Maranta Leuconeura Prayer Plant Care and Propagation

hey guys so in today's video I want to tell you about my prayer plants or the moranto Luka naira all the plants that you see here I've been able to harvest and propagate from one little four inch pot which I got about two years ago from the Portland nursery so just for your reference if you're new to my channel please do subscribe but for your awareness I live in Seattle and so I don't get a lot of sunshine and this literally has been one of the fastest growing plants that I own so in the little clip on the screen I'm showing you what it used to look like two years ago and how I originally bought it it was in a four inch pot and very quickly it started to produce more and more leaves you can see it there unfurling a brand new leaf and eventually in this four inch pot the roots started to overgrow and it started you know growing out of its nursery pot and so it was time for me to actually you know I in retrospect I could have probably kept it growing in this four inch pot but because I was concerned about getting the plants about it getting to root bound I decided to repot it and transfer it into two different containers and when I did that I noticed that it wasn't quite as full as the original plant was so as you can see in that little clip it was full and bushy but when I divided them obviously they just came from one main stem and so it wasn't as full at the base of the plant as I wanted however as I came to take care of it more I noticed that the growth not only came from that main stem but it also grouted brand-new leaves within the dirt I forget what type of propagation that's called but in the empty dirt that you see in the pot I'm sorry if I'm not explaining this as articulately as one could but you know what I mean like brand new leaves would come up from the dirt I'll show you in later clips what I mean by that and so as it continued to grow and grow it kind of got long some of the leaves and this is very common to prayer plants but a lot of the leaves do turn brown at the tips let's see yeah see so that leaf right there I'll show you in later clips what I mean but they sometimes can look kind of tattered and so this was the one of the ones that I separated you know and so it grew and grew super long but I think maybe it didn't like being transferred to a new pot because some of the older leaves kind of started to yellow and like I said it just looked really tattered here's a good example of what I was talking about you'll eventually see new leaves unfurl straight from the dirt and so eventually it will get to be more full looking so long as you start trimming the plant back and so that's what I decided to do so here you can see where you need to cut them so I'm getting ready to water propagate this cutting and I'm trying to show you here the brown spots on each of the nodes where roots are going to emerge I'm gonna link a video here where I water propagated a whole bunch of different plants and I want you to see the different sizes and textures of the roots for various plants so that you can kind of gauge which ones need a lot more water and when you should start to Tran for them into soil so I promise you this is one of the easiest plants that you can water propagate it'll probably take a few weeks to start seeing some roots emerge but all you have to do is just stick it in a container of water and roots will come out so again this is also one of the easiest plants I've ever taken care of it really doesn't need hardly anything at all I mean it does like to be on the moist side but other than that there's no special care for the type of soil that you want to use as you can see here I'm just using the general miracle-gro potting mix that you can get at any big-box store so I wait till the roots are about two inches like this and I'll pot it as soon as they grow inches so you can even cut just the leaf part so most of my cuttings have had new brand new leaves unfurling but as you can see here this will grow and I'll show you in a later clip how that's doing there's a couple of them that aren't doing too well but you can cut just one leaf as long as there's a node so I'm showing you here what that those clippings look like now since I've potted it and again this is one of the leaves that I cut with a node and it's starting to from it is starting to emerge a brand new leaf and I was really surprised because I didn't think it was gonna take but as you can see here this el biet it's very tiny it's still producing a brand new leaf and I pretty sure that pointy thing right there that's probably a flower because that's kind of how they come out when they're developing so the rest of the pot looks pretty empty but I promise you over the next few months even though it's not growing season they are going to start popping up in the soil and you can then harvest those little babies to transfer them in a separate pot or just wait for it to fill up the rest of your pot because it does look a little bit barren if I keep it as is so again sometimes especially when the plant is not getting as much humidity as I just mentioned to you it does like to be on the moist side so I think the Browning of the leaves can be attributed to a lack of moisture so especially in the summer and growing months you you're gonna want to miss this plant but I'm telling you for the rest of us that like to overwater our plants you can't go wrong with this you can totally overwater it and it will actually probably like it so in terms of lighting this plant literally does not need much if you don't have any direct sunlight or hardly any sunlight in your living space this is a perfect plant for you because it doesn't even need natural light I brought one of these to work where in the area that I sit there's no there's hardly any natural sunlight it thrives off of that nasty fluorescent office lighting that most of us if you work in an office you know what lighting I'm talking about but it literally thrived from having no direct sunshine I'll show you specifically what plant that is and what it looked like when I first brought it to work but it does not need a whole lot of sunlight that's why I'm saying that as a Seattle light this is a perfect plant for those of you that don't get a whole lot of sunshine in your area or even in your home I'd say that if you have a bathroom that gets a little a little bit of lighting this is a perfect plant to put in there since it does like a very moist environment but it does need some consistent lighting what it's natural or like office lighting so so this is the plants as you saw in past clips so this is a clip where I just wanted to show you where I now keep it so it doesn't really get a whole lot of direct sunlight this is a good 20 feet away from a window but it's still thriving it started to look a lot better when I cut it back significantly so this is the plants that I'm talking about in the little screen you can see what it looked like maybe six seven months ago maybe eight months ago but it was tiny and it was actually one of the babies that emerged directly from the soil and so I separated it from the main plant and I potted it in its own little four inch plant and it has thrived one thing I noticed however is that this particular plant did not produce any flowers so I find that this will bloom throughout the year it'll bloom a lot more during the growing months but even in the winter some blossoms do emerge and so what I tend to do with almost all my plants is whenever I see something flowering right before the blossom starts to bloom I'll cut that I mean I'll snip that part of the plant altogether I'll snip it off and I do that because I want the plant to reserve its energy on producing more leaves so that come growing season it'll have more outlets for more flowers to come out I do that with a lot of our plants especially the oxalis plant that I have which I'll link a video here and I want you to see how crazy that thing has has grown since I got it and I got that plant originally in a two inch two inch pot but anyway as I was saying this plant will thrive off of very low lighting conditions and so that you can see this plan so this is the one of the plants that I've had growing I used to have this planted with some pathos or pothos cuttings but I decided I didn't like the look of it being in the same pot and so I just kind of removed the pothos clippings and then added some more clippings of this same plants the same prayer plant and so why is this called a prayer plant I probably should have mentioned this earlier in the video but this is one of the plants that has a tendency to move a lot throughout the day and so what it does is at night you'll find the leaves kind of folded upwards and you know the kind of mimicking hands folded together as though they're in prayer and that's why it's called the prayer plant but the reason why it does that is to allow for rainwater to get down through the roots so you know how I keep saying that this plant likes a lot of moisture this originates from like rain forest II areas I don't know what country or region in particular but it folds its leaves up in the evening time to allow for that moisture to drain into the soil it also allows or prevents water from collecting on the leaves as bacteria may develop from water still water collecting on the leaves if it's growing in colder climates it also prevents the water collected on the leaves from freezing the plant isn't that crazy a lot of plants actually move throughout the day but this one in particular is known for doing that which is why it's received a common name as the prayer plant so key takeaways from this video is that one this plant loves moisture missed it if you can and water it regularly even in the winter months and - this doesn't need a whole lot of light not to say it doesn't like a lot of light but it doesn't need a lot of light so this is a perfect candidate to bring plants into your office environment or even in bedrooms or bathrooms that don't get as much light as in your bigger living spaces alright guys that's it for me please like this video and if you're new to my channel again please consider subscribing it helps me out a lot too if you give this video a thumbs up because that way I know to continue making more videos like this for you guys okay thanks till next time bye

Channel: Botanibabies !

Views: 112,790

Rating: 4.8691936 out of 5

Keywords: plant mom, plant gang, plant dad, indoor garden, easy house plant, easy houseplant, low light house plant, low light houseplant, urban jungle, indoor jungle, houseplant, house plant, houseplant tour, house plant tour, house plant tips, house plant care, houseplant tips, houseplant care, fast growing plants, easy plants, urban gardening, propagation, easy propagation, crazy plant lady, plant lady, prayer plant, maranta leuconeura

Id: pUm7t3boYbs

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019