Pilea peperomioides Care & Propagation — Plant One On Me — Ep 088

hey guys it's summer rain from homestead Brooklyn and I'm gonna be talking to you about Pylea peppery IDs care today we'll go over a little bit of the history what kind of lighting and watering regime a little bit of the fertilizing schedule as well as how to propagate this plant now if you know anything about Pylea pepper annuities is that this was so difficult to get our hands on here in the United States for so long it's very common in Europe as a matter of fact I got this plant when it was very little in the Netherlands and I had it mailed over to me right around the time when these were going for like 60 or 70 or 80 dollars here in the United States in Netherlands these were going for like $2 $3 $4 so the demand was here but the supply was not but now the supply is here and these plants I've seen four seven eight nine dollars even at my farmers market which you wouldn't have found that even four months ago so I think now a lot of us actually have this plant it's commonly known as a UFO plant largely for its saucer shaped leaves also called Chinese money plant and also the friendship plant which I particularly like because it propagates itself very easily which I'll be showing you today and you could actually share it with friends which is how a lot of people ended up getting their Pylea pepper annuities in the first place so firstly let's go over just the morphology of this plant now if you'll notice first it's got these really saucer shape circular leaves the other thing you'll notice and again probably from the species name peppery Oya teas kind of sounds like peperomia and i think when people kind of looked at this plant they said oh this leaf has this peperomia like leaf and i just want to give you a comparison here so this one is peperomia polly bought ria or raindrop peperomia so you could see kind of like a very similar kind of leaf and then this one is the pepper watermelon peperomia and you could see again very similar has this kind of Pelt 8 which means she shaped or circular shaped leaf and if you turn on the back you'll see that the petiole or the stem that connects the leaf is actually creating this kind of shield flattened shape leaf so I just wanted to kind of pull out these peperomia just so you could see the similarities there but something that I've never seen my Pylea peppery IDs do quite yet is flower and actually looking at the flowers could help you tell what kind of genus this plant belongs to and believe it or not this plant belongs to the nettle family which is at a Casey so the the flowers have a very odd occasion a word a nerd acacia flower and that's how you could really tell and place this plant in the proper genus now I've never been to the place where this plant actually grows but it's traditionally found in the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces which is a pretty mountainous region if I'm not mistaken within China its elevation is probably around on average 1,900 meters and this is found growing in forests but if I didn't even know any of that information of the Pylea pepper moieties what's really interesting is just how to observe what this plant looks like if you get up really close to this plant you'll see that it has these semi succulent stems and also these petioles which have very peperomia like look there's semi succulent and it has these leaves that has this kind of waxy Sheen to it and oftentimes when you see something semi succulent succulent it would tell me that this plant is really used to drying out so if you are bringing this into your home having it dry out between waterings is probably a good idea because if this is growing in a mountainous area may be under forests it might not be getting a tremendous amount of rain water you know perhaps it's growing in some craggy substrate that the water comes it grips on to it for a little bit and then the water is gone also what the wax enos of the leaves tell me is that maybe it tries to hold on to its water because when there's a waxy sheen on the leaf it prevents the moisture from trance firing too much so generally for houseplant people you know giving this plant bright somewhat indirect light like a lot of houseplants like is probably the best medicine although I've actually grown it in northeast facing windows and also about a couple feet away from my south west facing window one of the things to note about this plant is I'm actually showing you this and it's very leafy on this side but if I turn it around you'll notice that it's not so leafy on this side and what I actually need to do is face this side towards the window so it doesn't just all lean into one direction because obviously the leaves are leaning towards the light and so you just want to be mindful to actually rotate your plant in the window that you're giving it now if you're giving it this bright indirect light then you'll want to make sure that you're watering it appropriately to the light that you're giving it if you're giving it a little bit more of an intense light you're going to want to want to water it more frequently I water mine every 3 or 4 days and it's getting into fall right now so this will be actually the last time I'm gonna be fertilizing this plant I fertilize it almost like once a month and I'm using s pama's organic indoor house plant feed now this is organic it's not a synthetic fertilizer so you're not going to like really overdo it but generally you want to use one pour per quart so if I'm just gonna do a quick watering of this plant I'll just do it relatively generously and I'll talk a little bit more about the soil that I'm using in here because as I had mentioned this likes to dry out between watering typically you could use a standard potting mix like the s Poma potting mix but I also like to add perlite to the mix now if you've ever seen perlite you might be like Oh what are those little styrofoam white balls but it's not it's actually puffed volcanic stone so it's really lightweight and very airy and it's actually nice to mix in with your regular soil your gardening soil is fine but if you have a tendency to overwater it's also nice to amend it with a little bit more perlite and I we chat with a lot of growers and we joke and I'm like how much soil do you actually add to your perlite because a lot of growers like to add more perlite than they do soil because it's really important for roots to have that air and and not asphyxiate the roots and the other thing you'll notice is that it's rhizomatous so it actually spreads by underground rhizomes when they spread by rhizomes I always look at that as like this is the plant safety net it's actually cloning itself because if it can't find a partner in order to be able to propagate and create a new Pylea pepper mooa tees here's the safety net where it's actually cloning itself and spreading in this kind of understory or wherever it's actually growing and that's why it's called a friendship plant because they set out these little pups at the base of the stem and these are the pups that we're actually going to be propagating and planting up elsewhere so we're gonna propagate this plant now this little plant has been giving me lots of little baby pops off of it so what you want to do is you get a sharp blade like a knife and what you want to do is actually cut the small baby plant as close to the mother stem as possible it's not going to have any roots on it but it doesn't matter because we're gonna be potting it up and this plant easily roots so I'm just gonna slice it right here and get the plant off it came off very easily and that's what it looks like nothing nothing too fancy you could let them stay on the mother plant like I did with these and they get almost as big as the mother plant but otherwise if you especially if you want to share something you could just cut it off right here it doesn't have any roots on it but what we're going to do simply put this plant down right here and I'm going to pop this up in this little pot right here so what I'm gonna do is actually get some of this soil just pop that up and just use a little bit of the perlite as well that I can mix through and again you don't have to use the perlite but I always like to add just a little bit extra because it adds a little bit more raishin particularly as these plants start to develop their roots and then I'm also going to be using this organic biotin starter from ass Poma what I like about this is this is like kind of the prebiotics or probiotics that you use after you've had some antibiotics and it's killed off all that beneficial bacteria a lot of the soil is sterile so this has basically got helpful fungi and bacteria that you could use that helps plants particularly when you are propagating them or potting them up or if you want a plant to bloom this just gives a little quick starter mix so it's it kind of acts as a very light natural fertilizer so I'm just gonna mix that in with the soil and all you need to do is put a little hole in the middle and then I'm gonna pot it up just like that and you could also tent this up with some plastic around it and keep the humidity relatively high and put this in some indirect light but you don't even need to do that in many cases I would just even pot it back up in here and it would grow surprisingly well sometimes these bigger guys shade it so it's also nice to propagate these little babies up in their own separate container for a little while okay guys so I hope that was very helpful in your Pylea pepper meua teas care and of course if you like these episodes then don't forget to subscribe to the channel and you can follow along on my daily journey on my blog at homestead brooklyn calm and on instagram at homestead Brooklyn see you next week you

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 646,474

Rating: 4.9461694 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me, plants, houseplants, indoor plants, garden, gardening, house plants, houseplant care, Pilea peperomioides, Pilea peperomioides care, Pilea peperomioides propagation, Pilea peperomioides repotting, Pilea peperomioides cutting, Pilea peperomioides curled leaves, Pilea peperomioides youtube, UFO plant care, Friendship plant care, Chinese money plant, how to care for a Pilea peperomioides, how to propagate a Pilea peperomioides

Id: 4g6VLUZuzn4

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2018