Hi everyone thanks so much for being
here my name is kat and i make houseplant videos here on Good
and Planty! If you just so happen to absolutely love this video please
consider liking it, commenting, subscribing,
or following me on instagram, all of these things help me grow
my channel like a plant. Today we are talking about the
monstera deliciosa (obviously) but first i wanted to give a very
special shout out to one of my sweetest subscribers. So,
shout out to Millie, thank you so much for supporting my channel,
you are the best, and i hope you enjoy this video! Okay, so like i said, we are
going to be talking about the monstera deliciosa today,
in all of its houseplant glory. I will be going over
water, light, soil, humidity, propagation, how to get splits, and all
that stuff. So, if that is of interest to you,
then keep watching. Some basic overview of the monstera
deliciosa: It is an extremely popular house plant
(duh) and it is an epiphyte with aerial roots which i will get to
later. These plants can flower and fruit which you'll hear about if you read
about the monstera deliciosa, but that is extremely rare in the home–
like probably will not happen to you. So
don't worry about doing that but these care tips will help you get
the holes and slits that you probably want in your monstera. The only thing i
will point out about this house plant is that even if you buy it small
these plants grow extremely large- clearly.
Be mindful of that if you're bringing it into your home but i will also
share a tip for stunting a monstera's growth
if it is a plant you want to keep a bit smaller. Okay so now let's jump into the
care of monstera deliciosas. Water! Monstera deliciosas do like to stay
fairly dry with like a touch of moisture. I
tend to water my monstera when it gets to
just below the moist mark on my moisture meter. I definitely recommend getting
a moisture meter but another way that you can tell when a monstera
is thirsty is its leaves will start to droop a little bit
and they will be pretty soft so you can kind of bend them easily.
Whereas when they are hydrated, they'll be a little bit more stiff.
If you are over watering your monstera you will be able to tell because the
leaves will be turning yellow and soft but on top of that
you'll probably also finding some mushiness and dark brown
black spots on your plants and that is a sign of root rot.
And basically what's happening is your plant is rotting.
So if you're kind of seeing some funky signs some rotting it's probably a sign
of over watering. If you are underwatering your
plant there will be some similarities in the symptoms your
leaves will probably be turning yellow and soft
but you'll probably find a little bit more of a brownish color
and some crisping on the edges because the plant is dry.
Light! Okay so monsters are actually great house plants because they do well
in a broad range of light. It kind of just depends on your expectations for
the plant. The only thing the monstera does not
like is direct sun, so just be careful if you are going for
a little bit of higher light, that you're not putting it completely in
direct sunlight. If you want faster growth i do definitely recommend
leaning towards the stronger light situation.
Again, just be careful of direct light. And also if you're moving it from a
lower light area you're probably going to want to slowly increment
it up so that it can acclimate to a little bit of a brighter light situation.
If you go ahead and move it from low light straight to like a south
facing window, even if it's indirect, you'll probably
still scare the plant a little bit. I have mine kind of in between a south
facing and an east-facing window so it does get
plenty of light but it is a little bit of a shaded area
and i have no scorching on the leaves but plenty of
slits. So that is the key to slits and holes:
lots of sun. For light i'm also going to recommend
that you clean these leaves because as you can see they get pretty big
and will collect dust over time. So maybe once a week, maybe once every
other week, depending on what your schedule is like
just go around and clean off your monstera leaves. I talked about the
leaf cleaning solution that i make/use in a soothing sunday recently
so i will link it up here in case you want to go check it out. If the plant is
getting too much sun you'll probably be able to tell because it'll look a little
chlorotic– losing some of that bright green color–
and burning. You'll see some crisping that'll
look like burning. And if it's not enough light you will
probably see pretty slow growth and again not big
leaves with any holes or slits. To get those holes in
slits you're going to want to do optimal conditions and light is probably one of
the most important ones. Soil and repotting! My number one tip for
the monstera deliciosa is to not repot it unless it's
absolutely bursting out of the pot. Monsteras
love to be root bound so even though they grow really fast and you'll
probably see some roots starting to poke out of
the drainage hole pretty fast, don't repot it until you know
there's roots just pouring out of the bottom or they start coming out of the
top and the plant is actually declining. When
you do repot your plant, i recommend doing it in the
spring or early summer time and only go up about an
inch or two. I like to pot mine up in a mixture of
regular organic potting soil, perlite, a little bit of mosquito bits, and then
some orchid bark because it is epiphytic and i do put mine in a terra
cotta pot, but i know that a lot of people
do like to keep it in a nursery pot and put it in like a little cover pot. It's
kind of up to you. I just prefer the porousness of terracotta. I am a
terra cotta gal for sure. While you are repotting your monstera,
you'll probably have to decide if you want to stake
up the monstera and let it grow upwards or just kind of let it sprawl out and
grow however it wants to. If you're looking for those holes and
fenestrations i definitely recommend staking it up. It
will also be a big space saver if you train it to climb up
rather than out. My plant it has the slits in it
but i think if i wanted those little tiny holes i probably would have to
stake it up and also give it some more time because
those holes and slits come with maturity and i did get this plant
not super small but it was only like an eight inch pot or something
so that will be like the next step for this plant. However, if you
are out of space and your monstera is eating up your room
and you want to stump the growth what you can do is actually
just–do not repot it at all keep it in the pot size that it's
in and that you can work with– and just prune it
back kind of aggressively because they can get kind of crazy. And the last
thing i'm going to talk about in repotting
is aerial roots. Aerial roots are roots that grow
out of the soil and they will pop out of nodes.
So you can either leave the aerial roots to grow out as
is you can kind of wrap them up the stake that you
pot up with your monstera or you can completely chop them off
it will not harm the plant. If you leave them to grow
you can mist them and you can also water your plant through the aerial
roots a little bit but i just kind of let mine hang and i
clip them back just a little bit once in a while
if i notice some rot starting to form. Humidity and
temperature! So this is going to be a pretty quick and easy category there is
nothing fancy to this. They do like pretty average home
temperatures and maybe even a little bit warmer
probably 65 to 85 degrees fahrenheit. As for humidity, they do really
appreciate higher humidity but it's not like crucial if you
catch my drift. You can give them a humidifier if you want but
my monstera has grown a lot and it's pretty far from my humidifier.
If you want to see faster growth get a humidifier is kind of what i'll say.
Fertilizer! Like i have said like 50 times already,
these plants grow like crazy. They just they grow massive. So, as you
can imagine, they definitely want food. You will want
to fertilize your monstera during the growing season:
spring/ summer. And you've heard me say it a
million times if you're a subscriber, but i use
espoma's organic, balanced, all-purpose fertilizer and i dilute it
in a gallon of water and i give it to my plants
during watering time every two weeks. So sorry if you're a subscriber and have
heard that for the tenth time but that's what i use! And it is linked down
below if you want to check it out. Propagation! Propagations are fantastic
with this plant and extremely easy. My favorite
method is to water propagate but you can also do soil propagation here
and probably sphag too. I think sphag works with pretty much anything.
For any of these methods you are going to want to find a
node and just cut below the node because that is where
roots are going to grow out of. If you put the propagation in water,
you're just going to want to switch out that water at least once a week.
And if you put it in soil, you are going to want to keep
the soil moist probably for the first week or two. Same with the spagh.
This plant would also do well with air layering,
i think, but i haven't tried that so i'm not going to speak on it
but i'm just putting it out there if you want to look into it more yourself.
Air layering is probably a good option for this plant.
Okay so that's gonna be it for today's video!
Please drop down any monstera tips or questions down below in the comment
section and i will see you in my next video bye!
