What's it Like to Live in a Greenhouse? Houseplant Home Tour — Ep 163

this episode of the house plant home tour on plant one on me is brought to you by fourth-generation family-owned and operated s Poma organic which produces superior organic gardening products for both the indoor and outdoor gardener you can look out for a spell no products like their potting medium amendments and organic fertilizers at your local garden center and Attis boma com okay there's just some too random silkie chickens just hanging out outside the coulomb burg station stop they're just so funny and so fluffy everywhere I go I see little Kipps doesn't matter if I'm in Singapore or Thailand or the Netherlands [Music] I know a lot of plant people want to know what it's like to actually live in a greenhouse and the last year I came to Coulomb burg in the Netherlands and I came upon this community and what's interesting is that some of these houses are actually built in greenhouses so it's not true greenhouse conditions but I thought man it would be really cool to actually meet somebody here who's growing plants and to find out what it's like to live in a pseudo greenhouse so this is more of the eco village in colon burg and there's a guy who's driving some plant clippings around looks like maybe he's pruning today it smells nice here it's like a really nice autumn day here in the Netherlands a little bit of blue sky left otherwise it's fairly overcast we've got some apples right up here so you start to see a lot more homes with solar panels on and this is the village that also has some homes that have that are built inside little greenhouses or just using glass to create a little bit more like a greenhouse condition and grow plants grow food so this is an interesting construction because it looks like they're using very thick reeds on the side of this house for building material and that's probably similarly to what grows just around here near the marsh edges some bee boxes in the distance and some sheep ma well looks like it's apple season think of it all cut these kinds are so this is really nice because this feels like a little bit more of a community orchard although I don't know if it is and I just a mother with her son just above here just picking off some apples so if there's that option of just like natively picking the fruits and the vegetables that are around you I just really like that feeling as part of the community just like a cat love you and leave you it looks even greener than what it was before yeah it's it's going fast yeah yeah well you've I guess you've kind of grown into the place yeah well actually yeah last year I visit coulomb burg because I was curious to check out an ecological village in the area with plenty of glass houses while I was there I met amar an architect who had moved into one of the experimental homes I know last year I didn't really get a chance to talk a little bit more about the house and moving in here and I'd love for you to just like share maybe a little bit about what you do and how it relates to the house and a little bit about how this house is constructed well I'm an architect and we bought this house and four years ago it's almost 20 years old now but it's a project and the it's an experimental house where it should be self-sufficient for that time it was really like an experiment Construction wasn't that well so we placed a new roof last year and from that we'll go working down and actually and renovate the whole house Wow making it in an energy neutral house again okay so you were doing it in stages and even though this was done 20 years ago the idea was it for it to be an energy neutral house but it wasn't yeah it was it's built in one of the largest ecological and villages in the Netherlands also in Europe still the one of the largest wants and well at that time actually the Green was one of the innovative aspects of it and the energy and the producing aspect wasn't that and well developed yet but nowadays she can build like and it's normal to build energies in specification times so yeah so tell me a little bit more about how the glass cuz you are really surrounded by glass and I wouldn't say this is a true greenhouse but it has a lot of greenhouse elements of it and I loved for you to talk a little bit about what the glasses role is or what it was meant to be for in this house well the house is a faced to the south so the whole roof is faced to the south to produce energy because of the solar panels on the roof and the construction was made so that the roof is hanging on the construction from the outside so they can place a glass all around hmm so we have to do in a sixty degrees view and daylight coming in but the smart thing about this is that the south-facing windows are smaller than the east and west facing windows so get this sunrise and sunset light coming in and it's really nice also for the plants and tell me a little bit more about why it would be a challenge if the southern windows were actually larger well it would be fairly hard to hear like in summer and it was like and in the beginning like five degrees warmer than the outside temperature like when it's 2 degrees Celsius it's like 25 inside but since we renovated the roof and installed a heat pump exchanger it also and cools the heat and a heated floor so it's also cooling now it's like 5 degrees cooler than outside so you see that and the energy system and also the the installation and the building is working together addition it's amazing what you could do just to tweak the system ever so slightly so that you know five degrees cooler and five degrees warmer and it makes a huge difference when you're living in the house and I even know just from having Southwest facing windows in my home and you know they're not nearly this large but even just getting them in the afternoon that that heat intensity and the intensity of the light is is pretty dramatic that's correct that's why you know all the doors can be helping we have this large sliding door in the in the up side so that the air could also go to the to the living room and and cool the area and and actually yeah so there's a little bit more natural flow then which it sounds like you have to do occasionally with all this with all this window space and one of the things obviously that loves probably this amount of light is the plants and I just see that the last time I was here which I happened to just you were outside I was working on I'm expanding the construction project owner and it's like an endless project you never you're never not busy but but yeah your plant collection has really grown both in size and a number it seems like and I would just imagine it with east west a little bit of south-facing windows 360 degrees around you have you know carte blanche like all these plants have carte blanche and and have this nice temperature and humidity all year round which is quite wonderful because I know a lot of people especially homeowners or apartment dwellers are always short on light they're short on humidity and that doesn't seem like a problem here that's correct and actually at our previous house we had the same problems and we moved the plants here and actually the same plants started driving they grew like crazy and it's now it's like more like some plants I had to give away because they were going to the ceiling I was walking through here and some the other greenhouses where the houses are kind of like built into the the greenhouse some of the plants are actually coming out of the the roof or the ceilings and the different with that greenhouse is that they get cold in the winter because it's not their living area right and here it's the living area part of the house so it's actually room temperature all year round yeah so it's ideal for topical plants yeah well I'm sure you've learned a lot through the process and so when did you really actually start your love for plants because you said you brought some over here from your old apartment yeah well it started Brenda was boring yeah I was born in Suriname South America and and it was as a child I was playing in the garden with all these tropical plants and it was like wow it was actually embedded in my DNA some part and now when I moved to the Netherlands when I was eight and I really missed the plants so actually when I was 8 years old in my own room I place plants so for more like 25 years now I've been collecting plants in the Netherlands and well this is the result of the collection of all all those years of experience in and collecting the plains well I think you're lucky because moving to the Netherlands at 8 I mean Netherlands is a country that is has a really deep appreciation for plants maybe not necessarily always the plants that you grew up with but some of those subtropical and tropical varieties of plants are probably from Suriname so you get a little sense of like home in those in those plants as well yeah well should we go through and you take us through a little bit of some of the plants in your collection yes great I mean obviously over here is just this magnificent monster at deliciosa yeah I mean these fenestrations are out of this world well it's actually a cutting yeah okay two years ago from our vacation to an Ella Palmer it's one of the Canadian islands and it was like this and small cutting with only one leaf oh and in two years time and now has like more than 12 leaves and it's like growing rate is really astonishing I mean I know that people are you know completely probably jealous of but I mean I didn't look at my how many holes of head so many holes I mean this is like a botanical garden specimen right here yeah this is gonna if that if that was just within two years I mean we could just imagine if I come back here in five years you're going to have to you know kind of do any type of repairs here so that you could actually physically attack your plants up and like you know or just be taking cuttings and giving them to friends and what that well actually I took three cuttings this this is the this was the smallest one but I am repotted in a larger pot and and there you can see behind that this was a second oh wow right over here but I kept it in a smaller pot so you can see the difference and what it does when you're repot it in a bigger pot and give it more nutrition how much are you actually watering these plants a lot yeah because um use also seed in the topics they grow around ponds also in many places and the roots they actually grow in water yeah so they thrive a dead place yes the high humidity yeah the axis accessibility well yeah I remember actually just putting all those aerial roots in like this giant basin filled with water and they just filled out the basin and you move it out and it's like the shape of the basis actually repotting those it's a difficult task yes they they grow in the pot and and they stick to the pot so so well you can't even take a mouse yeah you're like cutting them out of their girdle yeah cutting the pot open it yes exactly yeah exactly so what other what other plants do you have kind of growing around well a lot of foot bombs it's actually one of my my favorites are uninformed and this is our katana Phoenix Cunningham yeah and it was actually it didn't had a trunk and when we moved in here I bought it it was like this and small and a seedling yeah and now it's like adult touching the ceiling see this is this is a challenge that you have and also what greenhouses and Botanic Gardens have is that they have these real statement pieces right and then you think you've built tall enough 35 meters in the air or whatever it is and then it's never taller clovers never talked about and we also have a lot of other volunteers like the foxtail owner with the area before cata and next to it is one of the family of the bottle palms or the spindle bottoms I think some people will actually be so envious of you because it is challenging to grow palm trees and regular homes and apartments but these are some of your favorite is something that you kind of remember as a youth and actually one of the my favorites is one of the most difficult palms to keep in house it's the coconut tree ah Coco's nucifera do you think you could actually get fruits here knowing you know this one I got from another poem enthusiastic yeah we have an online community it's called palm friends in the Netherlands oh that's so nice yes and we exchange plans together yeah and this and this person and I got it from him four years ago and it was a small seedling with only two leaves and you can also see the coconut still there yeah but and I had two of them one of them died and then it was only the one in soil died but this one I placed in Hydra culture huh so to keep it moist yeah and the humidity high yeah so that's actually the key in keeping this poem alive is that it needs a lot of humidity Wow well I love that you experimented because oftentimes I'll get two plants and I'll try them sometimes it's just like different lighting conditions but but yeah I mean I think that's pretty amazing that you have just experimented that yourself and found what what actually works and at this state sit and I've never seen a large and a coconutty in in anything oh yeah well you don't have any just any living room another nice monstera is the tie constellation yes it is very possible yeah I just got a gift as a gift from a friend this woman I've only had for three months now and you already see the holes coming up so the heat and sunlight is really charging the plant to to try and there's already a new leaf coming out of it yeah and you and this is obviously directly in your southern window yeah tell me a little bit about the glass here is there any kind of UV protection or what type of glass are you using on the home there is a bit of UV protection and it's double sided glass mm-hmm and because of the service is so large there's enough light coming in but in the plants that's actually one of my secrets in summertime I place like half of the plants outside yeah so the humidity is high and they can get terrain yeah also against best it's ideal so the natural balance is restored yeah and outside a little better yeah I find that with some of my plants like my Anita Scalia sacked enough foliage is Achaia is very susceptible to spider mites indoors as soon as I put it outside it's great I take it in in winter it's deciduous so it loses all its leaves and just looks like a stem but as soon as spring comes around right outside of my balcony again yeah yeah actually on spider mites and then I have I use by Ella biological many of yes yes it's from a Dutch company corporate and it's this is called a speaker loose but it's a kind of predator that a small kind of spider that each side of mice yeah predatory mite right like and and typically they're often tinier and a little bit faster than spider mites yeah yeah well I love seeing this and this is a great way to do it I've also seen in Botanic Gardens where they just use a little burlap and they'll put especially if they come in brand and they'll they'll put the brand and the the biological you know insect or mite in it and then they'll just hang it and it looks you know quite nice but I'm it's nice to see another plant they're actually using biological means well actually yesterday I bought in a new batch and this is also not alone it's against the scale bugs oh oh that's an interesting one it's like any small wasp wasp yeah and this is scale book so you can see how small like this so good because scale is a little bit more challenging is it also good on mealybugs scale like mealybugs no for just like the hard scale i use another one it's the larvae of the beetle and their books so the Crypt it's a large but you could get the larva here yeah that's hard because actually larva you can see you to love here yeah they're going to the next yep there it is cuz it looks almost like a mealy bug yeah oh my goodness farming here yes so I leaved him on the pot this is great because you could only get the beetle in the US or some reason and they're de la fille it gets attracted to the to the light yeah wow that's already enormous opened their class yeah yeah I was always wondering why can't I get a ladybird larva or a crypt larvae and they said that they have two wild harvest some that it's actually hard to you know kind of grow them in it kind of in a laboratory conditions which that's what they told me I don't know if it's true but it seems like you could get them here but this is one of the premier places to actually get you know biological well actually and I have a large stock from my neighbors because in one of the greenhouses they have like this victory yeah but they release in the summer like 50 of these larvae SH and because of the mealy bugs are in so large amounts yeah they survive and like now to have like hundreds of these lar feet and they need to get up clothing yeah in there and then bean house yeah and I can just take few and place them here so good I love seeing and I love seeing how closely closely there's a reason behind another them still and moving yeah because I set out a lot of them outside here there's one on the floor just wants a life sometimes they're not really smart yeah because they and actually quite dumb yeah well I think when they're when when the adults are I have to kind of collect them corral them from the windows and put them back on their prey and actually fall out of leaves yeah then you have to place it back because they lost their way and they on the planet yeah but both died and find one that sir but when they get hungry I bet I'd bet any money when they when they want food they will find it don't ever do you ever release lace wings no no you don't have lace wings here okay see those are like my main predators but they're also the ones that I could get as larvae and they are really voracious and generally good generalists but I don't know if they're native here and I also don't know if they are effective against scale so that's a that's a good one to know I should probably point this out the the philodendron this is a very kösem yeah and then a philodendron pink princess which is like so hot right yeah that's great well you see them and a lot of stores right now in the Netherlands yeah wheel hype yeah even though marketplace it's like and the pies are getting so high it's like Croatian I know that's why I feel so happy to have gotten so many plants early before the the price hikes I mean even here in the Netherlands like the prices are still so much more affordable than in the United States I mean the price hikes in the United States are kind of insane but but yeah I feel very fortunate that I was like collecting way before the and then you have a little bit more of a bonsai is this a ficus yeah I got this from my and to butters as a gift and when you and I got married so it's nice gift and it's still-growing show yeah yeah do you do any kind of pruning on it at all one time per year okay yeah yeah and actually it's time to prune it again because it stood outside in a in somewhere but now it's time to cut it back yeah 11:00 a.m. when Medicus be honest it's the Madagascar and the travelers 300k what it looks like this village yes yeah but it's not in this is a young plant but when they get an adult fish they have this like large one direction faced and the foliage does it naturally does it does it naturally start to well actually duration or this happen outside yeah did this well I see that you have some Nepenthes kind of growing up here it's just a mojito it's actually a new one I got a really large one and we have smaller ones growing here just to all of the place the fun is in thorium do you know species this is I know yes it's the tarifold yeah okay and these are just starting to cling on these little philodendron so cool yeah you always have to you know once you start to like have the foliage fill out and how he's a little bit more maybe less mindful when when they start to shade out others but I don't think you have to worry about that because you're getting like light 360 degrees around and it's actually looking like rainfall this forest canopy yeah the difference in the height yeah and the plants going up on top of each other so yeah and then you have a tetris firm in here this one's new for me it's the most yeah Oh see we don't get that I have I have not seen that and the cultivation like in cultivation in the United States I think the only time I saw it was in Singapore and it's had the flower oh really nice white flower yeah mmm just a feeling better than Florida go ghost yeah that's a beautiful version of it because it's like lightly speckled and then of course another one of your monster doses is that just a variegated yeah oh yeah there we go oh wait is that the one that he originally saw yes yeah okay much large much larger now obviously the haha if my memory serves me correctly and I'm trying to experiment because IV bothered it mm-hmm diet conservation I see it in the little bottom yeah and just seeing how it works out yeah yeah well it's great that you're experimenting here and then of course you have the pancake plant like what what like Dutch person doesn't eat food you know what you know I have to tell you there's some like there's some good pancakes here too so here you're good on that and it looks like you were experimenting with some kind of terrarium yeah light bulb but terrarium label we made this our shelf yeah also like four years ago mmm-hmm being small but all the first these are the roots of the fern yeah look at how their new friend growing like in the air oh my goodness and I haven't wanted it like for two years now Wow and the ecosystem is like self-sustaining yeah so what is it growing in or on like what does the medium the hi beautiful yeah the hydro balls over yeah and then boss yeah it's actually a mouthful outside home from the garden so it's a local product and then some small plants like ferns but other plants but they you can see the ferns they took over like the whole book yeah and what else did you had plant in there at other than ferns actually a small palm oh okay so that one's probably got yeah I mean I have to I'm looking at this right now and my BioPod at home which is a Polidori em I like really need to weed whack that and I'm I'm like where did that half monney ago it's probably like engulfed you know the ferns are probably growing on your palm tree yeah mm-hmm and then here you have a cig no Liam arathor file on right here it's beautiful and another palm which I've have never grown one of these in my house but are they easy to grow they used to go it's there it's also called a Metallica yeah yes no it's actually I think a flower yeah see and this one was placed outside with the snails and got it a bit so that's also a of DEFCON so - you get exactly okay one of the follies of nature yeah sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad yeah and then is this a variegated jungle boogie or which one it was - this gonna Bend on having a fire ring a fire okay well yeah also very popular in the Netherlands no just like their favorite ocean hmm and I think they it's a kind of hybrid day yeah it looks like a jungle boogie and then sometimes when things get like variegated or it looks a little different they could always make it into another cultivar but sometimes they just never remember what they look Dave yeah hybridize it with this or that it comes up the name I couldn't find the technical name exactly yeah yeah and sometimes they'll just never know in a croton they're doing very well outside yeah in the winter you can see them going a bit harder yeah and they're in spring in Time Machine I place them outside so they can dive again and I brewing them also so that the plant stays compact yeah I think if another one here is actually having a flower Oh always very nice to see a Croton flower because I only sometimes see them in the Botanic Gardens yeah yep yeah they're for me mm-hmm a new one so placing your plant outside mm-hmm makes it happen yeah yeah it's a little bit longer yeah just a nest yeah does it have a scent do you no no no okay yeah I can smell this yeah I always try to like stick my nose and there when I'm like it's just smell or not but sometimes it has a scent at night sometimes it has a scent in the morning another ficus here this one was one of my old neighbors who moved in last year and it was in a bit of a bad state so I pruned it a lot and I rebar this and it's like it's perfect it looks good as new it's actually in winter it's our Christmas tree is it really light and some object well it's a Christmas tree what a good idea normal to the year that's cut down or we bought it so it's well I hope other people follow that lead because I think that is such a great idea and especially if you're a plant lover and you're not like having to chop down a tree I mean when I was growing up and we had put a fake tree but it was like it looked real so every was a where did you get that dream mistake however when I was a really young girl my dad would get trees but with root balls and then he would plant them out in like 30 years later they'd be these like massive like blue spruces outside and like the the yard so I think that was like a nice nice gesture ficus trees really yeah I was memory of my youth oh that's so marvelous that you you could have that it's like a full circle and then you have some more palms and also some some Schlumberger all right here majestic Bowl those are really hard to grow we could find them in the United States but I always recommend to people like not getting them just because they are so hard to grow in an apartment setting has this been challenging for you or has it been good it was like and I bought it and it was like once we exercise like small planes so your key to palms here is obviously giving it like a tremendous amount of light and humidity and then what's what's the watering schedule like for you in this I'm trying to that that's south so this events and the outside temperature yeah yeah sunshine it gets a lot of holidays so you have to award him more but also one of my secrets is I don't use water from the crane but and they use ground water ground water pump and it has less calcium hmm and and more nutrients from the ground hmm so the plants get their nutrients also in that way you know to the water so are you doing any kind of fertilizing mixture and for the palms I used more slowly leash like and the mixture mm-hmm but for the rest of the plants more to organic like and it it can be a fluid like in the and you also went to stack yeah what's the NPR they have like all this water okay water yeah it's like from the sewage yeah they have it weaved nutrients yeah and they sell it for a plant fertilizer Oh interesting and it's and it's slow release when you order the plant you don't use it that concentrate it yeah so you have to water down yeah in with your water your Schlumberger does seem to be getting a little bit more light because they're they're reddening here and they're flowing also a lot yeah multiple times per year and that's interesting so they're probably sometimes when I plant it gets a little bit more stress which is not always a bad thing it actually has a tendency to flower so sometimes when we think about well how do we actually get my plant to flower it's like stop babying them give it a little stress fantastic what color flowers do you get on these and know that okay Wow and some more Nepenthes over here a lot of the Benzies and actually there are one of the more effective plants in summertime when the door is open we get a lot of flies and other bugs inside in nighttime they like disappeared yes we got these plants and I'm guessing they're yeah well no fertilization necessary then no if they're if they're having a healthy diet applies yeah is this a papaya or what is this it's Oh bread fruit okay yeah it's also actually new on the market now and but the nice one with this is the brand and which is bringing this plant on the market when they sell ten of these plants one is planted in the in Africa hmm so is it native to Africa do you know I think so okay and Nelson to South America so in a more topics and they give to the community a plant back that's really marvelous I've only seen breadfruit once or twice in the US market I'm not saying it's not available but like in my garden centers I've only seen it a couple times so I have no experience in growing it and this is relatively new for you then yeah okay no I think also for six months okay nice to go to this first event in oh yeah are you using the palm the growers potting medium well actually I make my own mixture with a bit of coco peat okay and I use and depending on the plant if you salty I use a mixture of slow-release in it and I make sure it with the local organic and uh and the potting mix they sell at the urban farm mm-hmm and then they make sure it hmm that's nice yeah cuz I noticed some like slow-release in here yeah and then you have some behind here and you have also some plants growing in the basin of of your experiments yeah that's what I'd like to do with my ficus because it gets really bear down there but it's like perfect medium for a smaller root plants to grow [Music] cuban King Paul hmm I'm actually very curious in how big this will will go because it's no but I can place it lower so that's attached boy yeah thanks to go needs a little bit more headspace soon very soon you don't have a lot of like duplicates of your palm so when you go to the palm friends Society or whatever it might be how what do you what do you exchange do you take one of yours we're like okay this is outgrown my house or okay and you and give one of you duplicates yeah you get only one yeah or you have a lot of seedlings are some of them self hurts some of them so fertile or no I buy seeds oh you buy see it's okay Tim oh no you have a lot of them yeah exchanging yeah yeah oh just buy it from someone who has planes over hmm and do you like to start your seedlings outside or do you have a I mean this is practically indoor/outdoor but like you like to start them inside here okay it's the best way because of if you started outside you have two snails mm-hmm like all the seedlings also in our kitchen garden it's it's a hell of a challenge a challenge to to to grow our food oh yeah yeah well I have to tell you my dad got so upset with the snails and the slugs last year in his outdoor garden that he's like almost exclusively growing indoors yeah but he can't grow food as much as he can prolifically outdoors but he was like just so fed up with the snails and slugs she's talking about food we had last year about Christmas we had our first edible bananas Wow here it indoors yeah oh that's so cool actually the plant you saw less yeah yeah there was one standing behind you can see the trunk of the mother plane yeah there and these are the two and new sprouts that have grown in one year yeah Wow and we had like large bananas Wow so would you separate these two or we would keep them in there I think I'll keep them in their experiments yeah and you can also add a little bug it's a bit oh yeah I see it right there that one right there right you could tell that it's a crypto bug even though it looks like a mealy bug because it actually moves because yeah yeah cuz I'm really bad really just kind of plants itself in in one place and I have this video of a mature Crypt eating a mealy bug and the mealy bug can't really move but it's like oh my god people found so much satisfaction and it because I think they really understand the the the the hate that they have for Amelia bugs preying on their plants anything you'd like to highlight here well this is also one of the cuttings I got from our vacation Sue Ann Medina it's also a local mr. Cavendish and wondering when it will flower yes a banana trees flower after 40 to 50 leaves in this and then the last leaf is the flower Wow and then the the tongue guys and then the new seedlings come up - yeah the old boot yeah I see some of the light just starting to come through now it's starting to break through a little bit there's some blue sky up there and we'll get a whole new appearance of the the place when the Sun actually comes piling in and then you have some depend things kind of trailing up here I think about 3 to 4 meters long it's like in a small pot yeah and it gets all these flies yeah and flesh for food yeah need any excitation do you also get any kind of fungus gnats here or not really no ok good to know and then do you have already someone bro lights or do you don't need any grow lights really no do you know it's actually only yeah it's a designed object yeah the only place we have grown at the kitchen fridge for herbs search yeah and well in winter the temperature and the lower shall be it's it's not like 25 to 30 degrees but more like 20 like in degrees and then the plants go to more like slower going and when you bring your plants out in warmer weather because we're not necessarily technically in warmer weather do they make it out to the balcony do they make it down on the ground or on the balcony yeah and also in the garden okay I can show you outside yeah if a lot of yeah also part of the plants are still outside oh so this is not the oh yeah actually yeah and these are also doing very well yeah these are like a plectranthus the type of bright yeah cause you're the best outside I've discovered Oh lemon verbena mmm yummy insight it's a more difficult planet yeah I would say they start to flower yeah they go we'd be well yeah hmm so good they're really great window box plants and things along those lines so so and the lemon verbena smells so good one of my favorite tea flavor is lemon verbena it actually was nice to see if you look over to me they also have oh wow Japanese banana yeah down below yeah Chinese Ben Miller Paul down there yes they stay like for all into outside Wow and it's also an experiment but first time I protected them for the winter mm-hmm so with a burlap or okay but now last winter I did nothing and like the turn survived because we had really might be maybe it actually helps that it's positioned against the house you know so it's probably protecting it to a certain degree and its place to the west yes and get the cold East right and the temperature doesn't decline so much here yeah sometimes like we have some of the turkey figs that grow in our community garden and oftentimes if it's they're not usually protected nobody protects them and oftentimes if you don't protect it it it stops growing up and it starts to grow out a little bit more so it starts to crawl which is fine if you don't mind that habit but that's great that you're experimenting to see like what how cold will it go yeah the other side we have the same oh wow bigger yeah it's another hybrid I got from a local well sometimes the hybrids you know our hybrids and and actually you're built for like the strength of you know so if yeah of growing so I think that maybe that's serving it well as well yeah that's fantastic great view also to be able to look at the garden from above that banana or also called musa Cavendish daka it's also a new plant on the market now and this is the one that actually gets the red banana what color flowers do they have do you know I don't know yet also six months yeah with hoping there's no flower and also a indoors I see a little one maybe coming up here too that's also one of the signals that the mother plant is getting at this mature stage yeah so it doesn't have to take long that the flower will form sometimes people will cut those little ones off or you just leave them on yeah so nice I mean look at all these things that you could be growing that I can't typically grow in my house so this is like a really wonderful experience you know just deed to see it and and to know that you had kind of an apartment experience before this without all the window light and just to acknowledge how much more it actually grows in this situation versus your previous situation and of course you have all these cats yeah the largest cats that I've ever seen the largest house cats that I've ever witnessed in my entire life you have five kids uh-huh and well they go well together yeah and also they leave the plants alone that's fantastic I mean I was gonna say do you have any kind of tips for four bad kitties but you don't have bad jettisoning and you say sure they were small and have you got them two years ago when they were like ten weeks old and in their last week at their previous owner they went outside in the garden so they got used to digging in the ground yeah so that was really bad yeah first week they were here like all the plants and it was like so everywhere because of all the plants they started digging and just playing around yeah so what I did was like this place this chicken and like a chicken wire chicken wire yeah like on all of the bots yeah abandoned or overdue soil yeah and it took like a year to that the cats were not more interested in the plants also making them wet yeah okay I was gonna say sometimes like citrus sprays you know cats hate citrus you know a little water yeah they'll learn their lesson but now it's nuts in that you say yeah now they're just like little Tigers in their own jungle yeah good kitties and we have a special room for them oh yeah oh yeah let's a little cat room are you gonna show us your cat room where's your kitty cat run huh yes I miss kids I had so many cats growing up yeah so many I lived between a farm and the ASPCA which is like where stray cats and dogs go and so lit having a house be you know between those two facilities you always get stray cats and so they would always come to our doorstep and my mom had a soft heart and so we would take them in and try to find homes for them and some of them we ended up keeping I think we had 23 cats that came through and we found homes for yeah oh yes [Music] we have a lot of special plans I also got from the palm fan community also called Pauline mhm it's actually not the bomb to me but it looks like policy it's the cradle pika and it's more like a leafy plant mm-hmm but the it doesn't get a trunk but the leaves can get fairly high you can see this one is also mmm hi yeah and it's in the topics it's gross on the forest floor so it doesn't get much sunlight right so it's like an understory yeah so I placed them also in this north facing me know so it doesn't get a lot of sudden sunlight actually not and these are a little bit more like parlor palms right it's a Mexican dwarf foam yeah and also an tiem is this a crystalline oh yes yeah nice and it's flowered as well yeah right here just to see the with the space and the Spade attractive spadix actually looks like well that's nice thing a lot of plants just start to flower mm-hmm indoors here mm-hmm like the banana trees and this is also another one they had a flower with it it was in the India yeah died back it's also the same hybrid they're also called finger fire yeah which in the botanical name it's not so much yeah and it looks like you have a geranium over there in the window yeah is that one that has a scent or it's the actually this one this effective against and there oh the citronella one yeah Nell mmm-hmm against mosquitoes right yeah another Musa is this like a little baby one special one because you can see it its own it has this white kinda oh yeah look at that wow it's very powdery yeah it's special it's I can look up that name yeah lady got that I didn't realize it would be so powdery cuz sometimes when you rub it it doesn't rub off you know the way that this one has one can go really big yeah okay large chunk so you're saying two years from now I should come back well maybe that's also a thing if I keep it in small bus yeah they stay small yeah but the moment IV bought it yeah it's like boom yeah and I'd imagine now this one you're growing in a little bit more of a kind of a darker condition so it might stay a little small yeah yeah and then it's also an interesting one it's the toyota meatus but the FATA gated woman how it's very very dated yep so I'm that's interesting interesting yeah very pale very little chlorophyll in that guy yeah keep me updated on that one you know you could always I would say not always but maybe you could graft it onto a stronger root stock perhaps to I don't know if that would that would work if it starts to struggle at all and then do you know what kind of begonia this is no it's a I'm terrible with cultivars of begonias but unless I got the Desa present so yeah well you know I wouldn't like about begonias not all of begonias but some of begonias is that they really bring a shock of color yeah you know to the foliage mix because just like you had some of that coleus outside it comes in so many different color ways and even when something is not blooming and sometimes wedgies are insignificant also flower star and but I mean um begonia blooms aren't so great but the foliage boom lots of color already sake please gift yeah yes it's hiding [Laughter] now down here we have some special plans oh I wasn't down here last time yeah had no idea and we're still dating here so see it's me yeah but this one is also I had this in my previous apartment this is the caveat Vitas oh you're still the fishtail Polonia and it's going like really big ha ha it's double I actually have never tried this in my home but I heard that this is actually a fairly easy palm to grow so in your old apartment you have this was it still really good in the east ok ok happier here though yeah yeah and this one is special because it was at my father's office it stood it's the tangible but he died like 13 years ago and I got this and from his office because it was in his office and the plant is like I think maybe 20 years of older Wow so it to being the old phone and still doing bill that's good and you have a little memory of your dad too is this growing completely in hydro stones yeah and just fertilize a bit special high difficulty of a fertilizer and then it keeps you going do you typically have something that is high in nitrogen or what is your fertilizer that you're using for your palms like n P and K or bombs I use special fertilizer yeah especially for the bones and the N is a bit higher I don't know the exact numbers but they use a lot of they go the fat bit fast so they need a lot of energy - yeah so the ones that you're growing in hydro stones you're using something different than the ones that you're using upstairs which was like the mix of the slow release and then some of the organic and again cool release form mm-hmm it's a bit harder to grow you can see that it has a bit of a crispy edges be edgy Mia and I haven't seen only in the real topics you can see that the leaf or perfect yeah it's indoor it's a bit tougher but this one is also I took from my PV Department yeah it's going along now yeah well it's nice that you're kind of like you know trying to help it along I have to admit that these are really beautiful like the feathery fronds are actually quite lovely and you don't see them all so a lot on the markets yeah this is a unique example yeah I love how you have it just like layer and layer of plants even in like what would be your like considered your basement area and behind that there is mm-hmm it's also a special moment which can grow really big mm-hmm this woman is like 2 years old and like the new leaf is like almost more than a meter long so I'm very curious and how big is this one can get because it gets at a larger mature state compared to the the coyote meter which is more generally on the market how do you make your decision on what plants you are looking for that you want to get in your home and planets have to remind me what they have in the garden its unum so that this one one way but also and on the online community we exchange information on your plants and there are new discoveries or plants are very beautiful and I tried to find him do you ever have any struggles with specific plants that had tried to grow in the environment yes and a few palms haven't made it and more like the real exotic ones it needs a high humidity like 80% or higher these are very difficult to keep like the lipstick ball mmm it's like almost impossible with the nice red all that so it would be amazing if you could actually do that yeah yeah that's a no yeah it smells possible yeah but it'd be here tried yeah it's a tough thing too because sometimes when they're larger plants like you feel a little bit more like ah this is a bigger risk yeah okay let's get today you know do they use this they don't that's like a hamster wheel guys that's crazy so if they need to like lose a few pounds they they go into the cat wheel oh come on no come on are you really [Laughter] salt kind of modeling in the cat room or owning house oh yeah and probably the smallest little one was one oh look at this and they have their own little kitty tree did you make this or is somebody did somebody make this an artist and it wasn't old and the fruit tree yeah you're from the local area and he plays like these and they're cuttings of different trees from cities he used them as planks for the cats did you call yourself man come here she's like no way no way I want to stay right here oh my god this is so funny Ewan mate BOOOM himself all the cabinets all the get and little cat cutouts unbelievable look at this demonstrating mm-hmm I mean it looks like a giant white bear I've never seen cat so large Caesar come here oh was what it's like to live on the cat 3 yes oh yeah that'd be great maybe I should probably put my shoes back on [Music] let's go outside starting at their balcony unifrom we also have the Bahraini banana it's also fairly common here in the Netherlands and that's different from your red banana then yeah different one because this one can tolerate more lower temperature mhm and this one also gets more larger mm-hmm but the food isn't edible hmm it's not edible oh it's more like more nice bulb mm-hmm nice banana to you too is it is it inedible or is it just like straight-up like toxic okay has no taste okay so it has it hasn't been bred for its fruit then yeah and here's also specialist it eats yeah yeah we don't know we don't often get to see these in the US do you know what the these species name is of this yeah yeah and you can see the difference yeah are these like wisteria vines out here oh nice do you ever try to hack those back they're really like aggressive yeah but they like getting hacked back to like that's the state they're masochistic and it's like well flowers yeah I love that's if that's what you love about them when you're just like oh the blooms are still serving yeah nice and maybe I'll just take a cutting for the winter mm-hmm outside and see what happens yeah I actually take some cuttings they're not Hardy in the the Northeast and so they usually die back sometimes they'll cut off fell deadhead the flowers and I'll cut off the flowers just so that their energy goes more to the leaves as well yeah oh and a lot of Hooper is right here yeah I started to get into these as well like outdoors because you they have so many different beautiful colors of foliage I actually started to go like through a goth phase and my garden and started to get like darker colored and so like the really dark hookahs that stood out for me and they're also very popular these are just the ones I got yesterday yes you'll have to plant them in the garden and just like endless hybrid forms and their schools forget it I mean some of the slides oh well actually these two ladies that came with the house they were from the first owner and they're like more than ten years old so they're really old ladies no well actually they lace a few eggs this year yeah but they're like retired now and enjoying chickens actually it's an old Dutch please yeah really old one and they're really tough okay that's why they are so old yeah they are very hard you can survive any condition well they are very I love the little white necks and other kind of like the black kind of guinea fowl look from the back one thing about chickens as they poop a lot yeah well here we have a few plants that will move in coming weeks inside also the devasena this is actually one of my first plants I got in the Netherlands so it's like um more than 25 years old now and it was like this really small plants and now it's like a tea actually really love the form I mean it has like this little green top and then something on a dr. Seuss stem growing up and Chinese windmill bomb also the same in which you have some growing in the ground and in pots and this one stays outside to the winter and when it really gets cold I just place a coconut and there's some extra coconut protection on top of it and here we have the other morally banana is the green one but with the the red being underneath yeah and we are some Candice and very Hardy Africa I was gonna say look at this this one can handle 5 degrees Celsius Wow it's a very tough one yeah and it's also going very nice some hostas that look like they've been held hostage rather slugs snails and you can tell this here they're getting to fall in into the winter yeah so they're the leaves are retracting the energy and here we have Yuka mm-hmm I had a huge one of these in my house they're quite picky if you get up close to them it was growing in my window I had to cut it back and I gave one of the cuttings to a friend because it just got too large which yours is quite sizable this one you also bring in yes and this one went outside because a tremendous amount of scale box just so I placed it underneath a tree and then almost most of the scale books they got eaten up yeah yeah and you don't want that to be another vendor in your house there's a couple of mine that have like mealy bugs that I have like I have to I can't just like move them outside because somebody will probably take it or yeah a lot of green and you need it because of the other insects that prey on the this scale box that's the thing you had a lot of beneficials out here and they could just naturally like attack them Sonia Antarctica oh yeah the dick Sonia look how thick it is yeah these are pretty Hardy - no yes I had a larger one but it got so large that I didn't had any space inside to keep it to winter so I started okay actually he's breaking out of its own yeah it's really growing also fast yeah and another nice thing is I have this winter hardy they stay green in the winter yeah can rhododendrons as well yep also and they look alike the dick Sonia yeah they do it actually a little bit yeah and then you have some Virginia Creeper here it's peepers yeah any grape sir uh uh well actually we have some apple trees here and some oh I do see a little bit of grape right there yeah okay this one stays in the ground this one stays in the ground and they do a rail and a lot of food so you can get more like this topical feel yeah but you're dirty you're not getting a lot of light here though are you this is the North Face yeah a lot of the garden who cares hostas like ferns this all makes sense and it's very moist you can see also the moss going between the plants and it's a nice place here here their grapes edible yeah edible bitter though not sweet teeth yeah and very seedy and if you move this way did you ever think about trying to grow something up these well actually I still have to paint this part [Laughter] [Music] and this is a nice place where we can sit in the summertime this is more like the East the Morning Sun and if he moved that way we have more the south-facing some and we built this and with a sedum roof we built it ourselves and wood is and treated with a fungi so it protects the wood from and barding and the writer and other and funghi so there's a fungus on here okay it's the it's a party called funghi Forsch yeah but the the exact name of the fungus is also an actually in it yes and you only have to treat it with oil natural oil yeah like a Lindsay I think once per year and that's also a nutrition for the fungus what is this do you know it's the game's fern it's also a winter hardy fern so it stays outside yeah I can look up the edges and here's one of your little snail friends right here next to like probably eat a little foliage it's a bamboo yeah growing here and a lot of apple trees everywhere here just a lot of edible flute yeah and plants we have I see people just picking off the apples which is look really lovely so behind this Apple team we have it's called a kind of Stuttgart it's also hybrids and it can go really big variegated one it's getting a little mangled by this uh by the by the apple tree and walk on further to the vegetable garden in which we and some where we grow our own food still edible these are late season or as berries hmm nice you can see the garden is getting to its last face of this year it's still quite a lot of harvest you get here this is Sarah I mean big and I like that these flowers they these plants they came here to the wind these are the yes these are great and I just let them go so that nature that some balance and which also worked great against mealybugs others and the best that you don't want in your garden and that you can create a natural balance this way and in during the end of the year I just let nature go through the garden and in the in the spring I will start over again new plants and vegetables well some of these are probably I know you have a lot of annuals here but some of these are probably perennial and they just come back like that one yeah actually those are seedlings from this year that's what's chard yeah Wow and it's growing like in a variety of colors it looks like you need to get an appetite for Swiss chard because you harvest some more and this is a shared garden so we share it with our neighbors it's like seven neighbors take care of this garden it's actually public space yeah so it's like a little community garden but yeah yeah doing Civic days that you know just so and then it's a nice writer and then you meet your other neighbors and you work to get him on the garden it's really big yeah and the seeds they dope off and mixture you you want to go again and the sunflowers are now like in the last storm in a few days they got beaten up a bit but they were really big like this one it's multiple flowers really nice yeah in many insects so this is also a harvest for seats for next year or for the birds and now I'm looking at your roof here I can actually see your solar panels yeah um this this vantage point yeah and also what the plants look like from out here well what special of the roof of our house is that well actually south-facing also it looks like and insect like the butterfly with its wings and you can see the construction where the roof is hanging on and we placed a white and a finish on the roof so that it doesn't heat up that much and it's also more effective for the solar panels yeah so the efficiency reflects back so the temperature doesn't get that high on black boots the temperature can get 270 degrees in a Celsius and this hoof only gets like 35 depending on the temperature wow that's pretty impressive so when did you paint the roof white and kind of like well it's actually a minimal yeah it's on the it's integrated in the finish of the roof in the minimums on the roof they and extract small particles from the air which pollute here and when the rain comes down the roof it washes off and then it goes in the ground and so it's a little more pure purified it's an else on the air purifier Wow super cool so sustainability is also an important for us and in different aspects from the plants but also the construction the house the way we use energy and produce energy and eat our own produce food and that way we try to and make our footprint as small as possible even though we have a large house but it was all any build with the footprint and it can be made small well this is a really a part of what you do professionally as well so it's America yeah it's your work so it's important to kind of like showcase it and live it and and you are just fantastic even though it's like no small task you know it seems like you have a lot of work to do so it's like you have to practice what you preach and learn from it because I think with a lot of these experimental livings or experimental homes you know as you were sharing before it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the the right way it's just a way that you're testing out and you don't really know what is the best way until you actually test it so marvelous is there more of the garden that we should see yeah we have this more jungle-like part you have to sneak to the leaves then well this is our south-facing Terrace and in summer it gets really hot here here you go and we have some figs and this station hold into all year round and it does very well at this spot because of the the heat of the Sun is reflected by the facade and this place warms up a bit more than other places in the garden it's really nice that you have these little micro climates and you become sensitive to those yeah yeah and place the plants on the correct you know this would this looks like a showing hood no I have not seen this it's a it's an it's a vinter hardy also no but it's a very nice taste well actually the taste becomes better when the winter foster yes I know it's similar to like a parsnip or something is that it needs to get all the sugars yeah yeah so do you then bite it like an apple or do you open it up like you got it open yeah and more eat it like you can see because of the vein last days this one this is the coloring it who gets I think this one's already good maybe yeah probably like burst all the tomatoes and this nice that it can survive in the winter because this is also a fruit which and I will I've learned from my childhood in serving him so so currants are and I'm did it grow and like more mountainous areas that I can handle some of the cold okay well actually it's a plant originated from Asia more the colder places and but it's introduced all over the world now so like Moringa like you see it everywhere now well here we have the big bananas and also the Chinese windmill nice to see them now from the aerial view you can see how big they grow because I planted them as small plants yeah and when we moved here four years ago and like how will it be in five years from now a little bit of perspective us standing next to it so you could actually see the height that it is under pending on the winter and if it's if the temperature drops very loud tranquil and disappear yeah but the roots will and deliver new and sprout in the spring do you find that even if it gives new sprouts in the springs that I could that it grows up pretty fast pretty high well let me - fast yes but also more and stems so this was from last from two years ago they were standing one banana now there are three so if the winter is a bit colder yeah maybe they will be double what they do even other it's possible here I've seen it from other Dutch gardeners then but you have to protect him very well in the winter and she's also nice one with more largely leaves well this is normal and a turkey pterocarpus and a fortune i but this is a new hybrid with more and longer on the leaves just like light or I think that and when the spear comes out maybe got damaged in the storm or by in Birken insects and because it's folded together the damage is on the same yeah yeah I love how you have like a lot of these like non-native species that you wouldn't typically think about growing in a garden or you'd see them in like kind of a more subtropical climate with like together with some more natural growing plants I see you like a little even yeah yeah and even the roses are blooming now these are the last man so many late season gifts that you'll still have here I think that's one of the benefits in living in an eco district very nature and architecture and living is imbalance in they the whole area is based also on permaculture principles yeah so that all the circles are closed not only in the way you live but also in the way use nature and the plants around you yeah it's very it feels very seamless and even though the houses are separate they still feel very connected part of the landscape and they even made the research and buy a few universities and they discovered that like this was like home justice flatlands and then it was not special just some sheep grazing around and some fruit trees and that was more than twenty years ago but when they built this in the area and just like six or seven years and they did like this monitoring program and the counted the number of plants and animals living here and discovered that more than forty endangered species were discovered here which were not living here but came here as a kind of reserved area where into American leaf right so there wasn't a it was an agricultural area before and probably not diverse at all and then as some this area was developed and people moved in with all the different kinds of plantings it became a very diverse area and using the permaculture principles in the it came in balance yeah which this was a show like we always hear about the impacts of the humans have on our planet it's always the negative impacts but you could also see how you can live more in harmony with nature and actually be a positive impact the same way that we could we could actually regenerate soil more easily you know by composting our food waste and our plant waste in our yard waste and by selecting plants that kind of grow well together and I know some people who are so used to kind of curated gardens would say oh this is a little bit too wild for me but that is act exactly what you want to do in permaculture principles is just kind of mimic the way that you would see in a regular ecosystem which is often unmanageable and curated and have a great variety of mixtures of the fact that well this has been a marvelous tour both indoors and out and I just really thank you for opening up your home your backyard to us and thank you for coming by oh absolutely I mean I had to you know ever since seeing you last year you're working on the house I'm glad we could actually come full circle and see you here in your natural element and maybe how it will look in five years yeah totally different [Music] how did you enjoy a Mars houseplant home tour and the variety of plants he was growing share your thoughts in the comments below and if you're wondering how to keep track and care for your growing plant collection then check out my house plant care spreadsheets get the 125 house plant care spreadsheet or enroll in the house plant masterclass to access the 350 care spreadsheet you'll also get information on the house plant care tracker which sends you automatic reminders to water and fertilize your plants additionally you'll be able to record track and share important milestones in your plant's life what more can a plant mom and dad ask for details on Homestead Brooklyn comm and in the description below you

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 1,010,312

Rating: 4.8809991 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me, plants, houseplants, indoor plants, garden, gardening, house plants, houseplant care, ecological community, Culemborg, Netherlands, Culemborg Netherlands, eco community, living in a greenhouse, living in a glasshouse, glasshouse, greenhouse, greenhouse living, permaculture, glasshouse tour, growing palms indoors, palms, indoor palms, how to care for palms

Id: ZO_lCBAf_Ag

Length: 79min 40sec (4780 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020