So please welcome the Plant Doctor,
the author of Wild At Home, this is Hilton Carter
and that's really what Wild At Home is about,
making this accessible.
Yes making this--
Making plants more accessible to all of us.
Making them more accessible, understanding how
to care for them and also how to bring them into your house
to style them and make your space feel alive,
bright, vibrant and just very lush.
Yeah, lush, I love that word.
All right so we're gonna solve a couple plant problems here.
For sure.
My show is your show, you take it away.
Here we go, so people have problems with plants,
I'm sure a lot of you do.
But the first common I guess, problem, will be
the fact that they have dropping leaves.
Now normally when leaves fall off, they don't look
as healthy as this, they're probably either brown--
That looks like somebody came out here
and just ripped that leaf off.
(audience laughing)
Hey, it wasn't me.
So they're normally brown or yellow but normally,
the issue could be not enough water, not enough light
or the fact that you might have root rot,
so you wanna check the roots,
you wanna make sure you get down there in the roots
because the problems are more than likely in the roots.
So I'm gonna show you today how to re-pot.
It may be literally outgrowing its vessel.
Exactly, so you wanna check that
because it you're over watering your plant
and it's getting root rot, you wanna make sure
you're checking the base of the plant
where the drainage hole is.
The first tip, when it comes to re-potting your plant,
is to make sure you check to make sure if there's any roots
coming out of the drainage hole
and if there are, that's when
you're gonna re-pot your plant.
Gotcha.
So what you're gonna do is, you're gonna take some
of this fresh potting mix and you're gonna place some
down here at the bottom of your new pot
but you wanna make sure that your new pot is
two inches in diameter larger than the previous pot.
The one you're coming from, right.
Exactly, 'cause you wanna give the plant--
Room to groove.
Some room to groove, yes, I love that.
I should've put that in my book.
(laughing)
So then you take the new plants or the plant you have,
you wanna squeeze a bit here on this
just to loosen up the soil.
You gotta loosen up the drawers, you know.
There you go, you gotta make it feel a bit better.
You gotta take the jeans off slow.
(audience laughing)
Exactly.
Then you gently remove it from its pot
and you can see all these roots here?
Yeah.
You wanna gradually, gently break it up
just a bit, here's a little plastic,
I'm gonna remove that as well.
You're gonna break this up, loosen up those roots.
You gotta loosen it up, you know
like taking your bra off, ladies.
(audience laughing)
Gotta loosen it up,
yes, exactly like that.
(laughing)
You're gonna get your hands dirty
and you place it down into its new pot.
You're gonna take some more fresh soil,
place it down in there and then you're gonna go around,
just to make sure--
It's like putting on your comfy pants.
There it is, there it is.
(applause)
And that's how you do it.
All right next one, let's come on down the line.
Then your next issue might be discolored leaves.
So you might have yellow leaves,
you might have brown leaves.
Like with this succulent.
Like this succulent.
Now yellow leaves are from over watering,
brown tips are from under watering.
So you wanna make sure you're watering correctly.
This one's yellow and brown.
So what's going on with him?
This one's yellow and brown, this one might be
acclimating to a space.
I wouldn't say that this particular leaf,
sometimes when you get a new plant,
you bring it into your home,
it wants to acclimate to the space.
So the lower leaves might turn yellow or brown
and fall off, which this is a lower leaf.
All the other leaves are healthy, you can tell
by this aloe here is real thick and nice.
By the firm, yeah.
By the firmness.
Brown tips could be because it's not getting enough water
to the tips.
To the end of it, right.
As quick as possible.
So when it comes to watering, you want to make sure,
the best way to do so is to check the soil.
So most plants want to only be watered
when the first, the top two inches of soil
are completely dry.
So you've gotta do a finger test.
You take your finger, stick it into the plant,
two inches down.
Oh my God!
If it's dry, then it's time to water.
No this is a little bit moist
about two inches down there.
So he's still okay, or no?
Well this plant had been previously watered
and it wasn't supposed to be watered.
Someone watered it before we came out here.
Uh-oh!
I was supposed to...
So look what you would do is, you would take lukewarm water.
Lukewarm!
You wanna make sure it's lukewarm.
Has to be lukewarm 'cause you don't want to freak out
the roots down there
and then you're gonna pour it over the soil gently.
I'm not gonna pour this now because like we just said--
It's been watered.
But you would slowly pour it over the soil,
like you're doing a pour-over coffee,
if you guys have ever had pour-over coffee,
slow and gentle, treat it like a little baby.
So you pour it over, nice and gentle
and then once water comes out of the drainage hole
into the base tray, you wanna make sure
that water's coming in--
That's when you stop?
That's when you stop, when there's enough water
into that base tray.
So let's just say we watered it and then you saw water
into the base tray.
Now you could either, you have a large plant,
you could either take a towel.
Mop it up.
Mop it up or--
This is brilliant or use a baster.
Or you take a baster and just keep sucking it up,
dumping it into--
That's so smart!
So smart and use that to water another plant.
(applause)