hi everyone my name is memo this is my channel house glanty goodness and this is the channel
essentially where i like to talk about the things that i'm passionate about the most
which essentially is well you can see behind me my tropical houseplants or tropical houseplants
in general actually so this is a channel where i talk about some of my experiences with my plants
with hopefully that's something that you can take away and maybe implement within your own
houseplant care routines i'll usually throw in a bit of scientific knowledge as much as i can
remember from when i was doing sciences so take it with a pinch of salt um but yeah let's geek
out essentially if we can a bit for a moment about plants if you like this video do drop a like down
below it lets me know that you like this type of content so i'll produce more of it uh if you like
these types of videos generally then do consider subscribing if you want every week i'll try to
upload about two or three times so there's more content like this coming out on a regular basis
it's actually quite nice we're building a bit of a community now we've got people are actually having
discussions within the comments and also people requesting videos this is actually a request from
somebody on youtube so they wanted to see a bit more about the large verticosm that you might be
able to see behind me now the reason why i haven't done a video on the larger varicose and for a very
long time now actually is because it has struggled the most it had a bit of an issue when when i
first got it it was fine i have to say i bought it as quite a mature specimen so probably not as high
it was probably only about this tall and then the rest of it is kind of grown in my care um
it was a bit of a learning experience i've never had a plant that was so well established and so
large to begin with so and actually when i first bought this varicose and it was trailing which i
didn't realize it could trail the way that it was and the stems or the trunk essentially the stem
really is quite thick it's about that big so huge and very well established plant and the
thing that surprised me the most with this is that most plants when they trail and they used to be
climbers when they start trailing their leaves get smaller but actually this had really decent sized
leaves when i first got it but i wanted to grow it up because it was just bending in all these
awkward positions now in hindsight that probably caused a few of the issues because when i tried to
try this it up onto a metal support because the wood just wasn't holding it enough there wasn't
a moss pole that was strong enough to kind of hold everything up it's quite a heavy plant
so it's got a metal trellis essentially but uh i kind of ended up bending one of the three stems
unfortunately in a bit of an awkward angle and it snapped and i hadn't realized it might have just
been because it flopped whilst i was trying to get it tied up onto the trellis and i hadn't realized
but this will tell you quite how resilient these plants are for about two or three months
the leaves were growing fine they were showing no signs of issues it's only when the leaves
started declining and that happened relatively quickly that then kind of investigated a bit more
because i had no reason to look into things that i realized that the stem was completely snapped off
basically so that was just surviving on the energy reserves that was still left within the stem
now what i then did waste not whatnot essentially is i cut it all back down to that stump
um i released the apical dominance so there's been more growth since then the last few months so it's
actually about halfway up the trellis now which is good it's doing quite well um but essentially
most of the leaves were gone so at that point i chopped up the stem and it was pretty much
wet sticks but it did really well it took a while but it's growing quite nicely i will show you one
of the propagations that's kind of done well bear with me now you might be able to see one of his
propagations now please excuse the crispiness this was in a ziploc baggies to kind of like
facilitate as much humidity as possible this was one of the first leaves and it came out it's
rested ever so slightly so it went slightly crispy around the edges but you can see the rest of it is
doing quite quite nicely and when it started going it went basically the interesting thing
that happened with this when i was propagating it from the wet stick it stopped pushing out leaves
before it started pushing out roots which i thought was hysterical but it then took even
longer because of that but it's doing quite well i probably will be doing the same thing
at the very top there and the reason i'll come back to the reason why i haven't talked about
the mother plant essentially the huge varicose behind me for such a long time is it struggled
a bit pretty much from the moment it came into my care i did everything that i was supposed
to i had a much smaller varicose which was thriving but with this one it was in really bad
coco coir i didn't do all of it at the same time so i didn't stress it unnecessarily because there
is something that a lot of us will tend to do where it's do everything at once do everything
it wants and then you over stress the plant and then it causes more issues so i did try to kind of
space it all out so i repotted it into better soil which was also in terracotta then that caused a
bit of an issue because it was used to the wetter conditions of the pure cocoa in a plastic pot um
so then it took me a while to get the watering down and then try to lift it up and then kind of
snapped so all of this combined and i think the location the only location that i could put it
wasn't anywhere near a decent amount of light so it was relatively far back it
was probably medium towards lower light which is not something that it was necessarily happy with
which then caused some stress especially because of the underwatering and then i started getting
some spider mites i then dealt with the spider mites uh and i've been dealing with
them for a while but then the melee bugs started arriving as well so i dealt with the meaty bugs
but then after the move happened to this house i think it overstressed it essentially so um
better conditions in here more light abruptly so this is a situation where everything happened at
once so i'm assuming that's probably why the pests kind of arrived in throngs essentially
is there's some mealy bugs there and then some spider mites but at the moment i kind
of went for the nuclear option which isn't chemicals i actually found that predatory pests
pest predators or biological control essentially serve predatory mites
for the spider mites and then um predatory insects for the mealybugs which bizarrely
enough look like mealybugs but they move a lot faster that's how you can usually tell
if you want a video on predatory insects let me know in the comments down below and i'll
put one of those together but they are doing great things at the moment i'm already seeing the kind
of damage has already halted unfortunately with most people they'd be like you need to quarantine
that take it away from all the other plants that you have that's a wonderful bit of advice but
when you don't have the space to do it and also give the plant the conditions that it needs it
will then stress it even more unnecessarily so at the moment i went with a nuclear option got the
predatory insects and kind of spread it around most of the other plants as well so hopefully if
anything does move to other plants the predatory insects will then deal with it there as well so
i've also got some lacewings that are coming in which tend to be a bit of a kill-all for
all pests most pests in the in the household so that'll be interesting but yeah that's the
varicose um at the moment because watering is still kind of struggling a bit more i went for
essentially what i find to be the panacea for all things watering related for most plants and i've
hydro spiked it and actually it's surprisingly how quickly it's getting through the water through the
hydrospike in relation to what i thought it would need because i was watering about every seven days
i was letting it kind of properly dry out or not fully dry out but dry out enough with the
moisture meter but that plant was used to be much wetter and it was a much denser bit of soil so i
think it kind of acclimated to those situations and when i removed that and gave it what it
should be wanting it then didn't like it so it's now taking as much water as it needs the soil mix
is very airy so hopefully it won't cause any roots or anything like that but so far so good
but that's the reason why i wasn't updating on the varicose and it's kind of struggling a bit at
the moment that's the other reason why i'm going to cut off some of the top bits so hopefully if
everything does go horribly badly and i end up losing that plant i've already got one
here that's kind of a replacement and if i've got a few more cuttings and it should be fine
and i think to be fair most of the plants should be salvageable but it's part of having a house
glance pests will happen don't freak out just deal with it and just make sure that you try and see
the signs the plant is giving you that it's probably not liking certain things if it's
under watering it's over watering if it's pests if it's a dry situation and it needs more humidity
or if it needs more light so just bear that in mind but yeah if you've got any questions
do drop a comment down below i'd love to talk to other people that are getting larger plants
and it's a bit more of a learning curve because you think you have more of a grace period but i
actually found the large more established plants are less forgiving than the smaller plants
so bear in mind but yeah drop some comments down below let's have a conversation hopefully you've
enjoyed hopefully i shall see you here soon and yeah enjoy the rest of your day thanks bye