Houseplant 101: How to Shop for Plants — Ep 117

oh he's like get my good side year in the previous houseplant 101 back to basics episode we discussed how to assess your space so once you've determined the type of conditions that you have in the home and also what kind of plant parent that you'll probably be then you could go to the plant shop and see what they have in order to bring plants home so I figured we'd stop off at a plant shop here in LA this is plant and nursery we're going to take a look at their plants and see what we should consider when bringing them into our home [Music] okay I'm gonna put my bag down and we're gonna take a look at some of the plants here alright so some of the things that you want to consider before actually getting into a plant shop is what kind of conditions that you have and what kind of plant parent that you would be because sometimes when we go into a plant shop we're kind of like willed in by the beauty of the plants but we have no idea about the conditions in our home and we've already covered that but one of the important things is once we actually know that we could get a more educated answer from the plant or nursery manager or owner at the shop because if we say oh we need a plant for my home how is the nursery person going to really know whereas if you come in and you say hey I have a southern or western exposure I get a lot of light and I travel often so I don't want to be around to take care of my plants all that much they would probably say BAM you know come and take a look at some of these succulents whereas if you're somebody who is maybe on your like 50th plant you have a nice Eastern exposure you don't over your plants you have a humidifier they might point you to actually something that maybe is a little bit more of a high-maintenance plant like something like we have over here in the prayer plant family which is calathea origin Portilla which requires a little bit more high humidity and not a tremendous amount of light often times that plant shops plants are arranged in a certain way so if you look at this display right here this is more of a succulent display so you have some sedum some Athan --is some echeverria's more sedum x' and these in general are plants that require a little bit more heavier light condition so a southern or western window now how would you know that I mean generally if you kind of can look at the leaves a little bit more of the leaves that are a little bit more of a 4-digit kind of hue this blue gray hue a little bit more succulent see in the leaves usually means that these plants are accustomed to a little bit more higher light conditions or they tolerate a little bit more drought whereas sometimes when you go in the int space you could actually find a little bit more plants that may actually be tolerable to lower light conditions if you come in here and you can see some that are displayed here like these peperomia and some aglio Nima's and these are probably not generally out there because these are a little bit more kind of interior plants that don't need a tremendous amount of light I took some of the plants from the inside there and actually put them here because I wanted to give you a little bit of a sense of some of the the breadth and the range of plants now for somebody who has a little bit more I would say kind of bright but indirect light or a little bit more diffuse light there's other great plants for that and I pulled out this Hoya AB avada right here which has very similar to these succulents here a fairly succulent leaf and a very fairly succulent stem and I kind of did the mistake with my Hoyas of actually giving them the same kind of treatment and light conditions as this so these plants are growing on other plants kind of in the gaps of forests so they do like a little bit more diffuse light because they're getting shaded out by some of the trees and the canopy so this particular plant would probably grow better in an Eastern exposure if you're in the northern hemisphere or something that has a bright but indirect light condition now for those plants that can handle a little bit more lower to moderate light so these are maybe getting a little bit more indirect light or are in a northern aspect or a northeastern aspect you might want to look into something like prayer plants and these are two good examples you'll notice here that this leaf is actually curling too and this is a strategy that some of these plants do to protect themselves against water loss now as I have probably shared before these are a little bit more of a high-maintenance finicky plant so even though they require a little less light which is so good because so many of our apartments don't have a tremendous amount of light they do require a little bit more higher humidity a lot of our homes actually don't have so that is something to consider but these are generally lower light plants so you could manage having them in a like I said in northern or Eastern exposure but they do require a little bit more attention another plant that is good for lower light conditions is Aglio Nima and there's so many different types of varieties this particular one with the pink and red I would say requires a little bit more light but there are a lot more stable varieties and what I mean by stable varieties is that they have natural variation this is a more cultivated variation that has been selectively bred by breeders and from my experience these require a little bit more light than kind of regular aglio Nima's which actually I don't see in this particular plant shop but generally a glutton Emo's I have a lot of those growing kind of away from even window light and getting a little bit more kind of like ambient light or grow lights and these are one of the few plants that I'm actually growing in the interiors of my space and they seem to be growing just fine one of the things to kind of keep in mind is that a lot of these plants have probably just come from the greenhouse they might have only been sitting here for a couple days maybe a week maybe two weeks at most so they don't spend a tremendous amount of time at your retail center generally speaking and they've been given probably the ultimate optimum conditions in the greenhouse so they're probably a little bit more of a compact plant and they don't have long inter nodes which are the spaces between the nodes so you could see here this is an inter node and they have short spaces between the nodes whereas if you got something that had not a lot of light oftentimes that starts to stretch and become a little what we call leggy so you want to actually find a plant that is nice and compact nice and bushy depending on the particular plant that you're getting even this this one for example this is an Asian anthis which is a type of lipstick plant now I'm growing one of these in my home and I've been growing it for probably four or five years now and it is much longer it's not that bushy it's actually quite bare on top and part of that reason is that your plant will actually change form once you bring it home because you're not giving it the same amount of light or conditions that the plant was given in the greenhouse so this plant even though you say wow this looks so full and so beautiful four or five years down the road it might actually have some bald spots it might be a little bit longer so unless you're kind of pruning it you're giving it a really great skylight you're giving it all the optimum humidity that it potentially needs it's probably not going to look like this so I just want to say this because I want to set up your expectations when you're actually living with plants because if you're treating like the plant just like a decor item and you want it to look perfect then you're probably going to have to come and get a new plant all the time versus just having it grow in your house and developing kind of a character in giving it the kind of like suboptimal conditions within your home some of the other things to kind of consider when you're looking at the plant is not only just the compact growth structure but something that you could do is actually pull the plant out of its nursery pot and make sure the roots look healthy so we have this aglio Neama here and you can see they have all these nice green and white chubby little roots coming out and these all look very healthy if you're starting to see roots that look brown and mushy or dried then you could probably tell that that is a plant that is not as healthy and I would actually you know put that plant back we could take a look at this christena of it formerly known as Sansevieria and you could see very similarly has nice kind of thick chubby roots it's not too root bound or anything along those lines and we could take a look at this prayer plant you can see that has a nice healthy root system right there not to root bound either we'll take a look at this Hoya and this one seems a little bit drier which is totally normal with Hoya because there are a little bit more epiphytic species meaning they're growing on trees and other plants and they don't like to be totally wet all the time it's actually not beneficial for their roots but that looks like a healthy root system and I also pulled out this one over here and you can see that this one a little bit drier and pretty root bound down here so this is a plant that if you were to buy this plant you would kind of tease out some of these roots and I would particularly plant this in a pot that is slightly larger than this so you just have to be a little bit mindful these are pretty healthy roots already but this is something that you would definitely want to repot and typically I would recommend that you would wait for about two weeks to get this to acclimatize to your own home before you actually repot it but honestly I don't often wait that long in order to be able to repot a particular plant but it's a good form to actually you know be able to pull the plants out of its pot check its roots a little bit and also check the tops of the leaves because if you see anything any kind of bugs you could be looking out for spider mites you look out for mealy bugs you look out for potentially scale oftentimes a lot of those bugs are difficult to see and generally speaking when I come to a garden center they usually have really clean plants one thing to kind of be concerned about is if you have some of your interior plants actually growing outdoors they probably have a higher propensity to get a little bit more pestiferous insects on the plants so you would just be a little bit more mindful around that and I've actually gone into nurseries and I have like a little magnifying lens that sometimes I'll check on plants but usually you don't even need to go that far you just really need to eyeball it see if it's a healthy plant take out its roots get a sense of whether that is actually a healthy plant as well and and consider that that could be something that you might actually want to body so how would you know whether a plant actually needs to be repotted in a larger pot and I'll give you a great example if you come over here and you look at the succulent you'll start to see some of these little roots that are kind of sticking out from the bottom of this nursery pot so this is a particular plant that I would say you would want to pot it in a planter that's probably the next size up when I say the next size up usually it's like 2 inches larger because it gives a little bit more space for the roots to be able to grow even that little inch of space below is going to be a little bit better for this particular plant or you can even go a little bit more like a one size up from from this planter pot but that is a telltale sign that the plant is going to want to grow a little bit larger you know this say I plant I would say is not so root bound but the roots are going to want to grow a little bit deeper than what they have going back to this polka dot plant you'll see that this one was really root bound as well but the roots are healthy so you want to make sure that you give this a little bit more soil to grow into so you'd have to get a planter pot that's the next size up from this and a little bit deeper so you'd put a little bit more soil there and tease the roots out with your fingers very gently and allow that to actually then grow into the soil system [Music] so speaking of soil if you don't have soil in your home then you're going to want to bring a bag of soil home with you so that you could repot your plant and again as I had mentioned I generally like to give my plants a little bit of time to acclimate in the house so you could actually leave them in their little nursery pot as you could see here you could even put it in a cache PO which a cache PO is a decorative plant container or you could actually repot them but giving them a little bit of time to acclimatize to your home is probably going to be better for your plant but once you actually are repotting your plant you're going to want to get some soil and you can see that they have some potting soil some perlite and they also have some cactus citrus planting potting mix generally the cactus mixes have a little bit more aeration in them by using some inorganic materials like perlite which is a little bit more like puffed volcanic stone you could see some of it actually falling out here it kind of looks a little bit like styrofoam balls but this is puff volcanic stone that they use for aeration within your soil potting mix and the reason why you want to have aeration in your soil is because it creates a little bit more healthier roots because surprisingly roots actually breathe much in the same way that plant leaves breathe as well so having a little bit more aeration particularly if you're a little heavy-handed on the watering is going to be good for your particular plants on the backs of all potting mediums you'll be able to find the list of ingredients on the back and that's not something that we're going to go deeply into but if you actually want to know what's in your potting mix then you could actually look on the back much in the same way that you would a nutrition label if you're looking at food all right so the next thing we're gonna do is take a look at plant pots there are certain different types of plant pots terracotta is probably one of the most popular it is a super reliable planter pot you want to get one that has a hole on the bottom especially if you're new to growing plants and the reason for that is you want the water to be able to drain from the bottom and of course you have that you need something to put in here like a basin so that it catches some of the water terracotta is porous and that is good for a reason that I'm about to explain to you but it doesn't mean that it's a good thing when you're putting it on top of a wood surface because it will actually leach a little bit of water and probably leave a stain on that would forever so you want to be a little bit more mindful when it comes to that now I have seen and it's not in this store but I have seen actually glazed terracotta basins it actually makes a little bit more sense if you're going to be growing that on a wood surface because it's there to protect the surface so it doesn't get wet underneath one of the things that you could do when you get a terracotta pot because it's porous and actually pulls the water away from the particular plant especially if you've watered it too much is that you could actually soak this in the water for about two minutes and that actually fills all the pores up within the terracotta before you actually plant your plant in it now when you're planting your plant in a terra cotta pot you're going to want to have about one to two inches of soil medium on the bottom and you want your plant to come up right around this rim or a little bit higher up and the reason for that is you don't want it to come up right up to the top because when you water it that water might actually spill over and damage the surface that you're actually have the plant on top of I personally like terracotta just because for that reason that it is porous that it helps suck away some of the moisture for a particular plant especially if you have a plant like a hoya for instance that doesn't like to have its roots sitting in water now if you have something like a little bit more like a maidenhair fern and you might not know this already but a maidenhair fern likes to be in a little bit more of a moister system so you either have to water it a lot more or you could actually use something that's a little bit more like a glazed ceramic or a plastic pot because that maintains the water inside the planter at a higher rate than if you had something porous like terracotta this is actually a great example of something that is a little bit more glazed so it still has the hole on the bottom but it has a glaze on the surface so it's not going to be as porous as terracotta even though it has this kind of like terracotta finish on the inside its glaze on the outside so you're not going to see some of that water being taken out from this particular planter pot but it'll actually retain a little bit more of the water inside of it now something like this it has no hole in the bottom versus something like this which is heavier and as a terra cotta pot and has a hole in the bottom so these are things to kind of consider this planter pot without the hole is something that I would consider more of a cash PO and a cash PO which is spelled spelled a little bit more like cash pot this is more a decorative planter pot so if you have a cash PO like this sometimes you'll want to put like a little basin inside of it so sometimes they'll give you like plastic basins similar to this you'd obviously have to find something that kind of fits the size but you never want your plant sitting in water in a basin it will actually soak that water back up and maybe some of the salts will actually go back into the plant roots so it's it's pretty good in order to be able to have a basin that you could remove and actually spill that out in your sink or wherever you're actually going to pour that water and and then that way it's something that won't be soaked back up into your plant roots or your plants are going to be sitting in kind of wet diaper if you will so you would actually put this is probably not the right size but for demonstration purposes this is what I'm gonna do you would actually put your planter pot in here and keep it within the actual nursery pot so you'd want to have some that's a little bit larger that might stick like out like this in this case this euphorbia is actually too small but for demonstration purposes you kind of see the point that you keep it within the nursery pot you water it the water goes down into the cache PO and doesn't drain out of the bottom now what's the benefit of having something like this versus something like this well I have to tell you that this is a terracotta pot and it's already pretty heavy whereas this is made out of probably fiberglass or something like that and it's super lightweight so if you have to hook this up like several flights of stairs in your apartment then you may want to consider something like this just for the ease of being able to actually carry it because something like this it's just gonna be a little heavy [Music] but let's actually talk to the shop manager here because I want to find out from her what people ask when they're plant newbies and coming in to actually buy a plant get my good side so you've been here for eight months and this store has been here for two years when somebody new comes in to buy a plant what are some of the questions that they ask you what am I not gonna kill what can handle no light no water what's gonna clean the air and not kill my pet okay and it's a lot of questions that is a lot of questions yeah so what are some tips like if I come in and I say you know what plant am I not going to kill so first we want to find out the conditions of the space that the plant is going in and then from there I just asked them to look around and see what they like just visually because a lot of times you can make something work in a space and a lot of the like hard to care for plants are actually pretty easy if you just know like hey don't go overboard with the watering oh this pot needs a drainage hole oh don't put it in direct Sun like really simple things that a lot of people just don't realize right away and so we walk people through how to care for each plant and then we say if you have any questions just call us if it starts to die just pick up the phone and we'll like walk you through what you need to do differently because a lot of times people already have an experience where they kill the plant once and then they kind of lose hope that they can do it again so most of the time it's like reviving people's hope that they can take care of a plant without killing it a lot of times people make the same mistakes over and over again which is over watering or just not waiting this long in between waterings and so a lot of the plants just boil down to let it dry out between waterings or keep the soil slightly moist but not soggy and most plants are like on that spectrum somewhere so if somebody comes into the store ideally like what would what questions would they actually have already answered before they walked in this store in order to be able to find the best plant for them so I would want people to bring photos of their space and bring inspiration photos if there's like a look that they're going for that they like they've seen somewhere else or a plant that you saw in a restaurant or someone's front yard when you were driving just like bring as much information as you can in and then talk to the employees because this is what we love to do we love to like talk to people all day like we have some regulars that come in and just hang out and it's almost like cheers or something where they're like Niner to buy anything necessarily but just to like discuss plants and then they go away having learned something and it's just really nice when people are just like willing to have a conversation and a dialogue and I feel like if you just like take care of and nurture your interest plants then the ideas will come for free in the last two episodes we've learned how to assess our space and what information we should know before going into a plant shop if there's other questions that you have write them in the comments below and in the next special episode we'll see how we can apply what we've learned in real life if you like these back to basics videos then give them a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe to the channel as it helps me produce more videos and if you want to be notified as soon as the videos uploaded then click on the notifications bell to get a complete course on house plant cultivation and care maintenance and more then head over to house plant masterclass calm and be sure to check out my upcoming book how to make a plant love you pre-ordering before July 9th 2019 will get you access to my 50 care house plant spreadsheet and a pre-release of a botany at bedtime video at the Huntington Botanical Gardens details are in the description below [Music]

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 396,935

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me, plants, houseplants, indoor plants, house plants, houseplant care, Houseplant 101, easy houseplants, houseplants for beginners, basic houseplant care, plant shopping, how to shop for plants, best houseplants for beginners, basic houseplant tips, how to care for a houseplant, houseplant haul, repotting houseplants, shopping for plants, plant shop, plant pests, indoor gardening, Houseplant How To

Id: 88PRb9yI_WM

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2019