Hello, if you're not new to my channel
then by now you're probably aware of my plant problem. It's taking over the house.
It all started when I really got into minimalism and I got rid of heaps of
stuff but then my place felt so empty and I found that plants started to bring
that life and that relaxation back into the space. I feel like a room with
greenery in it makes me feel calm and the act of taking care of the plants
itself is brilliant for your mindfulness. I'd also like to thank Squarespace for
sponsoring today's video. I will tell you guys more about them at the end of the
video but for now let's talk some more about plants. So I did a plant video a
little while ago which I'll link up here and probably in the description box,
which was more like you know how to pick the right plans for your space and some
suggestions, some of my favorite ones, um, but today I wanted to talk through
some tips to help you make them thrive in your home. The first thing that I
wanted to talk about is forcing growth with a plant, and to do that we're going
to trim and we're going to propagate. So propagation is where you create new
little baby plants out of the plants that you already have and trust me it becomes a
problem. If you find that you look at your plants and they're looking a little
bit leggy (which is where the stems are growing but they're bare for leaves), it
might be a look that you want to go for - I feel like in some cases it can look
cool but other times you might want to have your plant looking more full
because it can just look a little bit more healthy and less untidy. But when it
comes to plants there's really no rules - if you want them to grow long
and thin, and like strands and like wrap them around
a window, go nuts.. if you want them to be like thicker and well put together
do it that way. You can style them different ways and I'll show you some
examples as well. I have some monstera's that look like this and some monstera's
that look like this so you can set them up however you like.
Now, when you trim your plant or when you take off cuttings for propagation your
plant is going to sprout out a new shoot or a new stem at the site that you've
made that cut. It's not going to come up in the exact same way, it's more likely
to come out from the side but it can help encourage new growth particularly
if you have plants in a lower light area. So when you're pruning you always want
to prune just above a node of a plant. This is the area where a leaf or a
branch meets a stem. These are really really obvious in plants like
Pothos - you can see them sticking off so I'll show you an example of one of those.
These nodes have buds which can sprout again once the plant has been cut.
Obviously if you are trimming a plant try not to cut everything off but, you
know, sometimes depending on the kind of plant you can get pretty aggressive with
it and you can take a lot of the leaves off - you've just got to make sure that
you leave some there so they can still photosynthesize. Another thing that you can do is combine
multiple plants into one pot. This will make it look like you're some kind of
growing genius and you just have amazing lucious plants. I'm just going to make a little bit of room in the soil, obviously, because there's only one guy in here. As you can see, it's got a really good, healthy root system. So this is a really simple hack to make
your plant look much healthier with minimal effort. You just wanna make sure
that both plants that you're putting into the one container have a really
good root system. It works better if you've already established both plants
and then you combine them together but of course if you propagate little
cuttings and trimmings you can include them too.
Now to encourage growth, particularly on plants that need to get really tall or
on plants that are climbers we want to give them some support. You've probably seen
the typical stakes like this. You can get or make moss totems, you can use a plank
of wood, you can use the standard wooden dowels or if you want to encourage your
plant to sort of grow up a wall you can use clear hooks.
I use these command strip hooks because they're renter friendly - you can take
them off without damaging the paint later. Most climbing plants will want to
have support, you'll see that they will grow bigger leaves and they'll grow much
stronger if they're given something to climb up and around. So a lot of you are
probably familiar with this plant, this is a Pothos. This bedroom's not the highest
light it's you know reasonably low but this plants still doing pretty well. But
these are the size of the leaves - pretty small and I'll show you that
compared to a larger one. Here's an example of a Pothos on a totem, so it's
almost unrecognisable. It's common nickname is a Swiss cheese plant. As you can see, this
one has just been growing out of a pot trailing down. It's not in the highest
light area so it's a bit leggy and the leaves are really small and now we'll
compare that to one that is right near a bright window and it's on a totem, like,
it's so much more supported, it's got a large amount of light in this area and
it is just thriving. Now, another easy way to benefit your
plants is to give them more light. So obviously plants are going to tolerate
low light but they're going to do better with more and by more I don't mean just
bright, burning light all day long - I mean that lovely indirect sunlight. This
is gonna be three main factors that determine your lighting. Firstly, how far
is the plant from a window? Is it right up against it? Is it a few meters away?
Because you've got to remember that light falls off. Next, which direction is
your window facing because different directions are going to determine
different kinds of sunlight throughout the day. And then, three - what's in front
of the window? Is there like a sheer curtain over the top of it? Which, you
know what, by the way on a west-facing window that can work quite well or are there
plants outside? Is there a building next door? Anything like that is going to affect the type of light which is coming in.
Today might be a bad example because it's very rainy and very dark. This is
one of my North facing windows so we have a few little North facing windows.
If you're in the Northern hemisphere your North facing windows are going to
have the weakest light intensity and they're going to have a lot of shade
throughout the day. If you're in the Southern hemisphere, however, the North
window is going to get the most amount of Sun all day but I do have like,
further away, lots of trees and things in the direction of this window and my
other North windows which are on like that side of the building have other
buildings nearby so for me the light isn't as intense. This is one of my East
facing windows. So most of our house is positioned South-East. East facing
windows are going to give you a moderate amount of light so it's not gonna be too
harsh and you're probably not gonna have any afternoon light coming in. So I find
it's the perfect amount of light for plants that love that morning light or
like to have bright indirect light for a fair amount of the day. We don't have any
cover over our patio area there so it leads us to get pretty clear light most
of the day through these windows and as a side note I don't have any West facing
windows. West facing windows are going to give you some pretty harsh
sunlight, particularly in the Summer months. So if you live somewhere that's
quite warm, you might find that if you have plants too
to the window and it's West-facing they'll get a little bit sunburned. Okay
and this is one of our South-facing windows. So the other one is in our
bedroom which is directly downstairs and in Mitch's office. So this light, if
you're in the Southern hemisphere, your Southern light is going to be fairly
weak, like it's not going to have a high intensity to it. If you're in the
Northern hemisphere the Southern light is going to give you the most bright,
indirect light all day long. Now something to note, if you are in the
Southern hemisphere of the world make sure that during Winter your plants are
getting enough light. So it might even mean moving them a little bit closer to
the window because the light intensity and the light duration does drop in the
Winter months. Feed your plants and you don't have to just do this in Spring. I
like to really go around and look at them and see who's growing and who's not.
If they're growing I'm going to make sure to feed them if they're starting to
get a little sprout I just make sure that they get a little bit of food. Not
too often, every few months is totally okay. There are three main things which I
like to use for food for my plants. So I'll use diluted fish emulsion which yes
it is a little bit smelly but you're diluting it. Compost, now you can use both
the liquid and you can use processed compost mulch itself. So compost is
slow-releasing you want to put it in the soil or if you have the compost liquid
you can dilute that in water. So I'm talking like a capful to a litre of water, you really don't need much and don't pour it straight on the plants as is.
Make sure to dilute it and I also like to use worm castings from my worm farm.
So in order for your plants to look their best you're going to want to
fertilize them. As plants grow, yes they photosynthesize but you've got to
remember they're also taking up nutrients from the soil. So if you have a
plant that's been sitting in the same pot for years and years and years and
you're finding that the growth is getting a bit stagnant and maybe the
roots are overtaking the pot.. it's time to upgrade, put it into a new one, put
some slow-releasing fertilizer like compost in there as well as some fresh
soil. So many soils already have fertilizer in them Now this is something that I feel like a
lot of people forget to do especially if you live near like a road or a
construction site or something you want to be dusting the leaves of your plants.
I think we all know by now plants photosynthesize. They use sunlight to
make some of their food so cleaning your plant is going to help them and plus it
just makes them look so much better. You'll see the difference here when I'm
cleaning some of my monstera leaves. Now how you do this is up to you but I like
to use two different methods. I'll either use castile soap, just a little bit
diluted in water. I'm talking like a quarter of a teaspoon into a watering
can or you can use white oil. So this is sold also as like an insect killer and a
leaf shine. It kind of does both and I like to take a cloth and wipe the leaves
with the white oil. If you're using the castile syrup mixed in with water - do not
use hot water and do not use freezing cold water. You want it just at a mild
temperature. If the water is too hot or too cold it can injure your plants
leaves. Now your plants are going to want to grow towards the light - look at that,
they're all facing the window. So you've got to remember to rotate them so they
grow evenly otherwise you'll probably find that the plant starts to grow
lopsided towards the direction of the light. Okay, my next tip is to help with the
thickness and density of the plant, so see this one how it's just got a few
little bits here and that is simply like one node coming into the soil, which is
supporting all of that so as this starts to grow it's probably going to start to
look a bit thinner on top and not so thick. This is a different variation of
the same plant, see how many nodes are in the soil here. I'm just dropping soil
all over my table, god damn, but the thickness of that
compared to that is very different. So, common advice that I've seen is people
they say oh you know just take a little snip of it and like put it straight in
the soil and it will grow but sometimes these cuttings don't always take and if
we do cut this plant like let's say we cut it here it's still only gonna sprout
out one extra vine of growth it's not gonna thicken it at all. We're, you know,
relying on the cutting to thicken it so what I'm gonna do instead is take this
long piece of growth, see how it's got all these nodes on it.. I'm actually gonna
pin these nodes down into the soil. So the way I'm gonna do that is take some
pretty standard bobby pins, these ones, and you don't want to really strangle
the plant so you're just going to loosen them a little bit so let's pull it apart -
that's a lot better. Now this is great to do as well if you have a plant which you
notice is getting quite leggy so if it's getting a long stem and it doesn't have
any leaf growth on the top. So what we're gonna do is wrap it around, see how we've
got all this space in the soil, this plant doesn't because it's so thick.
We've got all this space in the soil so I'm gonna wrap it around and make sure
the nodes here are pointing down and yes the plant will look shorter for a while
but that's fine. So we're just going to take out that bobby pin - press it down
into the soil. Now when nodes come into contact with
the soil like this they have potential to root and then create new growth. So you can see already that's looking a
lot more dense than it was before and now all these nodes that are facing and
like pressed into the soil they have the potential to grow some more roots so as
this plant continues to grow it looks much thicker. And now, keep in mind
you don't always have to do that like you don't have to have them looking
thick like this, like if you want something like a trailing plant or you
want it to look more leggy you can do that too and you can let it grow like
that - there's no rules. Now this one is one of my favorite ones. I get DM's
all the time asking how do you get rid of gnats? How do you stop gnats from being
in the house and especially when you have like.. this is one room of my house,
so when you have a lot of plants like there is the potential for bugs to be
there. Firstly make sure that your plants aren't just sitting in water, they're not
really gonna like that anyway so if you've watered something take the drip
tray a few hours later, empty it out and make sure that nothing is too soggy.
Gnats seem to like to go into moist soil as the larvae feed off the fungus which
grows in moist soil and this is it, this is the tip, the tip is not getting rid of
the water obviously. Ceylon cinnamon. Ceylon cinnamon is true
cinnamon so if you're going into the supermarket don't just get the regular
cinnamon in the spice section. I know it's usually at health food
stores, like you have to go out of your way to find it usually but I buy like a
big bag from the health food store. It's called Ceylon cinnamon or true
cinnamon and you can actually sprinkle this on top of the soil. So you don't
want to mix it all the way through you just want to sprinkle it on top of the
soil and it will deter the gnats from laying their eggs in there. It'll help a
little bit with drying off the soil and it will help to kill any of the fungus
that the larvae like to feed on. So I like to do this in my bigger plants like
I have this one monstera which is huge. The pot, I need to weigh it, but it is
definitely over 50 kilos perhaps below 70 kilos.. it's really heavy. So there's
a lot of soil, so there's a lot of chance for that soil to stay moist, so I have to
make sure that every couple of weeks I'm going and putting cinnamon on top of the
soil just do deter the gnats. If you do this regularly to your big plants you won't have a problem with them. Now we're going to clear up the dead leaves. I feel like I've seen advice before which is
like leave the dead leaves on the soil because the plant will use it. The plants
already used the nutrient from that leaf as a leaf turns yellow and it starts to
die off, the minerals are being reabsorbed into the plant already. When
it's gone brown and it's crispy you can either take it off at that point or if
it's dropped into the soil take it away from the soil. It's not mulch, it doesn't
have the ability to aerate and breakdown like it would outside. Outside there's so
many little insects and things which are going to eat that and then they're going
to excrete that and that's what's gonna help create mulch for the soil. It's not
the dead leaf itself and the reason I'm saying this is because if you leave what
the dead leaves on the soil you're going to attract bugs and I know so many of
you don't want bugs in your plants cuz I get messages about it all the time. So
clean them up, make sure there's no dead leaves sitting
on top of the soil. And I want to thank Squarespace again for allowing me to
bring you guys today's video. So I've been using Squarespace for around six years
now to host both my websites, both the Eat Run Lift blog and my lifestyle
blog which is RachelAust.me - I find the platform incredibly easy to use. Look how
simple it is to format and make a lovely blog post. So they've got heaps of
different features that you can use such as the drag and drop, you can duplicate
your posts so that you can keep a similar format throughout everything on
your blog and as well as that they've already got heaps of different templates
that you can use to make sure that your branding looks sleek and professional. So
if you're someone who has a blog or you're looking at starting a website or
something for e-commerce check out Squarespace it's got such simple
solutions and I will give you guys a 10% discount so just jump onto that URL
that's on the screen or I'll also leave it linked in the description box and
you'll get 10% off your first Squarespace purchase so give it a go
today it is simple to use. I hope you found some of
these helpful. If you want more looks at my plants I post them all the time on
my Instagram story, so and jump on over to my Instagram which is @rachelaust
obviously I'm not a plant channel, I'm not a plan expert but I have been into
them for quite a while. These are tips which I found incredibly useful so I
thought maybe you could apply them as well. If you're still here
leave me a comment and how many plants do you have? I don't even know anymore,
I'm pretty sure the number is like over 100. I've lost count, that's okay,
but I hope you guys are well and I hope you're taking some time to enjoy your
plants and be mindful and look after them and enjoy yourself. I'll catch up
with you guys in my next video or over on Instagram if you want to catch me
there. Bye :)
