An In-Depth Guide to Philodendron Care

hello everybody glad you could make it my name is Kaylee Allen and welcome to an in-depth guide to philodendron care so the care tips in this video are not specific to one particular philodendron you can actually apply these tips to well any philodendron philodendron are probably my second favorite genus of plants due to the fact that they're relatively easy to care for and they're pretty tolerant of low light as well I think I like philodendron specifically so much because they really do come in all shapes and sizes for example you have longleaf philodendron such as the billet I hear you have various the forms of big heart-shaped leaved philodendron they're really cool as well so some hostas Arnim plow money.i all of those kinds of things you then have all kinds of philodendron swith interesting shaped leaves for example the florida ghost that's like my favorite plant ever i think but generally you can find whatever kind of thing that you like that suits you in the philodendron family so I do think they're plants that are definitely worth to have in your collection so I'm going to cover this video in sections and I'm going to timestamp the sections here of what I'm going to talk about so if you don't want to watch a particular part of the video you can just skip it to the part that you feel is most relevant to you so the first topic I'm going to cover is watering now believe it or not watering actually took me a little while to get right it's actually the reason that this video has been delayed for so long I know you guys have asked for it for so long but it is the reason it has been delayed for so long and that is because I previously watered my philodendron in the same way that I would water my Alocasia so when I water my allocation for example I actually completely flush them through with water now in my experience I've found that philodendron just don't seem to take too kindly to that so people ask me you know how many times a week do you water your plants and they are never happy with the answer I give them because my answer is always you know it depends and that is because plants should be watered when they need watered so plants shouldn't really be watered on a set you know day of the week plants don't work like that water consumption in plants actually varies quite a lot depending on your conditions in your home of just the general weather it can depend on a lot of things for example if a plant is pushing out a new leaf water consumption will go up if it's a much hotter day than usual water consumption will probably go up and in addition to that the water that's in soil will probably evaporate much faster so you'll actually lose additional water from your plant if humidity is generally a little bit too low water consumption will also increase and of course if you move the plant and you boost it you know into more light effectively then it's probably going to consume more water so you need to be prepared for that conversely of course in winter you know plants don't necessarily need as much water because they're just not getting as much light so they can't basically process what they're being given so it's usually the reason why a lot of plants get over watered in winter because people are still watering them the same amount than what they would in the summer months and they haven't kind of dialed up back and adjusted that for the winter months so you probably by now thinking oh my gosh ok like when is it good to water them I have no idea now and the answer and my answer to this and this works across all of my plans it's something that I absolutely swear by if you watch my videos all the time you probably know what I'm about to recommend but it is one of these this is a moisture probe so what you do is you stick this probe into your soil and it will actually measure the moisture level in the soil I think I said this in a clear video quite a long time ago now we don't know what moist is a lot of people have different interpretations of moist and a lot of plants need to be kept moist for example so this meter will tell you what moist actually is and when your plants need watering now this probe here it doesn't take batteries it is super super cheap on Amazon by the way it's less than ten dollars I think it's about like maybe seven British pounds something like that but you just you need to pick one up mine is actually a three way meter you don't need it it measures like pH and moisture but honestly I just use the moisture I don't use it for anything else so you stick this meter into the soil where the root ball is and it will read out a number on this particular dial I have one being you know the driest and then we have ten being the wettest now then so after some trial and error I actually figured out the number that most philodendron require you know to reach on this meter before they need watering and that number is number three now this number happens to be the same number as my Alocasia need watering on any allocation doesn't matter they reach a three water them same thing with philodendron only the watering style as i may have mentioned before is different so with an allocation I flush them through with the philodendron I don't I actually take my watering can I go in circles around the soil surface and I just fill you know I water the soil until it feels like you know what that would hit the bottom does that make any sense like I'm not flushing it through I'm not necessarily waiting to see loads of water run from the bottom I may be waiting to see a couple of drops drip from the bottom of the pot or whatever you know it's a tin I don't completely flush these through and I've found that my philodendron are much happier doing it that way if I've ever flushed them through I get yellow leaves because I've over watered them and they're just not happy so I do recommend buying one of these waiting until the number three hits on this dial then water it as with watering anything obviously if you water and then you go away and then you come back if your nursery pot is sat in a decorative pot do check and make sure that there's no excess water in the bottom of the pot if there is remove that and put it back just so that your plant is not sat in excess water because that's really going to affect the philodendron and you will probably get root rot and you'll probably lose your plant so make sure that you do check for excess water in terms of the type of water to use I use filtered water rain water is also good but one thing most most do no matter what the type of water is give plant you know doesn't have to be lukewarm water but not cold water either because cold water if it hits the root system can actually shock the plant and this goes for any plant by the way and that the plant can go into shock and basically drop leaves so you need to be super super careful about the temperature of the water you're giving it lukewarm would be ideal you know room temperature kind of temperature is quite fine cool water is fine just make sure you don't have you know ice-cold water or you may say some really nasty side effects moving on to light so as most of you may or may not know philodendron are actually known for being pretty low light tolerant and that is true but I mean as with any plant if you give it a little bit more you know the water can tolerate it's obviously going to thrive so if you can give the plant a medium light situation then of course feel free to do so because you will really see the benefits in the growth and the overall kind of perkiness of the plant I guess if you move it into better light generally with light bright indirect light is pretty good don't put your plant anywhere that you couldn't comfortably read a book in without having to turn on any kind of lamp or anything like that that's probably what is best for a philodendron as I say they can take lower light but if you can boost the light honestly you will see the effects pretty quickly if you see your philodendron getting a little bit on the leggy side or just not growing at all this is probably due to not enough light I've never had issues with leggy philodendron but I've 100% certainly had issues with fela dendron that literally don't grow I have fella dendron since I've moved to this new place that have started growing like wildfire and in my last place they just didn't grow at all and that's clearly because they didn't get enough light they had enough light to sustain themselves but they literally like they weren't growing they were just frozen in time so if you see that happening I would bump the light I think that's the first thing you should try and do humidity and temperature I'm gonna start off with temperature because it's the quickest but for temperature for your plans generally speaking keep the warm 24 25 degrees is nice you'll probably see huge growth spurts in about perhaps 27 28 degrees providing it is humid like I've had summer weekends here where the humidity has been up and the temperatures gone up and the plants have I swear to god they've grown an inch and weekend so bear that in mind when you're taking care of your plants now I'm not suggesting to put them on heat maps or anything like that but if you can keep them out of the cool that will certainly help them grow a little bit better and they should probably thrive a little bit more because at the end of the day they are tropical plants so as such they do need you know tropical temperatures so in terms of humidity I would honestly say do not give your philodendron any philodendron less than 40 percent humidity now in my home I actually class 50% humidity is kind of like a DEFCON level if you don't know what that means it's basically like my minimum level that I will accept my humidity to be at otherwise it's not good I'm going to start panicking honestly though for philodendron I would say 40 but really they're not gonna thrive in 40 so they will accept 40 and be okay but to get them thriving really I would say the 60% range 50 is absolutely fine but I find 60% to be honest generally for all my houseplants is pretty good sweet spot so you might be thinking well how do I know how humid it is and the answer again I'm going to recommend a product is to buy one of these again very very inexpensive on Amazon I believe this may have been about 10 British pounds I think but it is basically a hygrometer which is a humidity you know meter mixed with a thermometer so I can see the lowest it's been in here the highest it's been in here that goes from humidity and temperature I can see right now the humidity is it's probably not 66 I think that's because I'm near it right now call it 60 65 % in this room and it is twenty six we'll call it degrees in here so it's pretty darn warm also I'm site on delight so that's probably boosting the temperature a little bit but I have one of those meters in pretty much every room of the house sometimes I have more than one meter in the room like I'll have a meter over there I have a meter over there I'll just kind of spread them out so I can get a gauge of how humid the house is if you want tips on how to boost you know the humidity for your plans I will do a dedicated video on it but for now I'm just going to recommend a good humidifier there are many good different types of humidifiers out there I will link below the one that I use mine has a very very big tank it has like a 360-degree nozzle so you can have mist going in different directions from the same unit which is really good so I do recommend that product because I have about three of them in my house and they just kind of set humidity for an entire room rather than a local area of plants but if not there are plenty of options on Amazon so many affordable options and some of them look really cool by the way so you can have quite a lot of fun shopping for a humidifier look at the reviews you know find one that works for you but I can massively massively recommend a humidifier for your plants a quick note on different types of philodendron and different humidity levels so I have found that one or two philodendron do require a little bit more humidity than others and that's not to say that without the extra humidity they will die or anything it's just I don't know they just don't seem to grow quite as quickly for example a lot of my big heart philodendron right now I'm thinking about my philodendron mcdowell even glory awesome though if there is not enough humidity a lot of the times the leaves that are you know spiraling out they will not fill very quickly it'll take a very long time for them to unfurl so if you find that happening and you find that you are having new leaves on certain plants and they just aren't unfurling very quickly try boosting the humidity and I think you will find that they will open much quicker so with feeding I actually feed my philodendron maybe once or twice a month just depending I do not feed them at all in the winter because honestly philodendron well a lot of plants generally go pretty dormant in winter so they do not want to be sat in any additional chemicals so in winter please skip your fertilizing if it's winter right now put that fertilizer away don't pick it out till spring you don't need it right now in terms of any liquid fertilizer that you're going to use please please please is half the recommended strength of that fertilizer because certain plants just do not like being fertilized even though it is the recommended dose so the best way to combat that is do half whatever the supply or whatever the manufacturer recommends because honestly you can always add more in two weeks if you feel that it wasn't enough or you haven't seen any change in your plant so less is more okay please remember that less is more because if you all will fertilize pretty much any plant you can do a lot of damage to the root you can pretty much burn the root so please be very very careful with your fertilizer a quick note and this is an unusual one on particularly hanging philodendron I've noticed if I fertilize my hanging philodendron I found that the plant will get generally a good growth spurt but it will actually grow a lot of small leaves like the leaves just aren't as big as what they would usually be it's just something that I've noticed so what I actually recommend to do on hanging philodendron if that kind of thing bothers you is to actually go down to a quarter of the strength and not half strength just to give the plant a little bit of a boost but not to promote these you know loads of these tiny little leaves because we want the biggest hearts possible repotting and soil so first of all repotting so how do you know when you should be reporting your philodendron and i guess this goes for all plants not just philodendron but generally speaking if you are watering your plant and you know you come back a couple of days later and it's bone-dry and usually you know on average your plan takes five days to get dry now it's taking about two or three you know there's an issue there I would honestly check the roots first because I would assume at that point it's probably rebound don't rely on checking the bottom of your pots for roots poking through that honestly I used to use that method of checking and it doesn't work I've had so many plants where the roots have just spiraled around the sides and nothing has come out of the bottom you know don't use that method to check do check the roots thoroughly yourself because if you're looking for a little root to come out at the bottom it may not happen and you may be sat with a root bound plant for longer than is really necessary and if you want to get good growth out of your plant obviously you need to keep on top of repotting and make sure that that stays in check in terms of a good philodendron mix I do use to be honest I use the same mix for most of my IDEs I just maybe slightly adjust the ratios of the things that I'm putting in I can do a proper dedicated video on our I'd mix I know a few of you guys have actually asked for that so I'm totally prepared to do that just let me know in the comments and I will kind of go into detail generally speaking I use a mix of what do I use perlite orchid bark a natural fertilizer and coconut husk and I will mix that up into like a big bowl and use that for my plants if you're still not sure just go ahead and google a you know a good air I'd mix and a good mix will probably pop up so the last thing I want to cover today are really some suggestions on philodendron that you might want to try out these are reasonably easy now it could quite easily go into a full-blown video on this so if you'd like to see a video on you know easy philodendron then I would be happy to make that for you please leave a request in the comments and I will be sure to read that but I'm now going to cover some reasonably easy philodendron across different types of philodendron if that makes any sense which it will in a minute so my recommendation generally if you just want to get your philodendron care down honestly it is the same thing I recommend it in my allocation care video and that is to simply just get a philodendron that is easily replaceable so maybe a philodendron Imperial green or filled under Imperial red or something like that perhaps may be some sort of Congo not a pink one anything that you can replace if something goes wrong but I don't want to recommend anything exotic if you've never owned a philodendron before I would rather you went out and you bought something that was easy and got the care down for that got the watering down and then moved on to other things so I'm gonna break down very quickly some different types of philodendron so the first types of philodendron that I can think of are hanging philodendron for that I recommend of course the wonderful scandens and in addition to that the mic ins I do find that the care for those generally it's exactly the same what I mean by that is there is easy as each other it's really not an issue if you want to own either the care is just the same so if you own a scandens and you really want to make ins go for it for more bright colored philodendron I recommend the philodendron prince of orange is a very nice one the philodendron moonlight is a very very bright one and also the Painted Lady is a nice one as well those three are kind of non a neon side but they're very very colourful if you're looking for a more colourful kind of philodendron then they could be nice ones for that again okay reasonably easy not a problem big hard philodendron is the philodendron so multi people crave I'm going to only really recommend one for now because I found it's the toughest and that is the philodendron mcdowell that is a really really good one now glory awesome isn't too bad but it is a little bit harder pastures Arnhem is OK I think in terms of general hardiness the hardiest heart leaf you know big exotic heart philodendron I found so far is definitely the McDowell so for unusual shape leaves you could go with a philodendron Florida coast those are my favorite plants honestly I have two I won't get rid of I that I love them so much if you love super super hairy stems then the easiest philodendron I have found so far for that is the philodendron Serpent's mind you those stems are really really hairy not just a little bit of fluff they are full-on hairy so if that puts you off maybe don't go for that but if you're curious do look them up they're pretty awesome terms of longer leaves the philodendron bility is an absolutely beautiful philodendron to go for they just look so majestic when they sat there they have beautiful long pointed leaves and they have gorgeous orange stems so that's a really really nice one to try if you're looking for something long believed and last but not least the super exotic philodendron that I would class to be the most easiest this may surprise you but the philodendron luxuriance choco red absolutely just wow one of the best philodendron ever absolutely beautiful philodendron so much going on with that plant I don't even know where to begin that's reasonably easy to grow but the thing that surprised me the most one of the most easiest exotic philodendron to grow at least for me is the philodendron melon or cry zone now a lot of you might be quite shocked by that but honestly they're really tough I've kind of just discovered this in the past month but if you're scared to get a melon or cries I'm honestly don't be they're really really good that concludes my video on philodendron care if there's anything I've missed out or any additional tips you would like to provide anyone you know in the comment section please feel free to leave them below similarly if you have a problem with your philodendron leave a comment I'm sure either myself or someone else will be able to help you out with whatever care question that you have especially if I haven't answered something in this video because I'm aware that there is a lot to cover and this is kind of general as I can get it so if you have any question about specific plant feel free to leave that below and I'm sure you'll be taken care of because this plant community is absolutely wonderful in terms of how much we help one another so don't be scared to leave a comment and as always if you like this video please leave a like it really really helps and for any additional updates on the plants that I currently own a please feel free to follow me on instagram at let's wet my plants I know it's a silly name I thought it was funny at the time now we're stuck with it thank you so much for watching this video I really hope it helped you out and I shall see you next week bye guys

Channel: Kaylee Ellen

Views: 152,969

Rating: 4.9559603 out of 5

Keywords: kaylee ellen, kaylee ellen plants, philodendron care, philodendron gloriosum care, philodendron billietiae care, philodendron luxuriens care, philodendron pink princess care, aroid care, aroid potting mix, increase humidity for plants, philodendron care guide, kaylee ellen philodendron care, philodendron care tips, houseplant care

Id: LKlH27YVYW4

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 02 2019