Hello Plant People, it is Nora the Leca Queen. Thank you for joining me. Today we're going to be
talking about yellow leaves, yellowing leaves on your precious house plants. Now this is something
that a lot of people get, a lot of people don't like and we're going to be unpacking what causes
yellow leaves and in the same vein how you can help your plants prevent this where you can.
I have my two plants here that are going to help me discuss this. I've got my Philodendron Mamei,
that is my Philodendron Mamei there looking lovely living in her rectangular pot in leca and she has
yellowing leaves. I also have my Monstera Monkey Mask. Now this is my Monstera Adansonii Monkey
Mask. I've had this plant living on a moss pole for quite a few months now and she was a gorgeous
specimen. Just take a look at this picture and see how this plant evolved from a very small
plant to a lovely luscious plant living in leca. I will show you what this plant looks like now.
This is my plant now she is absolutely pitiful looking there you can see all these
yellowing leaves she's got all these brown spots. Her leaves are just dying, this plant is dying
the plant is actually dying and when you look at how this plant used to be it is such a shame.
Look at that it is so, so terrible. So stick around and I will show you what I am going to do
to help this plant and treat this plant and get it looking the way it used to look. What causes
yellowing leaves? Moisture stress, moisture stress is one of the commonest and most important cause
of yellowing leaves. So what do I mean when I say moisture stress? So moisture stress could
be underwatering or over watering so your plant is not receiving a consistent supply of water.
Sometimes you put too much, sometimes you put too little and that can manifest as yellowing leaves.
When you've got a plant living in leca that sort of almost gets rid of that problem because the
plant is actually able to absorb the amount of water that it needs when it needs it, so
semi-hydroponics will fix that for you. But if you've got your plant in soil how do you
know? One of the things that can help to regulate your watering is a moisture meter.
I've got a moisture meter here this is back when I had plants in soil I used to use this
and this is a little device that's just got you plunk it in your soil it's got a little
probe you put that probe in the soil and it will that dial will move and it will tell you whether
your plant is wet or dry so you know that you need to water it or you don't need to water it
but you need to water your plant well so when you water your plant make sure you're
watering it completely you're not just going there with little drips and drabs of water
get a good amount of water and make sure that water is running through and the plant is well
watered so using one of these is really really good so make sure you're watering your plants
regularly and watering your plants well. Another really important thing that
leads to yellow leaves is light. Light is really really important when you're taking care of plants
light or the lack of it is what caused my Monstera Adansonii to start looking like this.
When I was living in my old house which had way better lighting than this one
my Monstera was thriving she was just doing so so well and then when I moved to this home
and I put her in a spot that obviously she didn't like because there wasn't as much light
she started just going downhill. I've had to repair her once before but that clearly didn't
work and we are where we're at now. So light is very very important. Make sure that you've got
light for your plant and if you don't have sufficient light in your home
seriously consider investing in some grow lights. Other environmental conditions things like cold
and heat. When a plant is living in a home it does get exposed to all these things because we do heat
our home so you might have a certain pocket in your home maybe you've got your plant living under
a vent which you shouldn't have and then that plant is going to be more likely to be affected
by that heat and will manifest as yellow leaves or the plant is cold it's not warm enough where the
plant sits and it will manifest with the yellow leaves and that's exactly what happened with this
plant. So I put this plant right next to a window so it wasn't getting the greatest light but also
that window is single glaze and it is really cold where this plant sits so that's probably why it
ended up looking like this so light temperature very important. If you've got a plant that's
living in soil and sometimes even a plant that's living in leca, yellowing leaves might also be
an indicator that your plant needs to be repotted. Once you see a plant that's got yellow leaves just
look see what's happening with the roots because yellowing leaves is an indication that not all is
well and one of the things that might not be well is the root situation. So the plant might benefit
from a repot just give the plant pot next size up and that might help your problem. Humidity,
if your plant is developing yellow leaves it might be that it is not as humid as it would like to be.
Some plants like to be more humid than others so you might find that just upping the humidity
level in your home might prevent this and upping the humidity level might just mean,
I mean some people talk about putting some pebbles on a tray and putting some water there,
I don't know how effective that is to be honest, I suspect it's not that effective. Another thing you
could do is bunch up all your plants group your plants up together and those areas where you've
got your plants grouped up together they tend to have a higher residual humidity than other
areas in your home. But of course the ultimate thing that you could do is grab a humidifier
once you've got a humidifier going you can actually control better control the humidity
in your home and your plants will love you for it. Of course one of the most dreaded things that
causes yellowing leaves is pests and of course you know we all hate pests spider mites, mealy bugs,
thrips things like that they might eventually cause yellowing leaves so when you see yellowing
leaves one of the first things you should do is inspect your plants and make sure there aren't
any pests and if they are, you're isolating that plant, checking all the plants around it
making sure that they don't have that infestation and treating that plant or if it's completely
beyond repair getting rid of it completely. Another thing that causes yellow leaves actually
is nutritional deficiencies, so you might find that a plant that does not have certain nutrients
will start to develop yellowing leaves. So if a plant lacks nitrogen for example you'll start to
see yellowing in the older leaves first and then as the new leaves are coming they start they're
a lighter green than they normally would be so you might suspect that your plant has a nitrogen
deficiency and if for example it's got a potassium deficiency you might find that the yellowing
is along the edges and not necessarily all over the leaf and different nutritional deficiencies
will manifest in different ways but the most important thing really is to make sure that you
fertilize your plants and fertilize your plant with a well balanced fertilizer
or nutrient and once you do that you're not going to have those issues. And of course last
but not least one of the most important causes of yellowing leaves like my Philodendron Mamei
is that the leaves are old and it's time for them to go. So you when you take a look at your plant,
look at this plant the rest of the leaves are doing really, really well there's a new leaf
coming there there's another new leaf coming down there and all the plant is doing is getting rid
of the old plants and if you don't like the look of that all you need to do is just clip them off
and your plant goes back to its wondrous glory so no need to fret. Sometimes yellow leaves are part
of the life cycle of a plant everything that lives must go to the next phase so same thing we pass on
leaves pass on as well so if everything else is okay with your plant no need to fret it's just
a natural process that the plant will go through. First thing that I'm going to do is separate the
moss pole from this metal rod and then I can put it up on my bench top and start to work on it.
That's the moss pole down
whoops and I now need to separate this top moss pole from the bottom moss pole.
That's the top moss pole there's nothing there so I can use that for another plant.
I can then grab my plant and look at that look at how sad that looks
pull the plant out of the leca and those are its roots there and as you can see even the roots are
looking quite sad there is a bit of root rot going on there which does not surprise me at all because
remember it's it takes everything for a plant to grow nutrition water and light so if one of
these things is out of balance it's very difficult to maintain to keep that plant looking good and
growing well. So I'm just gonna, what I want to do now is separate the plant from the moss pole.
I'm going to put this down on my mat and I'll bring you down. So as you can see, these are all
dead and dying what I want to do is get some good cuttings from this plant. I'll get some
good cuttings propagate them and get rid of all the dead and dying ones. In order to help me get
the cuttings I'm going to separate the plastic sheet back of this moss pole from the metal
mesh and all I do is clip off the cable ties that hold it together and that should come off nicely.
That is that off and as you can see you've got some fabulous aerial roots coming through there.
Now I want to get the best looking ones. I've got my knife that I'm going to use to chop off
the best looking plants. The moss is moist so it's really easy for me to pull out
the aerial roots from there.
You can actually look at that that's a root there
and that's going all the way to the bottom look at that that's how long that aerial root is.
This is how fabulous moss poles are.
These are the parts of the plant that are not doing so well. I am going to discard these.
These are the cuttings I've been able to obtain from the plant so look at that
that one looks really good the leaves are still quite decent the stem is quite thick
those are the aerial roots there I've got another one here this one looks good as well I'll get rid
of some of these leaves that are really looking quite bad like that one just get rid of that
get rid of that one and I've got this one here still looks good and I have this one here this
one's also a pretty thick stem so I'm confident that the new leaves that will be coming off of
this will be quite large as well I'm just going to make some cuttings out of these so for this one
I've got that so I'll get two cuttings from that one
I don't know maybe I'll leave that as one so that'll be three
and then I'll get rid of this bottom leaf here and that'll be another cutting there and
this one's actually a tip cutting so I might get rid of that
and have that so these are the cuttings that I've got from my Monstera and monkey mask I've got five
of them if you're finding value from this video please don't forget to like and subscribe thanks
I'll put these in a propagation jar in with my special sauce which comprises of root zone
and clonex clone solution to help them root I'll probably have them living there for a
number of weeks and then when they're good to go I'll put them up in leca put them back on
the moss pole that they were on before so I'm just going to remove all the dead material that
was on that moss pole I will reuse the sphagnum moss I'll reuse the structure off that moss pole
and put this pour this plant back on that moss pole put it back in the leca and come summer and
come spring that plant will start to grow and maybe I can get it back to looking like this the
way it used to look so yeah that is what I'm going to do with my yellowing leaf plant thank you for
watching don't forget to like share and subscribe and I will see you in my next video thanks bye.