hi everyone it's marianne and welcome to my wasteless life
for today's video i'll be talking about 2022's plant of the year
thank you so much for joining me today and if you're new this is my wasteless life
where i share with you my houseplant journey as well as some lifestyle
content focusing on sustainability productivity
wellness as well as personal and travel vlogs here and there
and right now i'm actually sharing my hawaii vlogs
so if you haven't seen any of that yet i'll link the playlist up here
and also down in the description but for today's video
i'm gonna be talking about 2022's plant of the year
in 2021 i declared bird of paradise as plant of the year
but for this year we're going to go with someone with a lot more
authority than i am on this matter
the national garden bureau and it declared peperomias as 2022 plant of the year
i do think peperomias are still a bit underrated in the houseplant community
there are of course groups of people within a houseplant community that are really into them
but as far as its popularity overall i do think they still fly kind of under the radar
but peperomias have hundreds of varieties under its genus
maybe even thousands that we don't even know about and
maybe that's one of the reasons that peperomias
are not as popular because if you're a house plant collector the tendency
is you want to collect every single variety within each of the plant genus of your choice
with peperomias that's kind of hard
to do because a lot of peperomias varieties
are still very much unidentified but the more common ones that you'd see or are
well known within the household community is one
the peperomia obtusifolia also known as the baby rubber tree
and there's also the Peperomia argyreia i think that's how you pronounce it
and it's more commonly known as the peperomia watermelon which was really really popular
a couple years back and i think
they're still popular but they have gotten a little bit of
notoriety because they're kind of hard to care of compared to other
peperomia plants which are more relatively easier care than the peperomia watermelon
and there's the peperomia caperata which is the one we often see
and also known as the Peperomia frost
the properomia incana and we also have the trailing peperomias like the parallel peperomia
and one that we have seen often in big box stores as well which
used to be on the rarer side and now is part of the costa
farms livetrends collection which is the raindrop pepermia
and the last one that i'm going to mention but definitely not the least
is the peperomia prostrata or the string of turtles
so this is the peperomia that i'm going to be mainly talking about in this video
but like i said there are many types of
peperomia that you could choose from
and they look very different from each other from the way they grow the where
the foliage looks and the variegation that they may
or may not have the other peperomia that i have aside from this one is
this peperomia hope i used to have the pepperoni obtusifolia variegata
which i have traded and given away as well as with
the peperomia pixie lime and those grow in kind of like more of a bush form
also great plants but peperomias weren't really
my thing as a plant genus back then and this year
if you've seen my previous videos like my wish list plants for 2022
i'm taking a chance on plant genus that i used to stay away from and one of them is peperomias
but when it comes to the peperomia prostrata
more commonly known as the string of turtles this has been always part of my
wish list so when i got this maybe a year or two years ago
probably a year and a half just to be safe i really wanted to get
this plant and this one used to be on the rarer slash uncommon
side and was very hard to get but this one has
popped up in big box stores in recent years
especially last year and even in my most recent trips to the big box stores i've
seen like three of them at a lowe's so this one is a lot easier to find it has
become a lot more affordable if you can find them
in big box stores they have also have been common in a lot of nurseries
at a relatively reasonable price i don't think this carry
a super high price anymore but of course that depends on where you live but where i
am in the us in the northeast this
has become a lot more accessible and a lot more cheaper compared to two years ago
there are several reasons why peperomias would
make great houseplants as mentioned earlier it comes in many different
varieties so there's plenty to choose from
so you could always find one that would fit your aesthetic your plant parenting
style and your level of care that you could provide for the plant
and peperomias also don't grow very large either as a bushy plant or as a trailing house plant
so if you're already lacking space but you still
kind of want to add plants into your plant collection definitely look into
peperomias they make great terrarium plants if you want to build a terrarium
or if you have an ikea greenhouse cabinet or
any greenhouse cabinet that you like to put your plants on and
you kind of want the plants to stay in that greenhouse glass
cabinet for a long time you don't want it to outgrow it
too quickly they definitely look into getting peperomias and
pepperonis are often considered succulent or succulent like plants kind of like with hoya
but they actually have very
different care compared to succulents because peperomias are tropical plants not desert plants
and in this video we're going to be talking about care for peperomias
mainly focusing on the string of turtles
but a lot of the tips that i'll mention here
would apply to most peperomias that you'll find in big box stores or in your
nurseries and if you're not sure if the plant you have is a peperomia
one telling characteristic is if they're blooming they
have this rat tail influorescence which is their flower and compared
to let's say hoya's peperomias do bloom a lot more
easily and a lot more frequently so you would see
this rat tail inflorescence quite easily to help you identify if the plant that
you have is a peperomia so when it comes to the right requirement of a string of turtles
peperomia are often lumped
with succulents and hoyas when it comes to plant care
so they think peperomias need a lot of light for it to thrive well but in
reality peperomias are understory plants in the wild they can also
be epiphytes or lithophytes meaning they could grow on
living and non-living things but in general they are understory
plants so they don't really need a lot of light in order to survive
or thrive in fact they prefer not to have really bright lights
they are not low light plants but they don't like having bright direct
light on them which would cause the leaves to burn
so the ideal light for a peperomia is medium light to bright indirect
light but i would keep it more on the medium side
and i have my string of turtles in my indoor greenhouse cabinet which
has grow lights but it's actually on the shelf that does not have a grow light on it
and so far it's doing well as you can see it
has been trailing really really long and this is with me pruning it a lot
and when it comes to watering for the more succulent types of peperomias
yes you do have to wait for them to dry out before
you water them kind of like with succulents
but unlike succulents even though you have to wait for the water to dry
out pepperonis generally do not like staying dry for a very long
time even the most succulent types of peperomias
like this string of turtles as you can see the leaves of this
have thicker ones but they also younger ones that you can see are
a little bit more flat so if you have a string of turtles
that the leaves are a little bit more flat and not plump that means
you're probably not watering it as frequently or you're letting it dry out too long
but the tricky thing about peperomias when it comes to watering
is as mentioned they don't like getting to be dried out
for way too long but they also don't like getting to be watered way too frequently
so with this one i generally like to bottom
water it and it is in a terracotta pot and when i've got this
it was in a typical six inch pot that is kind of deep if you bought
any big box store plants it comes in that regular
pot and i immediately took it off that pot because string of turtles like a
lot of peperomias have very shallow root system
and they don't really need a lot of that soil in order to grow their roots so
immediately i transferred it into this very shallow pot
so you don't want them to be potted in lots of soil thinking that it they
would grow into it not really because it's like i
said i mentioned multiple times the root system very shallow and
often what i would do is when i do have to water it
is i bottom water it sometimes i do top water because i want to wash the
foliage and make sure the dust is not on it but for the most part i just
bottom water this just to make sure that it is not
getting overly saturated when i water them
and when it comes to the frequency of watering maybe i water this this size of
peperomia and this variety of peperomia the string of turtles
i water this maybe once maybe twice a month really depending
on the season right now i'm watering this
maybe every three to four weeks i try not to water it as often and if i'm going to be
honest i can never really tell when it needs watering
unlike other peperomias where you can do the taco test like with a
peperomia pixie or even a peperomia obtusifolia or maybe other peperomias that have a more
regular leaf-like structure
you could like bend it and if it's bendable or you could fold it into like a taco then
that peperomia needs watering with a
string of turtles obviously that's very hard to do with the way
your foliage grows so with this one i just kind of like eyeball it
but i'm just making sure that i'm not watering it more than twice a month
but like with any houseplants or any tropical
houseplants always urge to decide of underwatering instead of over watering
and the way you would know that you're over
watering your peperomias is it would have a very mushy base and it would
produce yellowing leaves and of course it would
be dropping leaves
and if you are repotting any of your peperomias make sure you're using a
well-draining soil mix the one that has lots of
perlite vermiculite or any soil amendments that increase
drainage in the soil mix so main takeaway when it comes to
soil and repotting use a fast draining soil mix
and keep them in a snog pot like a shallow terracotta pot like i have here when it
comes to temperature like most tropical houseplants that we have
they like the temperatures to be above 50 degrees
fahrenheit and when it comes to humidity they don't really require high levels of humidity
but they do benefit from having
relative humidity which is why i keep mine in my ikea greenhouse cabinet
one tip that i would give to help your
string of turtles trail a bit faster is once they started growing
this rat tail in fluorescence or their flowers just take them off
because you don't want the plant to be spending its energy
on producing this blooms and just let it focus on growing the
trails and growing the leaves of your string of turtles
and you can let the blooms grow if you want it's not going to hurt your
plant but eventually also this bloom starts to drop pollen all over your plants
and you might mistake it for spider mites or
pests so for me to avoid that confusion altogether
i just cut off or pinch off the blooms so that i would run the risk of
trying to guess is it pollen from the blooms or it's actually spider mites
when it comes to propagation peperomias i think
is one of the easiest plants to propagate
and i would say it would probably rival a pothos plant when it comes to the ease
of propagating one and with a lot of peperomias
you don't even need a node from your peperomia cutting for it to
propagate just as long as you have a leaf and a bit of stem
in it it would root up and produce new leaves so which is kind of a
great thing about so when it comes to propagation of the string of turtles
it's quite easy i actually have some here um it
looks nasty i'm sorry if you could look past
the algae filled water you can see that the string of turtles have roots already
growing in the water and normally this is not the way that i would
propagate my string of turtles but if you want to
propagate in water you definitely can the method that i do
prefer for a string of turtles is getting a starter pot well this is
an upcycled yogurt cup
and put some potting soil in it already instead of using any other propagation medium because i
don't like disturbing the roots of the string of turtles because i mentioned
earlier they're very delicate and shallow so once
they have grown into the soil i don't really have to repot it afterwards or transplant it
unless it really needs it more often
than not they don't so with this one all i'm really gonna do which is so
easy and so quick is lay it on top of the soil and
that's pretty much it and there's really nothing else to it but
by just layering the cuttings that you have on top of it you don't
have to dig or make holes or bury any part of the peperomia cutting
or the string of turtle cutting unless you want to but
most part is you just like lay it on top of the soil and it
will grow roots like that you could put it in a prop box if you want it
would help speed up with the root growth like with any houseplants
and with this one this is little cuttings that came
from the test tube i'm just placing this on top of it it has a root system ready
but i'm not going to like try to plant it i'm just
hoping that the root system will find its way into the soil
so this is why it's a lot better to just propagate them this way than
starting with water or using a medium that you know that's not going to be the permanent medium
for the string of turtles
and it just makes it a lot easier down the road
to just put it directly in soil and it would grow into soil i have tried
propagating this in leca it also works as well
but again when i needed to transfer it into soil it was just a hassle and i messed
up the root systems propagate it directly in soil
and you wouldn't have that problem down the road but yeah so i think
that is full enough and that would grow and i would place that in the prop box and
in the future video i'll definitely give you an
update on how well the string of turtles is doing
so that is how you propagate a string of turtle or peperomias in general
so that is 2022's plant of the year
the peperomia featuring my peperomia prostrata or the string of turtles
i hope you found those plant care tips and propagation tips helpful
and if you have a peperomia plant let me know down
in the comments which ones you have
or what are your wishlist peperomias and if you have any other plant care tips
when it comes to peperomia also share them down in the comments
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and have a plantiful day bye
you