When it comes to caring for our houseplants, most of us, myself included,
and I'm sure you've done it too, love our plants to death.
We do too much to them and then they die as a result.
And so in today's video we're going over three bare bones, dead simple,
so basic, they almost shouldn't be mentioned,
tips to make sure that your houseplants are nice and healthy.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener thumb. You know, we shouldn't be stressing about our houseplants.
They should actually be relaxing us, right? That's kind of why we get them.
So we're again, we're looking at three different tips.
The first one is a very dead simple one for just overall increasing the health
of your plants,
especially if you're watching this video at the time it comes out.
The second one has to do with what about if you leave?
What if you go on vacation?
And the third one is just a watering tip that I think may help you if you have
trouble watering your houseplants. So without further ado,
cultivate that Like button for Epic houseplant health.
And let's get into the video. By the way, at the end of the video guys,
I'll give you a couple tips on how to sort of condition your plants after you
get them in the mail. A lot of us are probably getting plants by mail right now.
I got these plants by mail, so stay tuned to the end for that.
Tip number one is to take advantage of the season. Now what do I mean by that?
You'll notice these are houseplants but they're not in my house. Why is that?
Well, it's a nice, beautiful, warm day.
We're coming up on midway through May and these plants naturally like to be
outside. Remember guys, houseplants don't exist. We made that term up.
All plants evolve outdoors. And wherever they're endemic to,
as in where they evolved, that's the condition they're going to like most.
So if you have a weak or sickly looking houseplant, let's pretend for example,
this one actually looks really nice, but let's pretend that it didn't.
And what we would do, so we would say, okay,
well unless there's some super-obvious problem like root rot or a disease or a
pest, if it's just generally looking weak,
something you can do when the weather's good is just bring it outdoors for a
week or so. Give it the light, give it that, look at this,
the wind is blowing on it right now.
Give it that environmental stress and it's going to perk back up.
And so I've actually left these outside. I have,
I've had these for about a week or so and they've been outside here in this
slatted shade area and they've just been absolutely loving it.
Tip number two is really four fast paced tips on what to do when you leave your
plants for a few days. I know we're probably not going on a ton of vacations,
but hopefully we can do that again soon. And so here are some quick ones.
One really easy thing to do is just top off the bottom of your saucer.
So if I do this and I go on vacation and I leave it just like that,
got a little spillage, but that's okay. Leave it just like that.
You will get some wicking action coming up. Now, is this the best solution? No,
but if you're gone for a couple days and the plant needed a water,
then this can be a great one to just give it a little bit of buffer.
Another thing that I don't see a lot of houseplant owners do, is use mulch.
Now this is just some fiber,
some plant fiber here that's covering the surface of the soil inside the
cachepot. If I scrape it back, you can see the soil is right there,
but it does cut down on the evaporation loss of water quite a bit.
And so if you are on vacation,
that's just a great tip to have to water less and buffer that plant.
Quick tip three, if you're really worried about a particular plant,
of this batch of plants I'd probably be the most worried about this Maranta,
if I was to go on vacation,
is you can grab one of those little water globe things and just pop it in and
then you have a little reservoir of water just in case something happens while
you're gone.
Vacation tip four is just to slightly move your plants out of the light and so
everything slows down on them just a little bit. Remember less light,
less photosynthesis, less water use,
and it can kind of just give you a little bit of extra time.
Especially if you're gonna be gone for a longer period of time.
Our final simple care tip is if you feel like you have problems watering your
houseplants, and I know I've felt that in the past,
I actually made a whole video about exactly how to go through it,
but this is something I didn't talk about in that video.
So I have this base and that I've just lightly filled with water,
maybe about a half inch or so.
I'm going to take my Calathea lancifolia out of its cachepot very gently.
So we have the initial nursery pot right here, which does have drainage holes.
Now sometimes it can be hard to fully hydrate soil,
especially if you have certain soil mixes.
And so just let it sit just like this for five or 10 minutes or so and water is
going to wick all the way up and slowly we'll hydrate the entire mix and you've
given it a nice, perfect deep drink.
I know those three tips were dead simple,
but sometimes simple is best and those will increase the health of your plants.
Let's imagine like many of us are probably shopping online right now,
getting plants online. What do you do when you actually get the plant?
When it actually comes to your door? Well,
the first thing to do is open it up immediately.
So I rushed out as soon as Breck's sent these ones out and I just opened them up
and let them out. Remember they've been journeying in cold, in the dark.
The temperature is changing all the time. They're getting jostled around.
You need to let them out and let them destress, right?
Get them acclimated to your environment. The next thing to do is nothing,
so don't repot it right away. Don't fertilize it right away.
Oftentimes you even, don't even need to water right away. When I pulled these,
all three of these, four of these actually, out of their box,
I didn't need to do anything for four days in any capacity whatsoever.
The only thing I did is I put them here.
I put them right here in my backyard on my slatted sort of awning,
and that's just to let them acclimate.
I don't want to move them directly into the optimal conditions because then
they're going from zero to a hundred.
It's kind of like hardening off seedling outdoors.
You don't go start your seed indoors and then just put it right outside.
You have to acclimate it and that's actually a seven day process.
So I've left these out here for about a week.
It's probably time for them to go into their future forever home. But again,
thanks to Breck's for sponsoring the video.
If there were any tips that I missed, drop them down in the Comments below.
But until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.