window now if you are in the northern hemisphere like we are in Sweden the worst placement is in a southern window where you get direct sunlight almost all of the day because direct sunlight will burn the leaves a little bit and it will give you problems with watering the plant because when it gets direct sunlight it it's not be it's it won't be able to absorb the water because a lot of the water is going to evaporate evaporates directly from the leaves so it sucks up water but it can't keep it in they can't use that water so the best placement is actually in a northern window where it gets a lot of light but no direct sunlight or you can place a little bit into the room so it gets a lot of light but not direct sunlight if you do this it's going to thrive it's going to grow it's a very very easy easy plant to grow what it also needs is a lot of humidity so and here in Sweden that is a big problem especially in wintertime because when it gets quite cold outside and the radiators go on and we have to heat our home what we're actually doing is that we are taking away a lot of the humidity in the air that the plant needs so if you can if you then shower this plant as often as you can you can just use some sort of a spray canister and maybe once a day or you can take it to the bathroom and put it in your bathtub and rinse it off occasionally to help it get that humidity it wants if you have a home that gets very very dry in winter time then maybe this is not the plant for you because what will happen is that it will get damaged by this low humidity and it can also happen if you are standing it in a windowsill directly underneath a radiator which also produces a lot of heat but dry heat what will happen is that a lot of the small leaves will start to die and you don't know why you've given it water you've done everything you can to make it thrive but small leaves is going to start to die and you can see that it's going to start to hang a little bit and the nice green lush color will start to lose its color it will fade a little bit and that is because it cannot keep the water inside of the plant it's going to evaporate straight out of this because these are big big leaves and there is a lot of water in these leaves and if the if the plant can't keep it inside its going start to evaporate so if you can then help the plant as much as you can by rinsing it with water or using a spray canister to just moisten the leaves with water exactly exactly now another thing to consider in the placement is that like I said before it doesn't like cold so if you have it on a windowsill and you know that in winter time you open that window quite a lot so you get a draft a cold draft that's not the place for this plant because it will get damaged and you will see it on the leaves straight away that it will become dull and perhaps even get really damaged and that will you will get like brown spots on the leaves everywhere on the leaves it will just look very tired and that will be because of that cold so if you have it on a windowsill where you know that you will open that window a lot during winter then move the plant during winter and then you can place it back during a spring summer and fall so protect it from cold climates now moving on to maybe the most important thing and that is how to care for this plant starting with the watering it's a very very easy to care for plants so it's not a lot of fuss but you have to consider this and that is that it doesn't want too much water if if the plant stands in water if the roots stand in water they will die so when you water this make sure that you get a lot of water to the soil that it sucks up a lot of water but then make sure that the access water goes out of the pot completely now you can do that by taking it to the bathtub and watering it there and let it rinse out or maybe in the sink in your kitchen that is an easy way to do if you have planted this in a closed container without any holes then you have to make sure that you have some form of drainage in the bottom so that you know that you have lakeya or maybe gravel in the bottom so that so that the roots will not stand in water but and how much water you have to give well that's completely depending on how big the plant is this plant will not need as much water as this plant obviously so it's it's difficult to say exactly how much but usually you have to water the monstera once a week during the summertime and maybe once every two weeks during wintertime so you have an approximation there but always check with your fingers because it need it wants to dry out a little bit in between waterings so just feel the soil when it gets dry or it gets a little bit cold and not wet then it's time to water again but if it's still wet don't water it and wait a couple of days until it dries out now if you wait too long which can happen sometimes if you going away some or something and you come back then you will notice that the smallest leaves these small ones are going to turn yellow and die and that usually means that you have waited a little bit too long before giving the water so feel the soil when it starts to get dry then you can water again now nutrients how often and how much do we have to give our monstera well it's not that dependent on nutrients but you want to give the most ERA nutrients to make it thrive and you do that I always recommend that you do that by adding nutrients to the water that you then give to the plant and always always follow the instructions on on the label of the nutrients that you use you don't have to look for specific Stara nutrients you can buy any type of nutrients from your local store but only give what they say on the box and here is why because when you add nutrients to the water what you're actually giving the plant is salt because the nutrients it's it's in salt form and always always give it to the plant when the plant is feeling good because of this because it is in salt form because if the plant is feeling bad it's never a good way to give it nutrients because if you add salt to the water and add that to the plant when it's not feeling good it's not going to be able to suck it up it's not going to use it it's only going to make it worse so we only give nutrients to a plant that is feeling good now if it's feeling really good then you can add nutrients you mix that with the water and it's that salt water is not going to be bad for the plants on the opposite it's going to suck up the nutrients and add that to make it grow even more and never ever add more nutrients than on the box because if you add more then you're adding even more salt to the water and that is never a good thing for the roots so always follow the instructions now if we have watered this to perfection we've given it nutrients it's going to start to grow and it's going to grow fiercely it can grow four or five up to ten leaves per season depending on how well you take care of it and that means it's going to be big so what do you do well you can cut it and you can cut it any time of year and I'm going to show you exactly how to cut it and buy ten leaves I mean per stem so if you have like ten stems in your pot and every stem produces maybe five six leaves per season it's going to be really big so you need to cut it now this plant here is a little bit too big for what we are going to use it for so I know I can cut this even if it's brand-new and we have one here a long long stem that I want to cut because I do not want to what I could be doing here is that I could help this by placing a bamboo stick here and make it go up instead but that's not what I want with this plant this plant I want to have a girth and I wanted it a state bushy and not grow straight up and be become tall so I need to prune it I need to cut it back now we have a stem here that is too too long this one here it's getting to be too big now first step is to choose which leaf is going to be the leaf that you keep and which leaves are going to be cut off now I want to keep this leaf here and I want to cut off these two leaves here now I'm doing that by using a sharer like this you can use a scissor doesn't it doesn't matter it needs to be sharp you can also use a knife if you have a short knife at home and you're going to cut it in between two leaves so we have the leaf I want to the leaf I want to keep is this one and the two leaves I want to cut off is this two and this is the leaf in between so here on this steel stem in between these two leaves I'm going to make the cut now I usually usually you make that cut in the middle in between but these this stem is quite long so I'm actually going to make the cut a little bit closer to the leaf I want to keep if it's a smaller stem here in between then just cut it in the middle but if it's long like this you can actually cut it a little bit closer to the leaf you want to keep now just cut it right off like this now what's going to happen here is that it's going to produce a new bud or a new stem and it's going to come from where the leaf meets the stem here and it's going to continue to grow and make new leaves like this but what I've done by cutting this is that I have kept this plant in a certain certain girth a certain bushy you can cut it as often as you want it doesn't harm the plant so you don't have to be scared by cutting this and we still have the big nice lush leaves on it it doesn't need to get even bigger than this now what do I do with this well you can do two things with this that you have cut off the first thing is that these leaves are fantastic and they're actually quite expensive in a flower shop if you want to buy it there together with cut flowers so if you cut these off never throw them away just use them you can cut them off from the stem like this then you put it in a vase like this now if you exchange the water in this vase every day these can stand up to four weeks before they start to decompose so start to become brown and you have to throw them away up to four weeks if you change the water regularly and this little piece here you can actually use now we cut it here and if I want to make a new monstera deliciosa from this little piece here I just cut the little bit of the stem that is left and then I place this in water now I have to have what you have to have this node where the leaf is meeting the stem one of those nodes you could have cut off many one of those has to be underwater so when I put this in water you have water down here and here is the water level and this is up in the air now it will start to produce new roots from where the stem meets the latest leaf here and one day the roots are approximately 10 centimeters long then you can repot this in soil very very easy now in your home you can get what a problem that we call mechanical damage as I said before the monstera needs high humidity and if it doesn't get that which K which often can happen in winter time inside it can get damaged and what usually happens is that the tips of the leaves here are going to get brown and really really dry so when when you touch that dry it will just crumble and fall off that is what we call mechanical damage now it comes from the plant unable to push the water all the way out to the tip here what happens to the water is that it evaporates before it reaches all the way out to the tip if you get that it's not a problem you can just take the brown and just with your fingers take it away or cut it off with a scissor like that and you to prevent this you can also help the plant by spraying it with water regularly preferably every day if you get the problems with mechanical damage on one of them on stairs start to start to spray the plant with water to help that mechanical damage to not come now when the plant is feeling well and it's starting to grow its going to produce something called air roots now we have them on this plant here it looks like this these are air roots they are not growing from the soil out of the pot they are actually growing from the stem and free hanging in the air like this now the plant uses these air roots to pick up akshay oxygen in the air and it needs them to thrive and be well but eventually when the plant gets to be quite old they are going to be a lot of them because they will produce new ones all the time so what can you do we usually we get the question can I cut off the air roots the best thing is always to leave them alone never do anything with them but there are two things you can do which doesn't harm the plant but it keeps it from growing quite as fiercely as it could and the first thing is that you could cut them off but when you cut off the air roots you only cut off one-third to maybe half of all the air roots on the plant and when you cut it off you cut it off all the way into the stem like this so I can actually show you here you can cut it off right here so and all of this would go away but only cut off one-third up to half the air roots at a time and then you have to wait a couple of years and then you can make a new cuts but always keep half or more now the second thing you can do is that you can lead the air roots down to the soil you could put this air roots on the soil and maybe even push it down into the soil a little bit what will happen is that this air root is going to be a combined air and root root so it's going to be both best of both worlds it's going to be a part of the root system but it's also going to be an air roots so you can lead it down into the soil but as I said when they get really a lot of them you're going to have to start and cut but never cut too many at a time now the last thing we're going to pick up during the care of the plants is of course tests now it's not often that you get pests on a monstera it rarely rarely happens but when it does is usually mites now mites are microscopically small very very small you won't see them with the naked eye you have to you have to enhance them to be able to see them so how do you know that they are on the plant well mites always attack the newest leaves first this is the latest leaves on this small plant here so that is the one that's going to be attacked first now this is the deserts for the mites this is the best part of the plant for them to start biting into and when you see that the newest leaf you can start seeing that something is wrong it's it's losing its shiny nice exterior it's starting to turn a little bit yellow in color then you might have a mites problem no pun intended and what do you do if you get that well you can go out and buy pesticide from your local store and just follow the instructions on the bottle make sure that the pesticide can take care of mites because not all pesticides can take care of mites so read on the bottles that you can take care of mites and then just follow the instructions and usually if you have gotten to that point where it's only the newest leaves that have been attacked by mites it's fairly easy to get rid of them they will die after one or two sprayings with this pesticide that you have bought but you can also do it yourself without pesticides what you do is that you take the plant you put it in your bathtub or you take it outside and just rinse it with water just rinse it off and you do that once a day for two weeks if you do that the mites will fall off and why you have to do it during two weeks is because when you rinse it all the mites on the plant is going to fall off but the eggs won't so the next day a couple of the eggs will hatch and start they will start to produce new mites and so on so when you go in day number two and rinse it the new mites will fall off and you will have a little bit less of eggs and day 3 etc but if you do that for two weeks you will get rid of all the mites on your plants now like I said in the beginning of the video the monstera deliciosa actually flowers and can produce a very nice fruit but you will probably never have that in your home because you don't have the humidity you don't have the light you don't have the circumstances that is needed for the plant to produce this now I have seen specimens inside of people homes that have gotten the flower and I've gotten the fruits but it's usually on a plant that is maybe 10 15 or 20 years old so don't buy this plant hoping to get it to flower because you probably won't get it to flower and also consider if you have cats at home that the leaves are a little bit toxic they are a little bit acidic which means that if a cat starts to nibble on it or if you should eat this leaf your stomach won't like it it's it's not it's not going to kill you but it it's a little bit toxic so if you have a cat this is not the plant for you okay everyone that is all you need to know about the monstera deliciosa if you like this video please don't hesitate to subscribe and hit that Bell as well so you know every time we put out a new video for you that's everything for today until next time haider

Channel: Swedish Plantguys

Views: 522,107

Keywords: Monstera, Deliciosa, care of, indoor plant, plantcare, monstera deliciosa, monstera, plant, indoor, planting, purchase plant, easy care plant, everything you need to know regardig monstera, All you need to know about

Id: 5eKWxUKfBOY

Length: 35min 28sec (2128 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019