Snake Plants (Sansevieria) : A Complete Care Guide!

[Music] welcome back everybody this is Amanda from plant arena yeah I'm standing in the middle of a bunch of snake plants Sansevieria because I'm gonna do a complete care guide on them I know I've done one before but I don't think I really got into detail so I'm gonna break it up in sections talk about soils talk about light talk about growth stuff like life stuff for them so let's just get started and learn a little bit more about snake plants mother-in-law's tongue this is something else it's like vipers bow hemp yes I never say it but let's just get started on it there's gotta be like 70 species out there but not generally sold and commercially so this video we're gonna talk about the ones that are generally sold in your greenhouses and your plan shops that are readily available I know there's more and more unusual ones coming to the market because rare plants it's a thing it's a big thing and they're harder and harder to find so we're gonna talk about the ones that you can get because why talk about like a unicorn plant you're probably never gonna find is that's frustrating let's start with light what kind of light do these plants do best in and quite frankly I know they're labeled often as low light plants but I just want to clarify something low light plants are just low light tolerant and yes these snake plants can do very very well in low light conditions I'm not talking about no light I'm talking about low light so again they're gonna grow much faster if you put them in an area that has indirect bright light because they're just gonna grow they're gonna grow fast or they're gonna be healthier you're probably gonna have less drooping this plant I don't even know where this was this is barely planted it is extremely dry and it's still doing okay and it actually is producing new growth you see it's not even in the pot I don't know what I was thinking I have a lot of plants and I get to do stuff but that's just the way it goes so again they really want to be in an area that has medium to bright indirect light and that being said if you only have low light in your home or your apartment or your dorm room they're fine they're going to live they're going to live a lot longer than a lot of other plants that you might have chosen so just remember that you can have these Sansevieria this is a cylindrical in a low light area just because it says low light doesn't mean these plants want low light they want a pretty good amount of light so just something to consider when you're buying plants pretty much all of my snake plants here are dry this little baby whale fin is dry throughout the entire pot it is and especially because it's in a smaller terra cotta pot it's going to dry out faster so when you're thinking about transplanting one of your snake plants consider putting it in a terra cotta pot or a pot that is slightly porous or completely porous because if you are a heavy water water like a lot of people are it's the kiss of death for these guys so I would recommend something that is forgiving right if you're an over water or put it in a container that's forgiving so yeah this is really dry and what I'll do is I'll soak it all the way through and then let it dry out again so that's just kind of like the cycle the watering cycle for these if you have a plant that is in like a cover pot like this this is a hon I I think it's like sunny something-or-other terrible babes this is in a nursery pot and it feels moist and what's gonna happen is that this is going to take a lot longer to dry out than one in a terra cotta pot just because of the mechanics the material this is gonna absorb the water and this is in a plastic nursery pot inside a glazed ceramic pot so it's gonna take a lot longer for this to dry out here's one here is a sense of area low rent I you can tell that because it has the yellow banding on the edges and I have completely not what are this and I'd say about a month it's been about a month and it's fine it all depends if this were in an area that was getting an excessive amount of light I would have to water it more often but it's in my kitchen and it gets like medium to low light mainly low light if we leave a low the lights off so that's it and you can tell like you know the thing is you pick up your plant and it feels super light you know it's kind of time to water it but although it's a little difficult for this Sansevieria are heavy you're heavy plants so what else about the watering do you need to have special water for your Sansevieria I don't think so I just used the tap water I have well water here so in general it's fine I've never had a problem I've heard of anybody having a problem with watering your sense of area with city water or any any kind of water that you have so they're not super sensitive like Joe Cena's and other plants that I'll do another video on at a different time I want to show you something this is really cute so this I showed you guys this a long time ago but this is that baby snake plant that I just found a bit of the root on the floor in the garage and I planted it and this is what happens so again I let this dry out I'm sure they're their roots have developed but I don't want to test it because it's doing quite well dry dry dry during the winter you should really really back off from watering the Sansevieria because they will get root rot if you're just water trigger-happy I know because I've done it and I can't show you example because they're gone now we learn early on what was she doing what we shouldn't do and these guys do not behave well and will rot unfortunately if you water them too much so that especially in the winter so in the winter they really only need it about like once a month depending where you live in depending how much light they're getting so but as a general rule water your plants a lot less in the winter and more frequently during the summertime but if you do find that you're getting spots like oozing wound Brown reddish discoloration and it's mushy on the leaves of your snake plant you probably have one of those diseases sorry to break the news but yeah and unless you want to do is you want to remove the infected foliage because you really can't reverse that once it happens it's there but you can cut the infected leaves off and toss it like get rid of the foliage don't put in a compost pile and use it for your other plants just get rid of it completely and then start letting your plant the soil of your plant dry out more because that's the only thing that's gonna prevent it so once you create this environment to for bacteria it's really hard to stop it from spreading if you continue to water it the way you're watering it so let it dry out it was like the biggest thing the best thing you can do to help your plants so let's talk about soil what's the best soil for your snake plants and there really isn't the best soil it's all relates to how often you water your plants and it relates to the drainage that you provide for your plant so if you're mixing your own soil you can definitely add a lot more pumice or perlite or whatever you're using to promote drainage add more of that but don't add so much of it where this the water doesn't have a chance to stay in the pot because if you're using like a straight cactus mix or orchid bark stuff like that your the roots are never gonna be able to you find the water absorb it because it's going to pass through so quickly so make sure you have enough cocoa or peat or that sort of water retaining material with some soil with some amendments like worm castings like I talked about all the time or back 100 or anything you can find that you feel like is gonna work for you and then you add enough of the materials like pumice or perlite or coarse sand if you can't find that material where you live mix it in there and then test it if you water your plant and the water is sitting on the top of the soil it's not a good mixture it has to percolate through so work on it and find the mixture that works best for you and and there are some really good soil mixes on the market but so do your research and find out about that but it's a it's really important that you have good drainage with your soil when you get a plant from the nursery right so this one's still in a nursery pot you get a plan from the nursery you don't know how long it's been at the nursery how long has been growing in the greenhouse and when they pot up these plants they put a slow-release fertilizer in the soil and it's possible by the time you get that plant the fertilizer goodness is all used up meaning it's not working anymore and you know you might have to fertilize it which you probably should anyway yeah having an idea of when to fertilize is another big question I get a lot when do I fertilize it I just got it a week ago you got it just it's a guessing game so what I do if I get a plant that I don't know when it was propagated or planted or grown I will use a very light mixture of fish emulsion and chelated iron so it gets greens up that plant again and just watch it over fertilizer over fertilizing your plants is another terrible thing to do it's not terrible but it's not a good thing to do because you can start burning the edges of the leaves because the roots will absorb it really quickly especially if it's dry and you put a whole bunch of fertilize in there in there just go it'll fry your plant and you can't undo that either I just wanted to talk about that I guess why I'm talking oh I guess while I'm talking about fertilizing how often should you fertilize these guys I would say you should fertilize them once a month in the growing season with a very heavily diluted solution of a complete fertilizer they need their micronutrients so if you are using fish I would add chelated iron and also make sure that you have some sort of compost in the soil that's providing those micronutrients oh don't forget about that they need it like we need our vitamins they need their vitamins let's talk about pruning our snake plants you don't prune this if you prune this it's over it's gone so in general snake plants don't need a lot of pruning for me the time I prune it is when I see a bacterial spot on a leaf I get rid of it if I feel like there's a really droopy leaf that I can't get to stand up I'll cut it off because annoys made and I'll propagate it so basically you're gonna be pruning your snake plants when there's some aesthetic you know I'm settling thing that you don't like seeing on it you want to get rid of it or if you want to propagate it this guy doesn't look so fantastic it's kind of been through the wringer but I'm not cutting it look at it it's still beautiful to me even with all your imperfections you're pretty darn good looking so you're yeah this is that was this Sansevieria I'm a 78 me so jnana way ALPHAN don't weigh outfit let's talk about how quickly these guys grow like their growth habit in general as a general rule snake plants grow kind of slow especially if they're in lower light but if you're providing them with a lot of warmth and a lot of indirect to bright light I'm talking straight on Sun depends on where you live I guess because you can burn a snake plant I mean in the Northeast here it gets hot but not super hot and they seem to like it and then you know we have the Laurentiis and then we had the type a sea otters and they or just can't keep growing up and they you know get to 3 or 4 feet I've seen them much taller on Instagram of course and in real life but they can get really tall when they're outdoors and also if you continue to up put them to put them in larger pot sizes they're gonna get bigger and if you want to encourage them to stay small ish don't repot them so their growth is you know it also is kind of dictated by how much of light they're getting which we spoke about so the more light they get the faster they are going to grow and it depends on where you live the part of the world you're in and if you have off seasons like I do winter and gets cold these guys don't grow much they will still put out some new foliage but not as much as they do when they're getting the light and the warmth they want and fertilizer so that's that so they do grow I'm going to show you this one over here that I it's just it's I don't know how old it is but it's not young it's definitely not young and it has a lot of little growth coming from the sides and it's not perfect but that's fine doesn't bother me it's talking about pruning I have to prune this a little bit cuz there's a little funkiness on it and maybe this is a perfect example of fungus I doubt it because that is a little bit of fungus bacteria this was outside and I think it got over water to lap up it's okay this whale thing has I divide this I showed that in a few different videos but this was one larger plant I think I think this one was i divided it up and I put each individual one in its own pot and this is actually located in a very low lit area so it's not producing a lot of growth and I like to see more growth out of it so maybe I'll move it and yeah so generally when you see plants that are pushing out like this guy so this one was divided I divided it and it has some little babies here which I'll show you the close-up of I don't know I don't know if you want to call them babies it's just offshoots it's just the roots are underneath and it's pushing out new growth so we want to encourage that and this is gonna be in this pot for a long time till this whole plant fills out and bust the pot open on its own now let's talk about propagating these guys I know I talked about propagating a lot cuz I really like propagating but there's three different ways you can propagate something plans and one of it one of them is by water propagating which takes time I have a bunch of water propagation jars with Sansevieria cuttings in them and they're doing okay some have roots some don't and quite frankly I don't change the water as often as I should I mean maybe goes a month sometimes if I change the water that's not what you should do you should change the water as often as you can like every other day is better for sure but and also like I said a thousand times before if you put both those cuttings in with your other cuttings the roots will grow faster make sure you put the cuttings in an area that gets some decent amount of light because it just seems to help it seems to go a little bit faster and you can also put your cuttings in an opaque vessel or something do I have one I don't so it simulates being underground so if your root area is darker and the vegetated areas lighter later that's better so try to do that if you can and then the second way of propagating which is the easiest and my favorite way is route dividing so you pull that bad boy out of a pot I think in this example I'm gonna show you I had this big sigh Lanica I think it's a cylon accord or coup via trife a sea otter they look so similar any anyhow I had to put it in a pot for indoors because this pot leaks it's an outdoor pot and it's definitely not meant for indoor so I'm taking it out of this pot and I didn't think was gonna go as smoothly as it did but it did and they're putting it in my bathroom because kind of liked it there my bathroom is medium light and it will do fine there and I also took some little off sheets off of it while I was reporting it because it wasn't gonna fit in that pot so that was just a forced division a root division that you can do and then the third way is to just take a leaf cut it in sections and you can put it in a faster eating soil you can put it in water that's the same as water propagating but you can soil propagate cuttings too I have terrible luck with that and every time I try it they end up drying up on me so maybe you have better luck I hope you do because I have terrible luck with it so that's that so and you want to propagate it generally in the spring but to be quite honest with you which I think I'm always honest with you I try to be yeah except maybe not my age but is you can do it any time of year because these guys just keep going they like the Energizer plants I've propagated them in the middle of the winter doesn't matter it's fine and if you have to repot it don't think about what time of year it is because it's gonna be fine it really is they're not tinder plant they can handle the transfer believe me I know I do it all the time look that with the propagating and um yeah I guess so if if you are propagating in soil or you are root dividing and you're putting it in another pot if you're up potting it add some soil amendments because that's a good time to add it like worm castings or any type of organic stuff like bat guano and I really use backline I just like saying it the good news about temperature and these guys is that they are really tolerant of a wide range it can handle super low temperatures in the 40s at night they will definitely start declining rapidly if it starts freezing so keep them away from freezing weather but they can handle in the 40s I didn't recommend doing that but if you have no choice don't stress out about it so much and then it could be in super hot temperature so they're extremely adaptable to a wide range and but I think they're best kept in like 60 to 80 degrees if your keep your if you keep your house at like 55 they're still gonna be okay so generally any average household temperature is fine for most of the Sansevieria you might think to yourself like what is that thing growing out of my Sansevieria and it's weird-looking it's yellow it has little it's a flower you're kind of confused because it doesn't look like a flower that you would cut off and give to a loved one it's a flower eat say like looks more like an alien or some sort of like growth but it's kind of cool and they smell good so anyway they do flower I had a few a flower actually this summer and I was really excited as it oh yeah I'm gonna take the flowers and shake the seeds off and then try to seize propagate it didn't work because I let the thing dry and then there's no seeds it's just like mush uh what was there but I think I waited too long but yeah they flower and I don't know why they flower I can't find any information about it but I think it's light related and temperature related and also think of relates to how kind of how dense your root system is you know it's a guess it's a guess really out to guess here and I'm sure I will stand corrected but it's okay used to that so yeah the flowers are kind of cool um don't expect it just if it happens feel lucky another amazing thing about these guys is that they are like so super tolerant of dry air of wet air of medium wet air they don't care about the air they just I don't know what they want these they want water occasionally so yeah if you're you know struggling because you can't keep certain plants alive in a place that's dry cuz you have force forced hot air good good choice so yeah um listen pretty much any indoor plant tropical tropical plant will benefit from higher humidity don't stress out if you don't have it and you want plants so yeah do you want these in your bedroom I do I do you know why cuz they release oxygen at night and they remove toxins but to be really on the truth tree with you guys you need a lot of them for that to actually make a difference for them to make a difference so but it doesn't hurt to think that they are helping us they're doing the dirty work for us they're takin taking those toxins that are coming from our furniture and our carpets the more plants the better for me because I feel like even if it's psychological it makes me feel healthier you guys are doing a great job thank you yeah but I would recommend I would definitely recommend keeping your pets your furry animals your ferrets your dog's your hedgehogs no they don't really run around so but anything that could potentially get a hold of your Sansevieria and nibble on it kids definitely not just because it's toxic you don't want to eat these maybe to show you again I don't know I must have given away so many snake plants because I used to have like I could have filled this table up but no I sorry I showed you the Henize they're super cute this guy and the Whale fins the little baby whale fins and the cylindrical the sky so cute African spear very cool and then here's the Myka do they haven't grown this is the low rent I there's a low rent I and I hold on a second I gotta bring this over here and then this is a try fast yatta and listen there's a big kind of thing out there people are selling Zylon ACCA's but I think there are really try Fosse otters it's kind of hard to tell I know does aisle Anika's don't look as good as a try fasciitis so you probably have a try fasciotomies like Lanica that's what I'm thinking but they look really similar and this look the new growth look at that it's bright green this was look here's the floppy leaf I was talking about should I cut it I don't know anyway this guy was the outside and loved being outside for the summer I'm looking for any spots to show you I'm gonna get like Zeus Aryan Wilton that leaf spot but I don't see it so yeah we got this guy oh we're gonna put you have to put you back here and then I'm just gonna slide this one over this Bantle sensation and you know maybe I should talk about this - there are more difficult types of sense of area to grow and this to me is the one because it never looks really good it gets crazy brown tips I don't know even the new growth does and yeah I do have it I have this can you see it I'll hold it down that is colocasia growing with it I did it outside because I don't know I didn't have another possibly and I'm just gonna let the coal Ocasio die because they always die on me so when it dies I'll pull out the root system but I think I think this fantail sensation likes living with this plan huh anyway so that's that's what I have up here and and I think I'll show you a few others that we were growing in the nursery oh yeah I had that jeboa I killed it that's gone unfortunately I was so bummed out and that's that so anyway I hope this was complete enough for you I just wanted to give you guys one video on how to care for a Sansevieria because like I said they are a pretty easy care plant but they just really don't like to be over watered they don't like to be over fertilized and if you can provide them with more light than low light because like I said they tolerate low light but they really do grow better with more indirect to direct light if you've got it you've got it give it to them or you guys have an amazing weekend I maybe will start doing videos again on Tuesdays I'm not sure trying to figure it out um that's that thanks thanks so much thanks for subscribing and I really appreciate all your feedback on Instagram about making longer or shorter videos but I don't know until it's crazy because I don't know how long it's gonna be until I'm done no idea so anyway I'm thinking I'm done take care guys bye bye

Channel: PLANTERINA

Views: 1,413,862

Keywords: Snake plant, mother in laws tongue, sansevieria, snake plant care, indoor plant care, indoor plants, house plant care, houseplant care, plants, plant care, vipers bow hemp, low light plants, high light plants, watering indoor plants, indoor plant problems, how to care for indoor plants, fertilizing plants, indoor plant soil, office plants, bedroom plants

Id: jJ-pbCbk6Lc

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019