Preserving Variegation in Variegated Monstera + Other Plants!

hello everybody glad you could make it my name is Kaylie Allen and welcome to a very long awaited video in this week's video I'm going to show you how to preserve the variegated in a variegated monstera now this can be applied to philodendron as well but I only have a monster in here with me to show you guys but of course you can't extrapolate what I'm saying towards a philodendron I know you guys have been screaming at me for this video and honestly the only reason I hadn't done it yet is because I couldn't find a plant that was reverting but now I have I have here with me you may be able to see it in the frame a less-than-perfect shall we say specimen of variegated monstera so as I mentioned before it can take a little while before your monstera reverts it might not revert all it might just keep on pumping out variegated leaves another one here behind me I don't know how well you could see on the video here obviously I have this rotated in a certain way generally speaking a lot of the leaves look like this to be honest with you it's only very recently that this one here as you can see in the frame has a leaf with minimal variation on it the same node however has produced this leaf here with plenty of variegation on it I don't know how well you can see that there in the frame this is quite reasonable so I'm not quite ready to cut back this monstera but it's definitely showing signs of you know not reversion but diminishing variegation so I'm going to keep an eye on this and should you know the next leaf come out with less variation as this or even the same amount of variation as this given the rest of the plants genetics I'm probably gonna snip snip and you know take some of these leaves off before I talk about you know and show you how to preserve the variation on a monstera there are a few things I would like to very very briefly cover honestly I've covered these before but if you haven't seen the other videos where I mention this then you may not be aware I'm talking in this video today about monstera Bozza Gianna Alba very garter so the white variegated monstera I will say very quickly this also applies to the yellow version it does not however apply to a monstera tie constellation the monstera tie constellation you don't have to worry about a reduction in variation or the plant generally revert so if you're sat there with a tie consolation at home thinking you know should I cut this the answer is no you just got a get out of jail free card so you can sit this one out you don't have to actually do anything with your plans however for us variegated monstera lovers we probably do depending on how your plan is going I must also highlight not only can a plant go you know to green so to speak but it can also go the other way and go for albo now it's important generally when we maintain a balance of variation in our plants we look for around about 50/50 so that is 50% variegation and 50% green basically because without the green we don't have chlorophyll without chlorophyll the plant cannot grow so as much as you don't want all green so basically your variegation dies out you also don't want a full white leaf because that will also just basically just crisp up and die you can't grow these plants if you want any more information on variegated monstera and kind of the pitfalls of it I do have a video that I will link down below basically talking about all kinds of things to do with variegated once there is such as propagating it's how to crop out buying one the whole shebang so if you're interested I will leave that below just to let you know that when you make any cuts to your plant whether that be to propagate it for somebody else or to prune it back or anything you will stunt the growth a little bit the growth will return to normal for your next couple of leaves are not going to be you know to the glory of what this is for example I might get a leaf that doesn't even have splits it might be completely juvenile appearing that comes out of the next node that there's nothing wrong with that it's just if you say it happened don't be alarmed so if you cut your plant and you're maybe you've taken a cutting and you're growing a new leaf from a cutting or perhaps it's just growing a leaf back on the mother plant you may say stunted growth you may say leaves without splits it's absolutely normal and it will return after a while if it doesn't you know return initially so when we look for basically what to propagate or what to prune back well you what you need to kind of look for is a decline in variegation over time if that makes any sense so if I take this plant here and I'm sorry if you can't see you know everything I can see a little bit on the viewfinder obviously this is a very very good leaf this is actually all the 50 percent so this is this is a little bit much it's fine it's got enough to sustain itself but future growth could technically become you know too white so that is one to watch out for however it has progressed up the plant this is still on the okay side we're all right again this we've reached even more you know levels of sectoral so arguably this is increasing on this side however I have a different vine in this plant this plant by the way is actually three smaller plants that's why it's a bushy it's not one single plant but this other vine coming from here has a slightly different story to tell us so here we have some decent variation I really hope you can see this we can have some quite decent variation here then it's it's okay there's more green but it's you know it's fading and then we've got to the point right now where we just have this so what I would say here is there is a decline happening in the level of variegation so I could leave it don't get me wrong I could leave it but it's it's not impossible either but it's very unlikely that this plant is maybe going to produce more variation so there's nothing wrong with waiting to kind of see what happens but if you're you know hyper sensitive or you just think you know what I'm gonna cut this I'm gonna keep it I'm gonna grow it separately and I'm gonna let the mother plant grow back this is probably a time where you might want to do some one as I mentioned before I'm actually not going to cut this plant today I'm going to cut this other plant I have right here so I will try and show you this the best I can I'm actually gonna change camera angles in a minute so I can show you me you know cutting it properly but this is the monstera that I have it's a little bit unfortunate hopefully I don't do anything with my microphone here but if I try and tip it towards the camera you will see here that we start out okay we've got a good level of variegation and then it just it kind of just stops I mean you're not gonna say it on camera now I did take some b-roll that I'm probably inserting for you possibly anyway but there is a very very slim kind of line of variegation going up this stem so I don't personally think that this is going to produce more variation I mean if you can see this leaf here if don't know how close I can hold it up to the camera this is gonna let me but basically that's not going to increase we're now in real danger of losing this variegation Oh pop down the trailer so this is definitely an example where you're gonna want to cut back and see if we can get some of this beautiful white variation back so this is the plant I'm going to be cutting today as I say I'm not gonna cut my big one I'm gonna give it one more chance with another leaf should that diminish I will probably cut that too but I mean I don't know if we've got anything coming out No am I the only person who likes to kind of grope my my petiole to see if there's anything coming out of it but being that you won't be able to see it I'm probably going to have to switch the camera up so I can show you properly so I'm gonna do that now so hopefully you should be able to see things semi clearly so as I mentioned before you need to start looking for a decline in your variegation I will show you once again kind of where up with this plant I'll try and turn around we started off with some good variation I hope you can kind of see that in the frame that we kept on with the good variation again I mean that's not necessarily the right order I think it probably started with this leaf here because it's more juvenile then it's reached this leaf then it's reached this leaf here and even this leaf here but once we reach the top two leaves here there is a very very slim sliver of variegation in this stem I don't know how easy that is to say on camera there again I've shown you b-roll already probably of the situation with this plant but basically these top two leaves aren't really useful to us now I'm not saying to chuck them out you know throw them away I'm saying keep them you know you can prune back your plants because you think the variegation is declining or it's increasing or whatever but you could still propagate the bit that you put away I'm not saying you don't get rid of it so what we're gonna do here it is the simplest thing in the world guys all you got to do is find a node if you remember from my other videos you need a node in order to grow foliage so a node on this plant here I'll show you the best I can hopefully I can zoom in if you know this isn't quite far enough in this is a node here there's also a node right here if I tip that up you can see a node right there so in terms of visible what you can see right now there is a node here then there is a node here now I could cut this node here okay I could I'll show you the leaf I'm talking about right now it's got like a tiny flake on it I could cut this off at this point here okay but there's not a lot of point because also the node beneath has this growing out of it so if i propagate it from here i'm not really doing much good to be honest this is still green you know the variegation and the next leaf produced its you haven't got great chances have you really not only that I don't have an aerial route here that doesn't mean that you can't you know propagate without an aerial route but your propagations are going to be like ten times more successful if you use an aerial route so if I look further down I hope you can see that I'm gonna have to tilt it right here you can see the next node that also you know has this growing from it here so the next node does have an aerial route now that is where I would probably be interested in cutting because once I remove that we're back to the part of the plant here that you know has some variation so that next time when the plant grows back we have a bit of a shot so what I would typically do again I'm think I'm just gonna have to tip it let me try and move this back a little bit here it's not you know the best way of showing you but I'm doing my best guys so about an inch under this node here it's probably a good place to cut I think that allows you know if it starts to rot or something if we put it in moss and it starts to rock we can shave a little bit more off and save you know the plant from rock should that happen so if you have you know quite large internodal spacing which basically means the space between these nodes and a monstera always cut your pudding and give it some kind of extra room or some extra insurance if you will like for example right here if I'm gonna cut this I'm not gonna cut it right beneath the node because one this is going to callus so it's gonna produce you know some some brown hard you know baki kind of vibes anyway and it's gonna kind of callus over there wouldn't be much point cutting it right up here when I could just cut it a little bit further down in order to give this plant more of a chance it would still need to be rude up to you know here passed the note but generally speaking if you can leave a little bit of extra stem on leave it on if you know what I mean so the only viable places to cut technically on this plant are here and yeah again tip it further forward here right there where my fingers wiggling but really the best place to cut in this instance would be right here so I'm actually gonna do that now with a handy little pair of these so I'm gonna tip it forward so you guys can see it's probably gonna fall off camera I'm cutting it here I can see an aerial root beneath I don't think you're gonna get to see this to be honest guys but there's an aerial route just on the stem that's kind of useless but it's kind of beyond the point where I'd cut it anyway so I'm just gonna cut this here I'm going to leave this root here because it's gonna be excellent for propagation I'm going to cut a little bit below the node just to give it some insurance I'm going to cut right here and I'm going to remove it so right now we can see that our plant looks slightly miserable it's got little bit of a stump there let's see if I can show you that little stump there will callus over if you leave it you know to air dry which why wouldn't you on your mother plant why wouldn't it air dry but you need to do the same thing for this cutting here and this actually counts for just propagating monstera let alone preserving derogation I guess when you preserve variegation you're kind of doing both anyway because really yeah I mean you could throw this out but I mean who realistically is going to you know I'm saying we're obviously gonna keep it so make sure that these calluses over it will give you much more of a chance of success in your cutting now what you could do to let this callus over is quite simply just leave it out leave it out in the air for an hour or two I promise you nothing will happen to this plant if you leave this you know on a table or whatever for an hour as long as it's not in a you know in the Arizona desert in 90-degree heat and it's not totally dry if it's just in a household environment I promise you if you leave this on a table for an hour you're not gonna see any difference in the plant so just leave it for an hour let it callus over and let it go a little bit brown and you can either stick it in water or moss I prefer moss to propagate from there or you can actually seal the bottom with wax and then pop it in water now a lot of people have asked me previously you know well what kind of wax are you using honestly if you know little tea light candles I just use the wax from those I set a candle going for maybe about you know 40 minutes an hour however long it takes I blow it out and then I dip in you know the end the little knob into the wax and I make sure that it's set basically I'm not shy with it and I do kind of seal up as far as I can as well that should really really reduce the risk of rot with your cuttings it's not going to completely eliminate it but it will definitely reduce it so now even though this plant certainly doesn't look amazing it's got more of a chance to bring back that variegation and really all we have now is a cutting for a friend or a second one stare at for you as well when you cut yours I mean it's quite realistic that your leaves will still be variegated right like mines kind of a frame now but the leaf that I mentioned before with like a little chunk of white that's still a variegated monstera you know it's just it's not necessarily as viable as you know your mother plant probably now is so I mean these ones are pretty much green apart from literally like a Fleck there but basically that's all you do to propagate a variegated monster look for a decline look for a good place to cut it you don't have to care about aerial roots and everything else if you're not necessarily going to keep the plant if you are going to keep the plant try and find an aerial root it will give you a better chance of success with your propagation because these aerial roots are really really really tough so now I can easily put this in a vial of water I'd actually put it in the center of my table that might look quite nice and that's that really simples so that was how to preserve variegation in a variegated monstera I guess the simple answer is use your judgment look for a decline try and preserve a percentage of variegation on your plant don't let it get too much where it goes white and don't let it get to you know little where it goes green basically and you lose the variegation altogether because what is the point of having a very good monstera if you lose the beautiful variegated thank you very very much for watching if you've got any suggestions for future videos for me to do please leave them down below and I will see you next week bye guys

Channel: Kaylee Ellen

Views: 95,926

Rating: 4.915503 out of 5

Keywords: kaylee ellen, kaylee ellen plants, preserve variegation in plants, maintain variegation in plants, how to keep variegation, variegated rare plants, propagating variegated monstera, pruning variegated monstera, variegated monstera cuttings, variegated monstera reverting, variegated plants revertin, variegated plants reverting, variegated monstera deliciosa, kaylee ellen variegated monstera, monstera albo, keep monstera variegated, maintaining variegation, selecting variegation

Id: ffuqN54iono

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 29 2019