hi everyone it's marianne
and welcome to mywastelesslife in this video
i will be showing you how to properly flush your plants
[intro] so this video is part of
my HOUSEPLANTS BACK TO BASICS SERIES where i will be talking about preparations
we need to do in time for the growing season for our houseplants
and also for the plant parents out there who are new
or plant parents who need a refresher i'll be going over basic but comprehensive
stuff when it comes to water, lighting, soil and
fertilization for our houseplants in this series
so flushing our houseplants if you haven't heard the term flushing or
leaching your houseplants it's a process where we remove the salt and
hard water mineral build up in the soil of our houseplants
and this happens when we water our plants so like i talked about in my Pothos Care 101
video it doesn't matter if you bottom water or top
water your plants if you are using regular tap water
chances are there's going to be salt and mineral build up in your soil
and when we fertilize and we over fertilize there's going to be a lot of excess nutrients
in the soil that is not good for our plants so flushing or leaching our plants
is a way to remedy that and if you have heard the term flushing or
leaching your plants it's probably when people are talking about
growing tomatoes or maybe even growing cannabis
because the goal for those plants is to harvest in the end
and they have different stages of vegetation that require different nutrients needs
and flushing help with that process and for us houseplant enthusiasts
we don't need to flush our plants as often as
people who grow tomatoes or cannabis do but flushing our plants is still very beneficial
for our houseplants if we do it every six months
or before we fertilize i would say before and after the growing season
and also each time before we fertilize for our houseplants what's going on underneath
the soil is important, sometimes even more important
than what's going on above it.
so flushing your houseplants is a way to make sure the soil
especially if we are not repotting our plants any time soon
is a good way to ensure that the soil our plants have
is still healthy and a good environment for the roots of our plants
before we start fertilizing our plants again it's good practice to flush our plants before
we do and in this video i am going to show you how
exactly you are going to do that so i am going to show you how to flush your
houseplants using my ruby rubber tree over here
as you can see from the soil i don't know if the camera can pick it up
but there is some white stuff on top and i know it's not mold
but it's salt build up you could also see it over here
if the camera would focus like over here
you can see the salt build up and it is more apparent if you have a terra
cotta pot you would see it on the side of the terra
cotta pot like the white stuff on it and that usually
means it's the salt and mineral build up
so if you have a plant in a terra cotta pot my first step would be to wipe off or try
to wash off the side of the terra cotta plant
but i found out very recently on instagram people feel very strongly about aged terra
cotta pots and they don't like removing the aged look
of the terra cotta pots but for me personally
the health of my plant is much more of my priority
so for me i would wipe off so for me i would remove the salt and hard
water mineral build up on the terra cotta pot
but it's your choice whether you want to do that or not
but for most of us whether we have it in terra cotta, ceramic, or a plastic pot
like i have here right now you would see the salt and mineral build up
on top of the soil of your plant so first thing you would do
especially if this is the first time you are doing it
for the season i would take off the top inch or two the soil
depending on how big your pot and your plant is
and just remove the top soil very carefully and try not to disturb the roots as much as
possible and you can use proper tools for this too
but im just using my hands to do so as yo u can see from here
after i remove the top inch or so of the soil it doesn't have much of the white stuff anymore
of course that salt and mineral build up is still in many parts of the soil
so we are going to flush it to flush this plant
i have this water right here and for flushing plants you could use regular
water you use to water your plant
but you'll need three times as much water than you normally would use when you water
your plants so for this plant, normally give this -
i bottom water most of my plants - so for this plant it takes up to about a cup
of water so three time that is three cups of water
and like i said you can use the same type of water you use when you are watering your
plants but i also consider flushing days as it' Spa
days so this water right here is filtered water
that i ph'd to ph6 so i am giving it a little special water
but it isn't necessary so ph 6 is the ph level of water that house
plants like for most us the ph level of our tap water
is going to be ph7 to ph9 i don't think it goes any higher or lower
than that because lower would mean acidic and that's
bad for our sewage and our pipes so our water is gonna be 7 and up
]our water is ph7 but i ph this down to ph6
for flushing my houseplants and in the water episode of my houseplant
back to basic series i will talk more about getting your water
to ph6 and whether it is beneficial or necessary
for our houseplants or not so over here
what i am going to do is i have this bowl to catch the water
that i am going to drain out because i am going to pour this water slowly on top
of this plant and i am gonna let it drain out
normally when we water our plants whether you bottom water or you top water
we usually have a drainage saucer or whatever to catch the water
and let it sip up the water but for flushing our houseplants we cannot
let it sip back the water it just drained out
that kinda defeats the purpose of flushing so i am just gonna pour the water slowly
making sure the water does not run off and i am just gonna let it drain
i put a little bit over a cup here sometimes i also squeeze the plastic planter
just to help it speed up draining a little bit more
so as you can see I poured about a cup of water
and barely anything came out so even if you top water
you are not flushing out any of the salt and mineral build up on a regular basis
unless you are using tons of water which I don't think is beneficial for your
plants as well coz you're either overwatering it or overflushing
it so that's the second cup of water
and here's the third eh not the third, still on the second
you have to do it slowly coz you don't want the water to run off or the soil to run off
and i'm just squeezing it to just speed up the process but
you don't have to do this i just do this coz it's in a plastic container
and it also ensures that the excess water is getting seeped out
but you have to be careful coz it might uproot your plant
this one has a support so i am not so antsy about squeezing the water out
but i would be if your plant is not properly supported
i actually already filmed this episode using my larger ficus elastica
and that one is a little bit more fascinating to watch
but the audio was bad so i might just put a timelapse version of
it in my IGTV after i put out this episode
as you can see how much dirty water is flushing out
and since doing this requires a lot of water