All you need to know about Sansevieria Snake Plant

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to swedish plant guys today we're going to give you all you need to know about the san severia more commonly known as the snake plant or as we say here in swedish svelmos tunga or mother-in-law's tongue now when i was studying at the university a long time ago we actually called these plants san severia trifasciota that was the full scientific name but i know that that is not the case anymore because you have different names in different countries and it's not that easy however in this video we will only say sansevieria or snake plant and you will know that it includes all different kinds of san severias so no matter what type you have at home all of this is going to work for you now as usual we will divide this up into four parts you have the purchase the planting the placement and the care of the plant and we'll put time stamps in this description below so you can skip forward if you want to however we always recommend you to watch the entire video to get a complete coverage on how to care for this plant now if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet please do hit that bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new and we really really like it if you give it a thumbs up after you watch the video it really helps us a lot and also please follow us on facebook and instagram so you can get small clues to what we're going to be making videos of in the future so please follow us there so starting off with the purchase now when you go out to buy a sansevieria there are a lot of them uh it's difficult to find exactly how many subspecies of this plant there is but there are in between 50 and 70 different varieties now i have four varieties with me here and those are the varieties that we use most commonly and it's also the ones that i think are easiest to get a hold of in the world so you can probably get a hold of these four different types in your country or where you are now starting off we have to start with the sansevieria laurentii now that is the most commonly used one and that is the one that most people know about and they are very distinctive with these yellowing lines at the edges of the plant and this is the lorentai and then we have the complete green variety that is called the salonica salonica looks like this and it has also has a variegated form but it doesn't have the yellow in it it has these very very nice dark and dark and light green spots then we have my personal favorite which is the kirkai and the kierkai actually looks quite different it has smaller leaves and it looks a little bit more bushy to the look but is it is a sensitive area and it's you take care of it in exactly the same way now the last variety we have here today is the one we call baccoloris san severia baccoloris it's usually also called mikodo as well this is these have leaves that are almost cylindrical in shape so it has quite a different look from some of the other san siverias and this was extremely popular a couple of years ago since it was very popular to have that minimalistic look in your home and those straight clean edges as well which the baccoloris really really has and they these can be arranged in different forms as well so they can be standing straight up all of them or they could be tilted a little bit when they are planted so it could have a different shape but no matter which type you're going to be using you can apply everything in this video to your sansevieria now when you go out to buy a sansevieria the quality or price is not that important some plants you need to have a high quality plant to start off with otherwise you are already behind when you get home however the sunset area is not one of those so you could buy the cheapest plant you can find and still be able to make it work perfectly however what i want you to look for when you go out and buy a sun severia is to look at the plant overall look at the leaves for instance to make sure that they do not have any burnt edges any black spots on them black spots is an indicator of a fungus or bacteria or root rot so you do not want that so make sure that the plant looks fine another thing is that the all of the sensitive areas have quite thick cuticles now the cuticle is that waxy surface on top of the leaf they should be quite heavy quite strong quite waxy because if the plant doesn't that could be an indication that it's lacking something and then you don't want to buy that plant so it should have that thick nice cuticle on them another thing is also check the plant to see that it has some new shoots that is always a good sign that you have small babies coming out from the soil now normally we always recommend you to knock off the pot in the store to check out the roots of your sansevieria or your plant however we do not recommend you to do that with asan severia the reason being that younger plants actually have quite a slow growing root system and you and they could have been repotted quite recently which would mean that when you knock off the pot here it could just crumble and you will be standing there like a fool with a lot of baby sansevierias in your hand so do not do that if you see that the plant looks fine it looks to be okay then the roots should be fine as well but i'm going to actually knock off this just to show you what the roots can look like if i can get it out it could look like this now if it looks like this then you have a high quality sensitive sansevieria you have a lot of roots it has been standing in this nursery container for quite some time so you have roots all around it but that is not always the case so it could be it could have been that when i knocked this off it just falls apart but if it looks like this it's actually a very good quality sensitive area now another tip for you is to take a look at the plant to see that it has as many shoots as possible in the pot now these i i'm guessing that this has been maybe two or three plants that have been planted together and then some of them has started to shoot up some shoots here in between so if you can get a plant that has the highest amount of starters or shoots from coming out of the soil then you have a better plant or you have a fuller plant to begin with so choose the one that has the most amount of leaves the most compact looking plant that you can find now it is a flowering plant the sansevieria does flower however when you are buying a sunset area i wouldn't recommend you to choose one that is flowering because our experience is that when a sansevieria flowers it actually draws out quite a lot of nutrients from the plant so that could mean that when you get home you have a plant that is a little bit nutrient deprived so i would choose the one that is not flowering over the one that is flowering and the flowers are not that beautiful so you're not buying this plant for the flowers you're buying it for the leaves and for the entire look of this plant now one thing that can be quite common when you're out buying in san severia is that some of the sansevierias can actually look a little bit faded in color and that usually means that that are the individuals that has been standing in the greenhouse where it gets quite a lot of sunlight quite a lot of light now what happens then is that the waxy surface or the cuticles actually start to break down a little bit so that they are not as hard and when that happens you see that the whole plant looks a little bit faded so if you have 10 different plants to choose from choose the one that has the brightest color and the thickest cuticle on them now if all of them look a little bit faded it's not a problem it won't die on you but if you have an option then choose the one that has the brightest color and the thickest cuticle this waxy surface now lastly but not least is that when you are going to transport the plant to your home it's usually not a problem because this is a plant that can handle almost anything and by almost i mean it can handle everything but extremely cold weather now the sun severio doesn't like it when the weather goes or the temperature goes below 10 degrees celsius or 50 degrees fahrenheit it can get damaged but it will not get damaged by 10 degrees celsius for a little while as when you are transporting it home however if you have a very very cold weather with temperatures below zero degrees celsius where it's freezing cold then i recommend you to tell the shop that they should wrap it in something in plastic or in paper something to just protect that extreme cold from the plant otherwise it's not a problem it's a very easy easy plant to transport home moving on to planting now when you get your sansevieria home we do not recommend you to repot it immediately some plants actually like that and needs that but not the sensitive area and one of the reasons is as i told you before that the root system grows quite slowly so what could happen when you get home and you pull it out of the nursery container it could start to fall apart and then you have a problem trying to repot it and having it standing straight in that pot so what we recommend you to do is leave it in the nursery container that you bought it for at least a couple of months maybe up to a year before you repot it now the sansevieria actually likes to be a little bit root bound by that i mean it likes to have roots in the entire container bulging a little bit around the corners of the container as well that's fine it actually likes that so it's not a problem that you're waiting for repotting it but when you do repot it when you think it's time it could be that the pot is starting to bulge a little bit or you can see that the roots are trying to escape from the pot then you should repot it when you do that you repot it in a little bit bigger container now this actually grows faster the bigger container you have it grows faster the leaves become longer however if you could if you should take this and repot it in a big container straight away what would happen is that all of that soil would be moist for a very long time and the roots will not like that they want it to dry out and dry out quite quickly in between the waterings so by just making the repot a little bit bigger and then waiting a couple of months or a couple of years then making it a little bit bigger again what you're actually doing is that you're helping the roots to stay dry for long periods of times but the bigger pot you actually come you you eventually will be putting this in the longer the leaves will become the bigger and thicker they will be as well but you can't do it straight away because then you could have a problem with the roots one of the reasons for it being bigger when you have a bigger pot is that it actually grows it it grows from each plant we have one plant here that i'm holding right now it will grow new shoots and become a little bit thicker and new newer newer shoots from that point but it will also send out root stems or rhizomes and i think we could see one here as well we have one here this is a root stem here and this will actually start to send out this baby here is probably sent out from that root stem so when you add to the bigger container what's going to happen is those root stems are going to send out small new baby shoots and you will get a fuller plant that is why you get a bigger better fuller plant in a bigger container now there is a big advantage using for instance a terracotta pot or a ceramic pot when planting a sansevieria now the reason for that is that a terracotta pot actually breathes which will help the soil to evaporate a lot of the water so that it becomes drier quickly more quick more quickly um but it's not a problem to use a pot that is glazed or is of plastic or something but it isn't a small advantage using terracotta or some form of ceramics no matter which type of pot you use we always recommend you to have holes in the bottom we usually keep it in a nursery container like this the plastic nursery container and then put that in an outer pot because when you have that holes those holes in the bottom that helps with the drainage and you can also pull the pot the the nursery container out look inside the outer pot and see oh here is water standing in the bottom pour that out and put it back again and you know that you haven't over watered your sansevieria which is a big problem for this plant so we always recommend you to have holes in the bottom no matter which type of pot you use now it does work perfectly in a self-watering container as well now i know that a lot of people are scared to put plants that we say wants to dry out completely in a self-watering container because the self-watering container the idea is that it always has access to water and here is what you do if you put a sun severia in a self-watering system what you need to do because it usually looks like this this is a store-bought self-watering system it looks like this you have the inside container like this where you plant your plant in it and it has nylon ropes that is going to pull the water up to the roots and you have the outer container where you have the water reservoir down here now this is extremely important because if you plant your plant in a soil that can absorb a lot of water and by that i mean normal planting soil that you can buy almost anywhere it usually has the capability to absorb a lot of water what will happen in a self-watering system is that it will have that soil will have access to water all the time because you have water in the water reservoir the nylon ropes constantly pulls up that water and that soil will be extremely moist that would not work for a sunseveria it would die quite quickly it could die in just two weeks so what you do is that you make sure that you have a soil inside of your self-watering container that has really really good drainage so that all of that excess water is going to fall out in the holes in the bottom down to the water reservoir but you will have a small amount of water or the soil will be just lightly lightly wet all the time that works for essential area so make sure that the soil you plant in has extremely good drainage then it will work fine in that system now of course i have to mention as i usually do you can also plant this in pumice we use a pumice that has just a little bit of clay mixed into that but it's almost completely promise and that works perfectly because promise has the ability to hold water and air at the same time so the pumas will never be too moist for the sansevieria all of that excess water when you have water will fall through and end up in the bottom of the pot and if you have holes in the bottom you can just throw away that excess water so pumice also works perfectly for the sansevieria moving on to the placement where should you put your sansevieria in your home it could basically be placed anywhere in your home and by that i really mean anywhere the only place that we wouldn't recommend you to put it in is somewhere where it gets direct sunlight all day so up here in sweden in the northern hemisphere that means you shouldn't put it in a southern facing window where you get a lot of sunlight it will survive that spot it will survive however all of that burning sun all day long will start to hammer on those that cuticle that protective waxy covering on the leaves it will be thinner and eventually you will see that the whole plant will start to get pale it will start to lose its color it's still alive but it's not looking like you want it to look it looks pale it looks sad so but otherwise you can place it anywhere you could also place this plant inside of a room where you get almost or a little light that works as well the big difference is the more light you give this plant the more it will grow and the better it will feel but you could place it anywhere a northern facing window for us here in sweden is perfect because you get a lot of indirect sunlight no direct sunlight uh and that works perfectly for this plant but you could place it almost anywhere now one one place i could recommend you to put this plant is actually in the bedroom now the reason for that is that this plant is actually active during the night it absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen at night so when you are in the bedroom at night it's actually working for you so that is a good placement for this plant and also this is one of the best air purifiers there is now all plants have some form of air purification properties now what we're usually talking about is that they rid the air of something we called voc or volatile organic compounds like formaldehyde benzene like the exhausts from cars and so on but the san severia is a high performer by this so also by putting it in the bedroom also helps that air purification inside of your home as well now like i said before the lighter you put this plant the better there is a big misconception about this plant that it should be placed where there is little to none light and that is wrong this plant can withstand darker places however what our experience is that if you place it somewhere inside of your home where it doesn't get much light it will not grow almost not grow at all or if it grows it grows very very slowly and over a long period of time let's say five six seven years it will slowly start to decay and you will see that after a couple of years it doesn't look like it should anymore it looks pale it looks old and it just not working anymore and that is because of the lack of light so this is actually a plant that loves light it wants to be placed where you have a lot of indirect sunlight if you wanted to grow big if you wanted to grow as fast as possible if you wanted to be as full as possible give it a lot of light but you can place it darker because it can withstand a darker spot but it will not like it as much as a light spot the sunset area is a plant that is not that picky concerning humidity it actually it doesn't care that much it doesn't care if you live in a country where you have high humidity or like here in sweden in wintertime where we have very low humidity indoors in the winter time it really doesn't matter however if you want to be picky of course if you have a higher humidity it will grow a little bit faster and if you have low humidity it will take a little bit longer for it to grow but it really doesn't matter the only thing to maybe watch out for is drafts if you have it somewhere in the winter when you have cold drafts it could react to that so just move it from that specif specific windowsill where you're opening opening and closing the window otherwise you don't have a problem with this it's really really tough and actually likes all different kinds of environments so you might think what about my radiators underneath the windowsill will that be a problem usually not it is very very tough so it will withstand the heat and the lower humidity in wintertime that you get from that radiator it's usually not a problem but if you should see that the plant is reacting to that warmth or that low humidity then just move it but usually it's not a problem you don't have to worry about it that is one of the greatest things about this plant it is so tough to different forms of environmental changes so it will work perfectly on that windowsill so moving on to the care of this plant now that is really really easy uh now the san severia is a succulent or you could call it a semi-succulent because it doesn't really work exactly like most succulents but it does keep water inside of the leaves it stores water in the leaves now what that means to you when you're going to take care of this plant it's a warning signal and the warning signal is this plant stores water because it's able to withstand drought that means for you that you should never ever give this plant too much water now usually we say about a lot of different types of plants that you should let it dry out in between watering that is something you hear over and over again but this is the one of the plants that you really need to listen to because this needs to be bone dry before you water it again bone dry as you can see on this here now a lot of the plants we have here with us we water it every week because it wants to be wants to have a little bit of water at least the sunset area we only water it maybe once a month sometimes twice a month because you want it to be completely dry before you water it again that is extremely important because what happens if you give it too much water or if the soil is wet for a longer period of time what could happen is that you could get something we call black spots now those black spots could arrive in the middle of the leaves it could arrive at the edges or the tips of the leaves now when they do you know that you have a fungal or a bacterial problem which comes from you watering the plant too much or it's or it has been standing in water something that this plant really really doesn't like now what you do if you get those black spots is that first of all you cut away the leaves that have the black spots completely just cut it off all the way down to the soil level and take it away don't put it in the compost because that fungi or bacteria could actually spread to something else take it away and take it away from the house completely but cut that off and you will probably be fine next thing you do is that you let that plant dry out so that it's so bone dry that you can almost see the leaves starting to wilter a little bit then you water it again and probably you've just saved that plant because that fungus those black spots could spread to the entire plant and then the plant will die another thing that can happen is that you can get root rot now that usually happens if you have a con nursery container like this in an outside container that is closed you water your plant it goes through it ends up in the bottom and the plant is standing in water you will get root rot now on a sunset area what will happen is that some of the leaves will just start to be wet and mushy when you feel the leaf like this it's it's uh soft and wet and it can actually start to smell a little bit and it's not a nice odor if that happens you probably have root rot or you have water too much so you have something else what you do then is that you take those leaves that are mushy and wet you pull them out and you pull out the entire root system for that leaf so just pull out the entire so if i have a i have a small plant here that has only two leaves on it if one of those leaves started to become a little bit mushy or wet then i would pull out the entire plant there just pull that out with the roots as well if you do that then you let it dry out really really hard before you water it again you have probably saved it because it's not it's very common that that root rot hasn't spread to the other plants so you could save the plant if you leave that just letting it stand there and wilter and and just be that mushy then it will start to affect the whole plant now one thing we try to do at least maybe once a month is just take a microfiber cloth used for cleaning soak that in water and rinse off the leaves just take that and and dry off the leaves not not dry off the leaf but wipe off the leaves yeah you're white you don't dry the leaves with something wet you wipe off the leaves like this uh and you do this because you get you could get a lot of dust on the leaves you can get there could be bacteria or other things that has been on the leaves you could have a starting of a pest problem or something by wiping it off and keeping that cuticle that waxy surface as clean as possible you're actually helping the plant becoming more healthy and becoming more resistant to problems so just wipe the leaves off once a month or every time you just think of it just do it and you will help the leaf that he'll help the plant a lot after a while your plant will if it's healthy and it's it will start to grow and it will become bigger and bigger you will repot it and soon enough it is so big that you can't really handle that you don't know where to put it you don't know what to do you could prune this plant now i have one here that i actually want to prune a little bit because i want this plant to have that straight look and as you see here i have one that is actually starting to well it it doesn't look as nice as the other ones so i actually don't want that in this pot so i could prune this and what i do then is that i take the entire leaf or the entire small baby plant here off you cut it off at the bottom of the of the at the soil level here and take that away you could prune a sansevieria by cutting the leaf we have one here that i'm going to show you that has been cut in the greenhouse right here but if you do that what actually happens is that when that scar starts to heal you will get some brown spots or like it looks almost looks like burnt edges on that so it will never be as nice as the leaves that are not cut so you could do that you won't harm the plant but it will not look that nice so what we do is that we usually cut away the entire leaf so if you need to prune prune it back all the way down to soil level otherwise it will not look as good as i said in the beginning this is a very easy plant to care for the only one of the biggest things that you need to consider all the time is that you never give too much water let it dry out and then you're fine another thing is fertilizing this plant this plant actually doesn't want you to fertilize it very often or with a lot of nutrients what usually is enough is to give it some fertilizer when you water it so mix it up with the water you're watering with and usually two to three times a year and we give fertilizer when the plant has its active periods so here in sweden we have an active period where we have a lot of light and high temperatures from around march to october so during that period of time two to three times when you water it you add fertilizer and you just use a complete coverage full fertilizing that you can buy almost anywhere it doesn't need to be a specific type of fertilizer we always recommend you to use an organic fertilizer if you can but they are often quite expensive so if you can't then use whatever you can get a hold of and when you give that fertilizer make sure that you give exactly what it says on the box never add more to the water because it could actually harm your sansevieria it is better that you dilute it a little bit more with more water than it says on the box than the other way around because it can hurt the plant now you will see that on the plant if it has too much nutrients or if you're giving too much fertilizer the roots actually react to all of that salt because when you add fertilizer it is in salt form and when the roots get too much salt down here they react and you will see that the leaves will start to look they will get burn marks on them it can be burn marks on on the middle of a leaf it can be on the edges of the leaf which is the most commonly or it can be also at the tips the tips can start to be brown and become just dried out that can be an indication of either too much sunlight but if you don't have it in direct sunlight it could be that you have given too much fertilizer so make sure that you only give it a couple of times a year and that you don't give too much when you give it and then you will be fine it doesn't need more than that lastly you have pests which can always be a problem in your house however the sansevieria is extremely tough and very very rarely get pests and the reason for that is that they have that extremely thick cuticle that waxy surface on the leaves because the pests and most of the pests we have indoors are pests that wants to bite into the plant and suck out the nutrients but if that cuticle is so thick that the pests can't get through it that means that you have a plant that will almost never get pests and this is one of those plants it will it has an extreme ability to avoid getting pests but if you get pests it's usually mealybugs because they are a little bit they're one of the biggest pests we get indoors and they can bite quite hard as well and and also in rare occasions we have had some mites spider mites on our sansevierias but you usually get that if your plant is not feeling well if it for instance had gotten a lot of direct sunlight and had has damaged the cuticle a little bit that waxy surface is a little bit not as strong than you could get pests so usually when you get pests it's because the plant is not feeling well so if you get that you know okay it's not feeling well and what you do if you get mealy bugs on a sensitive area if you see it in an early stage you could just remove them with your fingers but i always recommend you to go out if you see any type of pests on it go out and buy a pesticide or use and follow the instructions on that pesticide to get rid of those pests or you can use a green soap and water mix and just spray that on the plant that usually works and then after you've gotten rid of the pla of the pests you have to check the plant to see why it's not feeling good and usually when it's a sunset area it's because you have yes you guessed it you've watered too much that is the 99 times out of 100 if you have a problem with your sansevieria it's because of the watering uh but usually most of you will never have pests on this plant it is extremely tough just make sure to keep it happy and you won't get that problem now like i said before these most of the sansevierias flower but we do not buy it for the flower reason for that is that when it flowers it sends out a small stalk here from one of the plants small plants a small small stock it that is quite narrow and on that stock you have small clusters of very very small greenish off-white flowers it doesn't look that good it's not a flower that you particularly think is beautiful and we usually cut away the flower when we see one and it's because of two things first of all it's not that beautiful and secondly that flower starts to let out a sticky liquid it's almost like glue and if you get that on you or on on your drapes or on your window it's sticky and you don't want that and also another thing is that we cut it away because our experience of taking care of sanseviers for over 20 years is that when you let it flower and it eventually actually gets a small berry that is orange reddish uh it has sucked up so much nutrients from the plant that you can see that the plant is deprived of nutrients it's not feeling as well anymore as it did before the flower so since it's not beautiful since you have that sticky liquid on the flowers as well we cut it off and the plant is fine it doesn't hurt the plant to cut off the flower either so it's okay to do it could just cut it off all the way down to soil level and take it away now the last thing in this video is of course is this plant poisonous it is mildly poisonous which means that as almost all types of tropical plants you shouldn't eat it but who eats their plants really so that is not a problem and it's not toxic when you repot it it's not toxic when you touch the leaves you should just never eat the plant if you eat it you could get problems with your stomach there are some rare occasions where it can trigger an allergy reaction to people but my advice is just keep it away from small children that are usually tries and bites on everything or tries to bite on it and pets as well because it is mildly poisonous to pets as well so make sure that your cat or dog doesn't reach it and that your small children doesn't cannot get a hold of it and bite into it then it's not a problem you can just enjoy your sensitive areas and keep them healthy and lush now that was all for this video thank you for watching if you like this video please give it a thumbs up that really helps this channel a lot if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet please do hit that bell of course you get a notification every time we put up something new follow us on instagram and facebook so that you get small sneak previews on upcoming videos as well and please share with your friends now until next time i don't

Channel: Swedish Plantguys

Views: 181,777

Rating: 4.952076 out of 5

Keywords: Sansevieria trifasciata, trifasciata, Laurentii, Zeylanica, Bacularis, care of, plant, swedish, guys, Sansevieria Snake Plant, Sansevieria, care of the plant, placement, purchase, taking care of, injured, leaves, on the, Mother in law’s tongue, Mother in-laws tongue, svärmors tunga

Id: Vw_rZBhlVy0

Length: 43min 52sec (2632 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020