Ultimate SPATHIPHYLLUM (Peace Lily) CARE Guide — Ep 205

today we're going to talk about the care of one of the more common house plants we encounter the spathaphylum this video is brought to you by squarespace now spathophylum otherwise known as peace lily the name actually literally translates into leaf space which is referring to this iconic part of the plant right here now this is a genus of over 50 species and they are totally tropical plants and they live in these humid forests or often near streams and they are native to regions like central and south america and you could also find them throughout southeastern asia as well now if you can't tell by their sail-like flowers which feature that fleshy spadex and that space i just referred to these are considered arroyoids which means that they they're in the same family as anthurium and philodendron for example now these plants were discovered in the late 19th century and then they started to make their way into cultivation pretty shortly afterwards and almost all of the spathophylum we buy in garden centers and plant shops are cultivars so that means there are these cultivated varieties that have been selected specifically for certain traits and they are almost exclusively produced through tissue culture now there are several dozen cultivars that are out there on the market and some of them are super tiny only growing to about six inches tall and then you have others that are like really massive which could grow as tall as me or maybe even like four feet tall six feet tall and they have very wide leaves and really really big inflorescences now it's worth noting that these plants are toxic to pets and kids if ingested so that may be taken into consideration if you have animals or little ones running around now i already talked a little bit about the flowers but peace lilies typically bloom from january through august but they aren't always in bloom during those months and they bloom fairly sporadically so it's that's a problem if you really always want to be showcasing them for their flowers because they're not always going to be in flowers and most of us probably wouldn't buy them in the market if they looked like this and if they didn't have any blooms whatsoever so this one is a little bit more interesting though i'd have to say this is spathophylum domino so it has these like white fleckings on the leaves so that does give a little bit more seasonal interest when it's not in bloom but for the most part growers get the plants to flower by giving them gibberellic acid spray which is a plant hormone that controls this plant's overall development and once that plant is sprayed you know usually within i would say like two and a half to four months it'll start to bloom and that's actually when you start seeing it in plant shops and garden centers so if you're looking to get your piece lily to bloom again it can be a little challenging because they are as i shared really sporadic bloomers but if you give them good light and you keep them moist and you offer up some great humidity then they are more likely to go and rebloom now the most suitable night temperatures for your spathophylum are going to be typically what you have in your house already which is somewhere between i would say like 68 degrees fahrenheit or that's like 20 degrees celsius and this is likely going to get the plant to rebloom again now in greenhouse conditions they're growing this plant under about 30 percent shade and that usually gives the best bloom results so if you're actually thinking about well how can i get my plant to rebloom again you could take all of that into consideration and try to figure out like the best place that you're going to have it in your house now once they do bloom you could do something that uh is called deadheading and that means essentially cutting off the top of the flower and try to get the to cut it of course this one's in bloom so i wouldn't deadhead this but once it starts to brown up you could then clip down to the base of this because the plant is going to want to shoot out another stalk now some plants will just bloom right again but that's not really the case of spathophyllum so just prune it as close to the base as possible now typically we see these creamy white sale like spades on our peace lilies but they are occasionally streaked with like green coloration and this usually means that they're aging or they're maturing sometimes they're moving out of season so they're going to get some chlorophyll back into these leaf bracks and that's going to help get the plant some more light so it's not just the leaves that are might be acting as these solar voltaic panels but you're going to get the space to be acting like a solar voltaic panel as well now speaking of light let's talk about it spats are plants that would abhor direct sunlight you do not want to put these plants in direct sunlight you can put them in this bright windowsill but if they have too intense light it's really going to damage their foliage i mean if you look at this look how thin and dark these leaves are and the darker and the thinner the foliage then it's probably going to be more low light tolerant but again the sweet spot for light is going to be that medium to bright indirect sunlight an eastern window if you're in the northern hemisphere like i am would be ideal because it gets that really cool morning light and then has this really solid gentle light throughout the day so that's what i would you know do if i would uh give my spathophyllum like the perfect light now as far as temperature goes uh spathaphylum in general are not cold hardy plants and it goes back to where they grow which is in that tropical humid forest so don't leave them next to your ac or to a drafty window and anything really under 50 degrees fahrenheit i would say that's kind of like 10 degrees celsius it's really going to be dreadful for this plant so um it doesn't want to to be in anything that's too drafty now heat on the other hand may not be that much of an issue but if you're going to have it like right next up to um a place where there's heat coming out it might dry out the plant a lot and these plants do get a little like droopy and weepy if you have the heat on you're going to want to keep this well watered now some cultivars can manage heat better than others some are up to like 108 degrees fahrenheit that's that's really hot that's 42 degrees celsius i believe but not all cultivars are that heat tolerant so you just have to really do your research on what cultivar you're getting and sometimes when you're in the market for this plant you're not going to see what type of cultivar so i would say it's going to be better if you stay somewhere between 65 to 90 degrees fahrenheit which is like the 30 degrees celsius that's going to be like the sweet spot for these plants now if plants are grown at higher temperatures like i said they they typically want to get more water but another thing to note is if you've seen plants with really narrow leaves that typically wouldn't have narrow leaves then they were probably grown at a higher temperature so you might want to mimic some of those temper that temperature in your home as well humidity i think this goes without saying but because these are tropical plants they love humidity i mean they absolutely love humidity these plants if they get more humidity then you're probably not going to have to water them as much so the more humid it is the less watering you're going to need to do and the less humid it is the more watering that you're probably going to do but this plant doesn't really like to get dry in the least bit so if you want to actually keep up the humidity that's going to be great and when they don't get enough water and the plant dries out the leaves will start to actually droop and look like super sad and luckily though like this plant is actually going to be fairly resilient so if you catch it drooping it'll perk right back up within an hour of watering it now let's talk a little bit about soil because part of keeping this plant nice and moist can do with the substrate now you still want a potting medium with good aeration but you want something that has more water holding capacity and if you use any grit whatsoever only keep it to about i don't know i would say about like a quarter to a quarter of the mix like let's just say a quarter of the mix because as soon as you start to do more than that it can actually affect negatively affect the growth rate of the plant and if you're going to add a grit i would add maybe something a little bit more like vermiculite because that actually has a little bit of moisture holding capacity while keeping the aeration in the soil and if you plant this up and say like a glazed ceramic planter or plastic planter versus terra cotta then it'll likely dry out less now i have mine in a terracotta planter as you can see here so i have to be very mindful and probably water this a little bit more because that terracotta is porous and it'll kind of suck all that water out of the of the planter pot now fertilizing can be done i would say bi-weekly to monthly and it's during the growing season so it's when this plant is actually growing when it's in bloom so be mindful of that because it will start to go a little bit more dormant you know in the winter months and it won't start growing but a well-balanced organic fertilizer is totally suitable so if you want the shiny green looking lush leaves and you get a fertilizer that is maybe a little bit slightly higher in the nitrogen so like a 311 or a 312 for instance but then otherwise you could just have a regular well-balanced fertilizer as well now propagation of spaths usually involves division so the best way to do this is to take a look at the root ball and see the best place to actually split the plant if it needs splitting at all so here you go this looks a little a little aggressive but what i'm going to do is just cut right through the middle you got to make sure that your fingers are not in the way i probably um cut away from my body is a little bit smarter although that's really hard to do when i'm demonstrating this so i'm like want to be on the floor for this there you go so i definitely had some stems that were damaged in the process here we go so i have this one division right here and this stem will need to be removed because that one came off in the process some extra roots right here and then i have this one division right here you could probably divide this one more time but i wouldn't this as i had mentioned i wanted to show this on how to actually divide this but i would have from seeing this clump it was a really tight clump but it was just really root bound i would have probably just repotted this into a larger planter pot but you could see how you can actually divide it as well say you had too large of a plant pot and you had two small planter pots then you could actually take the opportunity to plant those up in those two planter pots so that's an option up for you but i just wanted to show you how you could actually divide your spathophylum okay so let's talk about common problems that come with growing peace lilies the number one that i already said and it's totally resolvable is don't let the plant dry out it'll get droopy and if you let it get dry for too long then its leaves will start to dry out and then you won't have a happy plant any longer and then eventually you're going to have a dead plant want so you definitely want to keep on top of this plant's watering but the great thing is is that it will tell you that it wants water you just have to notice it now the second one is brown tips and edges and this could be from maybe watering a little bit too less to having too much fertilizer or a lack of humidity so it could be multiple different things that you might be seeing in your spathophylum now number three is keeping it too close to direct sunlight because as i mentioned before this could damage the leaves it will start to curl them under it'll turn them yellow and maybe even show signs of necrotic spots which is just like browning of the leaves and number four is that the leaves may also start to wilt and turn brown around the edges as well and i would check the roots because they should be really nice and white and fleshy and healthy and brown mushy bits will need to be totally removed and the potting medium should be changed out because that could be signs that it's actually dying from the roots now number five because spath like these really moist environments and it's growing in a container sometimes with not a lot of airflow and it can be susceptible to fungal and bacterial pathogens and they will often show up as these like necrotic spots around the margins of the leaves and occasionally there will be this like massive yellowing of the lower leaves in addition to these necrotic spots so definitely be mindful of this i would say that some cultivars are more susceptible to these types of diseases than others so you're going to have to like probably cut off those areas check the roots periodically to ensure the plant is not fully infected and if it is then i would say usher that plant out the door maybe sorry just like sometimes it gets a little bit too bad and finally as far as pests are concerned the plant can be susceptible to a range of pests i mean anything like mealy bugs or thrips but honestly i haven't had those concerns with this plant in my home i would have to say though that fungus gnats however on the other hand can be an issue because if you're keeping the soil really nice and evenly moist it will attract fungus gnats now luckily i have a whole video devoted to curtailing fungus gnats in your home so you could check that out and notice if it's a problem all right folks that's all there is today as far as pathophylum care and if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up and if you can't get enough of these videos then don't forget to subscribe to the channel and you can hit the notifications button as well because they deliver these sweet video missives right to your inbox it's very convenient alright guys until next time see you later i'd like to shout out to squarespace who is my sponsor for this video now all of my websites including homesteadbrooklyn.com houseplantmasterclass.com and even my personal website over at summerrain.net are all built on squarespace's platform now this is for obvious reasons they are this all-in-one platform that offers up slick modern designs that provide incredible user experience now you could customize their already primo templates integrate your social media seamlessly and even send out emails and oh yeah if you ever need help their customer service is dope so if you're interested in checking them out you can use my link squarespace.com summer rain for 10 off your purchase check out the link in the description below you

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 325,691

Rating: 4.9390883 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me, houseplants, indoor plants, house plants, houseplant care, spathiphyllum, spathiphyllum plant care, spathiphyllum care, peace lily care, spathiphyllum propagation, peace lily propagation, Peace lily, Peace lily in water, peace lily brown tips, peace lily root rot, peace lily yellow leaves, peace lily drooping, spathiphyllum drooping, peace lily repotting, peace lily flowers, peace lily timelapse, peace lily blooms

Id: F7jG8CzAvBc

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020