Calathea Care And 9 Stunning Varieties - How Not To Kill Your Houseplants

hi guys it's andrew here from smartgardenguy.com if you've been having difficulty looking after your caliphates and keeping them in great shape this is the video that's going to help you i'm going to share all my top tips for looking after caliphase to keep them looking great to prevent brown leaf edges to prevent the leaves turning yellow to stop over watering i'm going to tell you how much humidity what temperatures and how much lighting your calories are going to need to keep them thriving growing strongly and so that you get a lot more enjoyment out of looking after your caliphate is so caliphase do have a reputation for being a bit tricky and that is true they are a little bit tricky they're they're a fair bit more difficult than a lot of other common house plants but in the grand scheme of house plants there are plenty of plants that are much more difficult so really it's just a matter of getting a few key things right with calatheas and you'll be absolutely flying i've got a few of my own caliphas here just to share with you just to show you the variety that's available within the calathea genus uh i mean they really are fantastic there's so many colors and leaf patterns and leaf sizes and shapes and growth habits that um you know i own quite a number of calatheas and certainly it's a genus that i'm going to keep adding uh adding more and more to my collection because i really do love them so i'll just um go through some of the plants that i have here and we'll chat generally about um some of the care tips so the first one i've got here is my calathea war sku xci and the other name for this is calathea jungle velvet so this um is i think probably one of the only sort of velvet leafed caliphas it is in my opinion the most gorgeous calathea that there is out there it gets these lovely large um leaves with this deep green um leaf surface and then underneath you've got these purple you know purple leaf backs uh this is quite a tricky caliphate to look after so all calatheas they want uh a good amount of bright indirect light so you want to put them somewhere where you know you where there's plenty of light in a room but you want to keep direct sunlight off it if you get direct sunlight on a califor you know you know even an hour a day uh it will start to cause brown leaf edges and scorched the leaves so certainly you don't want to leave this on a south facing window or to be honest even in any window during the summer you want to leave it a little bit back from the window and you want to keep an eye on it to make sure that it doesn't get too much light um certainly if you do start noticing brown patches on the leaves or big brown leaf edges lighting is one of the first things to consider the other side of the coin if lighting is too low your caltha won't grow so watch out for that you know if you've got it stuck in a dark corner and it's not putting out new leaves again have a think um you can put it somewhere really that seems very bright to you but as long as it's not getting direct sunlight that's absolutely fine so absolutely lovely one there and one of my one of my favorites and actually that's um while we're on that i'll just show you this thing here and most california's their new leaves emerge or coiled up like this you can see it tightly curled because calatheas grow from a rhizome which is a modified stem that's under the ground so the roots grew down from this rhizome and then the new leaves sprout up uh so they almost look like drinking straws when they first emerge from the soil and then they come up and then they slowly unfurl and you get a lovely new leaf so this plant has been producing a couple of new leaves over the last few months and that's that's been great the next one i think we'll look at is this one here this is a small calathea califia or nada or pinstripe califia this is really widely available again it's probably on the more difficult end of the spectrum in terms of calatheas there is a better variation you know the one that we saw before caliphate war scurxied is very difficult um the pinstripe caliphate or calathea or nadas somewhere in the middle but possibly towards the more difficult end of the spectrum caliphate is the other thing that you really want to do to keep them in great shape is humidity okay so if you live in a dry environment an art environment where humidity levels are say less than 40 percent your healthier is not going to thrive so if you can't provide a reasonably humid environment you probably shouldn't even consider buying a calathea just go for house plants that don't require so much humidity and you'd be so much happier because one of the things i found with house plants is if you're constantly fighting against the conditions in your home and you're trying to grow a plant that really isn't suitable it's just a miserable experience you're much better picking plants that are more suited to your home or adapt the conditions the conditions in your home and to the plant that you're growing really well it'll give you so much more satisfaction so you want to aim for humidity levels of at least 50 percent for caliphates now in the summer where i live that's no problem humidity levels are comfortably above 60 maybe 70 percent i use a digital humidity meter to keep an eye on humidity levels and particularly in the winter when i've got my central heating on inside this is quite relevant because humidity will quite often dip down below 40 percent and i use a range of measures to increase the humidity level such as gripping the plants together and using a humidifier to make sure that those humidity levels are are high um even despite this um i actually have a couple of calatheas where they are getting quite a lot of brown edges and this is my fault uh this year i have been running the central heating more in an effort to keep the temperature up for my house plants and the consequence of that has been the humidity levels have dropped faster and further than expected so although most of my calories have been okay i've got a calathea i've got a couple of calathea orbifolias which have really struggled so i've got one back here uh this calathea orbitfolia has really been decimated with brown leaf edges and i was just a bit slow on the uptake in terms of seeing the problem so you know it got into sort of start of october i stopped the central heating on i thought it was doing a good job by you know making the river these horseplants are in a little bit warmer but the consequence of that was the humidity levels dropped dramatically and i would say most of the leaves are this calathea orbifulia now i have brown edges but at least i know what the problem was you know i identified it quickly i've started running my humidifier more so i'll not make that mistake again and i think that's half the battle in terms of houseplant care if you can actually just you if you know what's happening you can adapt to it it's when you see brown leaf edges and you don't know what's going on you see leaves turning yellow and you're not sure what's actually happening how can you fix that and chances are if you do try and fix it you'll fix the wrong thing you'll you'll end up killing your plant um so that's that's why i love sort of you know you really examining my plants very closely and seeing what's going on with them and making some changes and watching how they adapt so we'll move on to another plant here this is a calathea rosiopecta medallion so rojo pecta and then the the cultivar is medallion now calathea rosiopecta there's actually quite a lot of um cultivars of this um i think because it is a really good looking plant it's also one of the calatheas that's a little bit easier to look after so it's less prone to over watering it's less prone to leaf problems and certainly i haven't given this one any particularly special care and it just seems to have thrived very very nicely uh so that's um rosie who picked a medallion and i've also got a wee tiny one here this is rosie pector dottie and this well i've already said worcestershire was my favorite but this is probably number two i i just love the leaf coloration and the really dark green leaves and the pink accents are amazing i bought this from a local supermarket and it only had about three leaves i probably bought it probably actually probably about a year ago now and well initially i brought home and it actually didn't do great and it just sat and one of the leaves died and only had two leaves left but i just focused on providing good lighting keeping the soil moist and making sure the humidity levels were good and sure enough last spring it started just producing leaves and it's just produced new leaf after new leaf afternoon leaf and it's really thriving so i suppose that brings us on to watering because after lighting and humidity watering is definitely the next most important thing about looking after califor's so you can't let calotheas dry out too much and you can't over water them and they are quite sensitive the roots are quite delicate so if you um if you forget the water this plant and the soil dries out completely again if lower leaves will start dying it'll start getting brown leaf edges brown leaf tips and you'll destroy the cosmetic look of your plant and that's bad but if you start watering it properly again it will grow new leaves and you can revive the plant so with calories generally what i do is i just i water them thoroughly soak the soil let it drain really really well and then keep an eye on it every couple of days and once i feel the top sort of well for this plant actually because it's in such a small pot once the surface of the soil dries out i'll water it again and some of my calories that are in larger pots uh i generally sort of leave it until about the top one to two uh you know inches of soil feels dry to the touch every plant's a little bit different every calf is a bit different it depends you know what pot you're using what soil you're using the size of the pot if you're one of the worst things actually you can do when you're watering caliphates is plant them in a pot that's too large so there's small plant in a larger pot you water it the soil gets really wet it gets a bit soggy it takes a long time for that soil to dry out so the plant is exposed to soggy conditions for a long time and you're much more likely to cause your plant to be over watered and an over water plant will often get ripped rot this happened to my calafia sabrina i knew the soil was a bit heavy i knew that it was in too large a pot and i didn't do anything about it i was just pretty careful it was thriving it was growing loads of new leaves and just to the point when i was totally happy with it the leaves just started going a slight tint of yellow all over and my heart sank because i knew it developed ripple and sure enough it had um so the leaves became progressively yellow i repotted it checked the roots and two-thirds of the roots had rotted and i see that plant didn't survive so definitely planting in a pot that's too large and over watering and are some of the worst things that you can do for caliphase and you just want to um you know keep the soil lightly moist but don't overdo it and what i've got no yeah this is i've got another color theater that's a wee bit a little bit different uh this is a calathea lancifolia uh or the rattlesnake plant i think just because of how it looks it kind of looks like a rattlesnake this one is doing okay it does have a few brown spots on the leaves and it's got one leaf that has developed um sort of a brown edge which isn't great interestingly sometimes you get a brown leaf on a car or a brown edge on a califa leaf if the leaf comes into contact with another leaf if it's pressing against another leaf and certainly if there's a bit of trauma to that leaf and so somebody if you have a plant that is actually growing really strongly sometimes the leaves can damage each other and i've noticed this in particular with my calathea war sku xci which is a real shame you're the the faster and more impressively it grows the more likely you are to get some of the leaves that'll press against each other and it'll cause these large brown edges or brown patches on the leaves um i'll actually go on to chat about fertilizing calatheas at this point so caliphas definitely do benefit from a little bit of fertilizer again you want to tread cautiously so i fertilize my calories from sort of spring through the late summer so from about march through to the start of september um once a month maybe once every three weeks i use very little so i use a balanced water soluble synthetic fertilizer and it's just a general purpose fertilizer with equal amounts of nitrogen potassium and phosphorus as well as stress or micro nutrients and it is a fertilizer that's designed for all plants outside in and indoors so the instructions on it say um say one thing but basically i ignore them and i make it up to about a quarter to about a half up most of the strength and recommended for outdoor plants the reason for this is calatheas are sensitive so if you put too much fertilizer um on your calophase again it'll burn the leaf tips they'll get brown edges it'll actually damage the roots and then your plant will stop growing and it'll have to spend many months uh growing new healthy roots before it'll resume new foliage growth so i just add a little bit of fertilizer and fertilize it at the same time as i'm watering it approximately once a month and keep an eye to make sure that uh you know there's no adverse effects from fertilizing it and the other thing i generally do is about a couple of times a year i will flush the soil because all that fertilizer goes into the soil some of it's taken up by the plants but some of it will accumulate in the pot in the soil and over time this can cause toxicity to the roots so um as i say a few times a year i will take the plant to the sink and i will run loads and loads and loads of water through the pot to flush any excess fertilizer salts out of the pot and uh you know keep it uh it will keep it from building up and uh causing problems um the interestingly the other thing that can cause these brown leaf edges and brown leaf tips it's actually the water that you use itself so you sort of think tap water be grand tap water is absolutely fine for most houseplants but tap water does contain some things that house plants don't like so typically your tap water will contain chlorine and or chloramines and that's as a sort of disinfectant to make sure your tap water doesn't uh contain any bugs that might do humans any harm it can also contain fluoride and it contains other minerals and heavy metals and whilst these are usually at safe levels for humans they can cause problems for very sensitive plants calatheas are one of those plants that is very sensitive to water quality i live in a soft water area so there aren't an awful lot of minerals in my water i generally use water for tap water for caliphase and have no problems whatsoever but if you if you are getting the watering right and the humidity right and fertilizing right if you're doing everything that your caliphate wants and you're still getting brown tips and brown edges on the leaves try changing the type of water try changing to rain water or distilled water and this will eliminate this as a potential cause of problems with your calathea um so i've got a few other ones here i've got a really tiny another really tiny calathea here and this is a calathea macayana or a peacock plant and again this one's called peacock plant because the leaves kind of look like um the wings of a peacock which i think yeah i think they do it's also called cathedral windows because of the way that if you shine light through the leaf it sort of looks like a stained glass window which is really cool um i suppose next thing that shall we actually is pruning so caliphase are very low very low pruning requirements and really the only thing you need to do to prune coffee is sometimes they will a leaf obviously this one's got one relief that has died off and you just prune them off at the base where they emerge from the soil so just use sterile pruning shears and cut off any leaves that are damaged or yellow or anything like that i think i've actually got yeah we've got another um calathea herba fulia here and it has got to be a yellow leaf and again most of the leaves in this calathea orbifulia are perfectly healthy but this one here is is dead and i know this is nothing to worry about this is not a sign of over watering because it's just one leaf this is just acclimation so it's currently winter here light levels are a bit lower and the plant has decided to get rid of this lower older leaf and it's just in the process of giving up on the life so what i will do actually as part of this video is i'll just show you uh we clip with me um cutting it off at the base what i would normally do and i think this this actually is doing better than my other one it's not really suffering with the brown edges they have been grown in the same room so i'm not 100 sure why this one has been a little bit more resilient i've got two other cavities to show you and this one here is a little bit different this is a calafia museuka or a calathean network and this is very interesting because this just has a really unique leaf pattern it's got this sort of crisscross appearance on the leaves and again if light shines through from the back of the leaf they really are beautiful and i suppose on first glance maybe not as impressive as some of the other calatheas that you see but i i just really really think this one's very interesting it's definitely a grower um yeah okay so we'll discuss actually propagation now so probably getting calcius is usually very easy um as i say they grow from a rhizome so when you repot a calathea you can divide the rhizome and i wouldn't divide this one it's too small i did divide my orbitfolia about a year ago and it's getting pretty big again now but basically um you don't want to you don't want to just propagate a calathea whenever you feel like it you generally want to do it whenever they are growing out of their pot because they don't really like to be repotted they don't like to be they don't like their rhizome to be divided and they can struggle for a wee while after you do this when i repotted my caliphate orbitfolio it was huge it was thriving it was actually looking a hell of a lot better than it is now and i divided the rhizome and i actually wrote it up as a blog post on my website and it all went really well repotted the two halves into a really good potting mix and took good care of them but it still took months and months of them sitting doing nothing presumably in shock from what had happened to them uh while they got used to their new surroundings and it was maybe maybe three four months later that they started producing their first new life um but yeah basically in terms of proper getting uh caliphates you just take them out of the out of the pot remove any other loose soil and then you can just divide the rhizome largely with your hands actually if you just gently tease the rhizome apart and take two um you know two clumps you you can usually separate the plant fairly clearly um you went uh you know two or more pieces um you can't cut the right zoom if you're getting stuck if it won't just quite tease apart that's absolutely fine and then you just want to repot it in appropriate soil and actually that brings up a good point what soil do you use for caliphate as well you want to use something that is both well draining but also retains moisture so i typically use just either a house plant potting mix or paint or cocoa choir fifty percent of that and fifty percent per light and sometimes i'll go slightly more sometimes i go like you know two-thirds potting mix on a third per light and but essentially the principle is you want something that does retain a bit of moisture but is light and fluffy like peat or cocoa choir and you want an inorganic drainage amendment uh such as coarse sand gravel pumice perlite is which is what i use um which i'm i think works very well and you want to make sure that after you've repotted it when you water it the water shouldn't sit on top of the soil it should run through the pot fairly quickly and out the drainage oil holes within really a few seconds so i think i'll wrap this video up now i just wanted to have a bit of a chat about some of the care tips that i have for looking after caliphase and show you some of my calories some of the things that are going well with them some of the things that aren't going quite so well and hopefully help you to keep yours thriving so if you've enjoyed this video please consider subscribing to the channel and press the like button to let youtube know you've enjoyed this video and hopefully i'll see you in the next touch plan care video all the best bye now

Channel: Smart Garden Guide

Views: 52,070

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Id: MGW61cWXP_8

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020