Beginner's Guide to Indoor Plant Care

[Music] hi everybody how are you this is Amanda and planned Rina today is my birthday today's my birthday and I'm making a video because I want to celebrate my birthday with you at least like this part of it but I think today I really thought about this and I know there's a lot of people just getting into plants just getting into houseplants and they don't really understand to some basic stuff like some terminology and what to do with your plant when you first bring it home because sometimes it's a little daunting um you know what I'm talking about you bring a plan home we're not even that you want to know what to get how to pick a plant all that stuff so it's confusing so let's just start from the beginning maybe before you try to put your plant in its permanent spot or semi-permanent spot you want to look at your plant you want to understand that the plant is in good health because good health is really the key if you start with a plant that really needs rescuing or that has been potted in bad soil it's been sitting around for too long possibly not being fertilized you might start out with a problem so make sure you have a healthy plant and a way to do that is to just inspect the foliage first like look at it if the foliage is perky and not full of holes or insects or black spots or brown spots which would indicate that it has some sort of a fungus yeah you want to put that plant back like get rid of that planet but have a plant that's I'm not saying that one's not healthy backs healthy death it's this thing you like oh look at this this is actually a peperomia obtuse if folia that looks pretty healthy to me there is some weird stuff on it but that's the other thing sometimes the leaves aren't perfect so if you have an imperfect leaf don't worry about it maybe you can just get rid of it if it bothers you or just deal with it say nature's not perfect which I do repeat over and over again so that's it look at the foliage and check it out and if it's like up to par go to the next step the next step is well hold on I'm gonna change locations for the next step hold on okay new spot new spot new idea so what you want to do is check the soil and I've mentioned this in a couple other videos maybe on IG TV I don't remember anymore but you'll want to take the plant out of the pot if at all possible and don't hesitate to do it at the plant store or when you get it home or if you got it online do it because it's important all the good stuff comes out of the roots right all the problems start in the roots generally so you'll want to just flip it over I don't want using the biggest plant I have on the table to do this way and also gonna get dirt everywhere but story of my life okay so look first of all peperomia is don't have a very intensive root system so this maybe isn't the best example but these roots look good there's no sign of rot you see that it looks like a crazy road map of some crazy place in the world but we're like neurons firing in your brain it looked like something but it looks healthy to me so that's kind of the idea is that the roots are actually established so when you pull the plant out of the pot and like soil falls everywhere that means the roots aren't established yet so this is this is a good one the roots are not to root bound there enough of them to hold the soil together and they're not rotted so that's good we just couldn't put them gently back in the pot and say all right you might be a keeper you might be a keeper I might be bringing you home with me or I'm not bending your back another thing about the soil is that when you are checking the soil and you are checking us on like a teacher when you are checking the soil make sure that it's not dense it's not compacted you see that thing fly out of that soil anyway make sure that it's kind of fluffy the water can get through it that you know it's not caked with salt and things like minerals like that that you know there's an issue so it shouldn't look rich it should have porosity and water should go through it very easily or not so easily but it's not like succulent soil but it drains you want soils that drain if it doesn't drain something's going on inside the pot that you should know about oh I just noticed there's this tiny little new growth on this diffenbach eeeh do you see that little tiny thing sticking out there it is adorable I cut this back to propagate it I have a propagation up there so it's pushing out to new growth isn't this a pretty one yeah so Oh also be aware that some plants are toxic and you can have allergic reactions to them so if you're handling things like dieffenbachia yes even some Croton someone mentioned to me that the sap of Croton can really cause a big allergic reaction so wash your hands between handling the plants and also sterilize your your pruners when you're pruning to hear that the door just moves by itself so yeah they must be friendly ghosts in my house because I'm still alive so yeah check that soil out really check that soil out so now do we want to keep the plant in the nursery pot do we want to plant it into a different pot so let's talk about different pot options if your plant didn't come with a pot I'm gonna go to another location daddy are you doing are you doing over there it's that camera okay so let's talk about pot so you have this is a parlor pump that's in the nursery pot and you can leave it in the nursery pot for quite a long time say until your really start seeing the roots popping out at the bottom and or and or you see a decline in the health but in general these plants can live pretty long in a nursery pot and I'll get to that in a minute how we keep it very very healthy let's talk about what kind of pots that you can put them in and why so the parlor palm I like to leave in the nursery pot for as long as possible because they like a bit of water they are great low light plants they're great plants in general they don't grow that big and they stay looking really good and they're great anchoring plans for like centerpieces and all that jazz but in general I like to keep them in the nursery pot and how I do that is I will I will put them in a cover pot they're called a cache pose and this is all you kind of do instant kind of instant kind of beautiful and kind of easy and why I like to do this it's because when I do water them it's really really easy so this is one thing you can do this is a ceramic pot there's no drainage hole on the bottom it's you know it's solid so you can put it on a surface and not get water everywhere which is good too but keep in mind that some some pot or some ceramic pots and especially the terra cotta pots will um water absorbs into the into the fibers of the clay and it gets like your furniture wet so be careful you want to put maybe a metal tray or something underneath it just in case because not every pot is waterproof I would say I've had experiences where I thought something was waterproof but these little edges on the one particular pot I had didn't have any glaze on it and the water ruined a piece of furniture I've ruined a lot of furniture with plants but I prefer the plant over furniture anyway so there and it's about that now you can use things like like terra cotta okay I just literally posted ieg TV about transplanting this ficus elastica remember I did it in a video a long time ago two months ago it rooted and I needed to get it in a pot so I chose I chose a terracotta pot just because I liked the way it looked and also these plants over time like to dry out between waterings so I know that they will dry out faster in a terra cotta pot and the other thing is I water a lot in a sense like not a lot but I am always watching my plant so it's okay if you are the kind of person that does not have the time or think about watering your plants as often as I do you might want to think about using a different type of pot like like the ceramic pot and keeping your plants in the nursery pot for as long as you can so I guess see the idea here is that there's no need to rush to transplant a plant that you just got because you think it doesn't want to live in here generally they've been growing in here for maybe six months to a year that's the process takes a long time to grow them so if they look healthy don't ruin a good thing don't change it just let them be for a while until you really figure out um what you want to put it in or you just don't really want to keep it in the nursery pot that's up to you but I'm just giving you advice and take it or leave it that's kind of it that's what these videos are it's not like my way or the highway it's just things that I've learned over time that seemed to work very very well so um that's the pot situation there's actually you can use other things too like on baskets I showed this for you in the last video all the stuff is still there from the last video because I've been swamped but it's the like making videos it's fun I feel like I'm talking to you guys but yeah I've got this dysphoria Chelsea that's still in this hanging basket pot I took the hanging basket hook off and I just put it in this pretty basket and it works it works which is really interesting I realized when I made the last video that all all but one of my Hoyas are hanging the rest are just on shelves on on tables so you don't have to hang your hanging plants you can just put them in a cool taller pot if you want or just put them in a shirt or pot and put them on the table that's kind of all you have to do so yeah hot choices are a limitless but I guess the general rule is if you have a plant that is more of a succulent type of plant that does not mean watering often you can put them in terracotta pots or pots that are unglazed because it'll help keep that plant healthier and the roots won't rot and if you have a plant like and not an theory I'm Agatha it's alright my brain doesn't work a plant like firms or plants like Alocasia things like that that leg a little bit more water you can keep them in a nursery pot okay on to the next section I like this movement around a little bit changes it up okay so let's talk about pruning I'm asked I get a lot of questions on Instagram and a lot of DMS and I'm kind of going through them during this video just answering trying to answer our dress like the main questions and one of them is okay well I had a planet for a while and I love it but it's starting to yellow out and getting yellow leaves on the bottom what does that mean well first of all it means that you probably didn't water it enough or you ordered watered it too much in this case this was under watered and the bottom leaves of this Sango neum mini illusion pretty sure it's called that the leaves got yellow so I'm going to show you where to prune it because I tell people think do you just prune like the top the top off like that the answer is no the answer is no and generally you can even let them just kind of die off and pluck them out like that but some people don't want to see dead things I've seed that thing so they get impatient I do that too especially when um I want my place to look good and so I'll just go in here and cut you guys see this thing I'm gonna pull this back you're gonna cut as far down to the base of the plant as possible and that's really the general rule for pruning any plant what does it look so dark behind me this is the lighting so yeah so I just pull pull the leaf out if you can just manually or you take a leaf I got all the yellow well and you cut it down at the base you cut it at the base so I mean some plants actually don't really like that like Aguila Nima's because you can introduce in like bacteria doesn't say infections but do I have it somewhere but the point is yeah so that's how you do it so you want to prune it and also you can prune for shape so say you're lucky enough that you got this big gorgeous hanging plant and it's not the right way for you you can you can cut it back a little bit and I'm just gonna bring it over here okay okay I'm back so you see you see this this is new growth it's very very shiny and glossy so if you want to print it back which I don't really want to do by my nose for you guys because I'm gonna show you cut it right like above the node in this case if you just want to keep this healthy and growing you see that and that's it you can just trim it and guess what if you want if you really want you can propagate this this leaf will probably die because it's new it's young but you can just snip that off like that you can put that in soil you can put it in water yeah so then you'll get another plant eventually I should probably want like 20 more of these to get one big full plant so that's what the pruning and I'll just show you how to prune like a and cerium flower bracht you know they're not really flowers right back with the plant so okay so we know that an theorems look great and when we get them and they're beautiful but then if they're not in the right spot or just time to over time the bracts the flowers I'll just call them flowers because they'll look a lot like flowers but they're not we want to cut them down at the base so well you know honestly I really prefer an theorems without the flowers I hate to say that but the white ones I like so I'm gonna cut it I'm gonna show you can you see I'm coming going way way way way down there way down and cutting it so that's what you do here's one that I never got to that's brown so you just pulls right out so it depends on how much time you have and how many plants you have it'll all depend on how much time you plant maintenance sometimes the plants just have to wait for you to get to it so I'm okay with this guy I mean even if it has a few brown spots on the brass on the white area I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it because as I got older I realized there's a lot of imperfections out there you can't cut them all I'm gonna leave it like that so there's another funky one in here that one's coming out can you guys see that yeah that's it that's it that's really it and then I'm gonna check it so again this is a plant that has been in this pot for quite a while and I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it for as long as I possibly can so that's that that's with pruning so you'll want to prune to keep your plants healthy to keep them in shape and and just to kind of get rid of anything that might be a fungus or just is unsightly to you so those are the reasons for pruning and when you prune prune down prune down as far to the base of the plan as you can without cutting off any other nodes or new growth that's the general rule that's my rule you don't have to listen you don't have to you know what I'm saying just trying to help let's go to the next topic so you get your new plant and what you should have done initially before you brought it home if you went to a planter to get it check the soil I tend to stay away from plants that are saturated because that could possibly mean that they've been over water watering it for a long time and the roots are like mush so again you know you want to take your plant out of the pot I guess I'm gonna I'm just gonna do it I'm gonna try to do it this means I think this is well Rudy that doesn't want to come out okay I don't want to hurt the foliage but take the plant out of the pot and look and if you see mushy mushy brown roots put the plant back because it means it's over watered so let's assume that your plant is not over watered and dry when you get it so you'll really want to saturate it very well so you can either put it like in the sink like here you probably can you even see sink is so crowded it's always there always a revolving amount of plants coming in and out of the sink here and then you take it and you put it under the faucet and you still fix okay so good until the water comes out at the bottom of the pot okay and this was already kind of wet I don't know why use this as an example but you'll you'll wait till you see the water dripping and then let it drain out and then let's go back to the pot thing if you uh this isn't the right size but you let it drain and then you put it back and then in the nursery in the cover pot that's really what you do when you keep it in the nursery pot it's very very easy to take care of plants when you just keep them in the nursery pot I'm not saying it's not easy the other way just I think you have a little bit more control because if you and if you don't like your pot any more you switch it out to another point so you've changed your whole decor in your house and now you just want purple purple pots you just move these to purple or you paint your pots purple house you can better or not I don't know if you like purple it could be a little too purple so yeah that's that with the watering and and then how do you know when your plant needs water I'm gonna tell you I'm gonna tell you you're going to pick up your plant and I see I'm gonna I'm gonna get rid of that for you I'm gonna show you how to get rid of it so just take my little printer and you know you really should sterilize your scissors or your printers between cuttings and I'm not doing it right now cut it cut it this dumb cane is there's another one in the middle and I'll tell you why that there are yellow leaves on it because I let it dry out too much and so anyway how I know it's all gonna take it out of this very heavy sort of a ceramic pot that has a drainage hole it does and I am gonna feel it and it feels pretty light like the lighter your plan is which is question wait a minute it was heavier when I picked it up last week that means the weight of the water has evaporated and it's time to water it again so you however you water if you wonder with a watering can if you water in your sink if you use rainwater or whatever you use just get it through the whole entirety of the plant all around the soil not just one side to make sure you go evenly so all the roots get the water and then let it drain you put it and you put it back and you put it back and it's good to go it really is so what are you is pretty easy but you just need to stay on it and and and my rule and these are my own rules for me what I like to do is pretty much every plant I have - the ferns get almost critically dry they get pretty dry and then I go through and I saturate the soil with water and and they really like it they are responding they're a living they're doing they're living longer you can go away for longer periods of time if you kind of train your plants not to like want water all the time - so yeah maybe that doesn't make sense but in my brain it works so yeah the water is pretty simple and then let's move on to another oh I've got a good lot to talk about see you back there up there but I put some grow lights up the other day I took a break and install the light fixture I love it I'll show you guys I will do a video on lighting grow lights pretty soon I just have to kind of get my stuff organized for that for that video so let's talk about fertilizing your plans what is fertilizing even mean it means that you are replenishing the soil up with nutrients because they need nitrogen phosphorus potassium magnesium to live because think about it we take them out and we put them in these little pots and they use up the nutrients and the nutrients leach out pretty much every time we water our plants so we have to make an environment that replicates the environment outside that they're used to being in because all you know debris Falls and detrás falls from and becomes hummus hummus houmous doesn't become humus it becomes humid and that's how they eat that's how they feed so we need to feed our plants we need to fertilize our plans so and there's a couple of different ways you can do it also when you have new growth like this you should really fertilize it cuz it's using a lot of energy so that's good so I'm gonna show you what I use and also talked a little bit about it so I'm going to have I mean this water literally that that ficus cutting was in this water so it's kind of nasty water I haven't changed it and this is fish emulsion and I know not everybody's happy about fish emulsion and somebody asked me if it was made from shark liver no it's not it's usually sardines things like that that they crush up but if you don't or if you're not into that which I I'm starting to really question if I'm gonna keep using fish emulsion I might switch to seaweed or like back one oh but I'm not sure how a sustainable bat guano collecting is I'm gonna look into it more but for now been using fish emulsion and I just this is it I put I diluted heavily so I'll put and it smells I know it smells they say it doesn't smell it smells so I'd like to dilute it like a quarter strength so I'm talking about like like that's almost too much that's almost too much but really especially if you are planning on fertilizing your plants a lot you just do a little bit of this I mean just like a drop because then you can pretty much fertilize every time after you water so I had just oh oh this smells I just like when you smell it through your mouth yeah it's like you eat it though it's really disgusting I got to do this I got a switch to seaweed I'm gonna switch so now I'm gonna do this I'm just gonna i had watered this recently so that's what I mean by watering your plants first before you fertilize it because you don't want to burn the foliage of your plants the roots don't burn it's the foliage that really burns it can damage the roots but the foliage gets affected mostly so you just you know fertilize that bad boy or girl and I seriously need to put this down with it's gonna drip and that's it or you can use a slow release fertilizer and most of your nursery plants that are grown in the greenhouse have that in it so let me go find one I'll go find one show you okay so in this plant you see the little green things I gotta pull it out I gotta pull it out for you and it's interesting get us here okay you see that little green that green guy that's a slow-release fertilizer and I was just talking with my grower and it's pretty interesting because a huge question is what when do I fertilize my plants do i fertilize them as soon as I get them it all depends because when the grower puts in the slow-release fertilizer it depends on how long it takes this plant actually to grow so if this plant took six months to get to the point or almost a year to get to the point where it's being sold that fertilizer has been used up because that was like a year long release fertilizer so the yes if you get a nice full plant that's a little bit bigger and takes longer to grow you might want to fertilize it as soon as you get it and also you don't know how long it's been sitting in a nursery or a box store depending on where you got it so it might really be depleted so if you know what your plants are coming from you'll have a much better idea of when to fertilize it so I know this is like ready this wants to be fertilized and they don't need to be fertilized a lot so let's just go back up for a second research your plants when you get them because you know there's so much information online as you're discovering and you can get to the bottom of it by just looking up a plant and finding a video or a great blog article or somebody who really knows what they're talking about get that information from them also just compare information to that's what I do to get to the bottom of it so yeah so fertilizing is pretty important so you can read yeah you can also use just a regular liquid complete fertilizer that like the big brand sell I don't really like to do it that much because I like I like organic stuff and that will be experimenting more with organic fertilizers coming up very soon so that's just the basics on kind of the basics of fertilizer that's enough about that because that was a ramble alright maybe we'll go talk about something else about getting your first plant I did forget to talk about worm castings and show you it's my birthday I can look however I want on I really care so worm castings it's super super organic I love the idea of actually getting a little worm farm thing they make I'm gonna get a warm farm and I make my own worm castings because worms are cool worms are cool look what they do they break up the soil then make it so plants can live they can take up the nutrients and they aerate and they give you nutrients I said that but it's a big deal so worm castings is a great way to fertilize your plants especially if you have a bigger plant and you can't and you can't transplant it and you don't want to so you just put some worm castings on the top and you work it in with your hands and that's that's it when castings are great or any type of compost you can get your hands on hands-on that is sterilized because if you use outdoor compost and your indoor plants you can be introducing some major major problems I try not to do that got it it is something else it's not like where do you put your plant where do you put your plant when you get it so you know you got a I got a Jolla boy is like a lot of light where am I going to put it you're gonna put it close to a window so it's going to get bright indirect light that's why if you go back to researching your plan or your plants should come with information that tell you what kind of light it means and so look at that information and figure out where does it go in there in the spectrum of your houses light thank God I didn't become an English teacher like my family because I would have gotten fired very very quickly so yeah it's really about where you put your plant and you're going to experiment you're going to have it in different locations potentially before you find the right spot for it and then also turn your plant if you can a quarter turn every time you water it that's probably a good rule it's not every week it's every time you water your plant come on up so this section gets a little bit more Sun and the next time you go then this section so it keeps your plant well-rounded I think I covered it all no it's impossible I think that's enough to kind of maybe set your mind at ease about bringing a plant home and understanding there's little tiny things you need to do to make a big impact for your plant so that's it you guys um enjoy your weekend Friday Friday and it's my birthday I can't believe it kind of em depressed but I'm kind of excited because every time I just get up every day I'm happy I'm alive that's kind of how I feel so yep enjoy your life you guys take care bye bye

Channel: PLANTERINA

Views: 407,272

Keywords: indoor plants, houseplants, house plants, plants, interior plants, foliage plants, plant care, indoor plant care, houseplant care, house plant care, how to water plants, how to prune plants, how to care for indoor plants, best indoor plants, easy care indoor plants, easy care houseplants, plants for beginners, indoor plants for beginners, houseplants for beginners

Id: HM3kFsQsX74

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019