Hi, my name is Byron Martin, here at Logee's Greenhouses, and today we're
going to be talking about the Variegated Swiss Cheese Plant. This is a tropical
climber. It grows in the understories of the jungles of South and Central America
and tolerates very low light, but it also will attach itself to trees and climb up
them, and eventually as it matures, get into higher light. So, it's a
plant with a great deal of versatility in terms of its environmental needs. One
of the things that South and Central America has is a wet and a dry season,
and during the dry season it really doesn't rain very much, and there's very
low moisture, and so the plant is very tolerant to lower moisture levels in
both the soil and the air, as well as during the rainy season, when it gets
plenty of water and moisture. So this particular cultivar is Monstera borsigiana
Albo Variegata, and you can see the the leaves actually have some solid
white in them, and they also have the flecking, and then they have the green. As
I mentioned, it's a climber, so you can see the plant is actually going vertical.
And in a home environment that's how one would grow this. We would allow it to
climb on a stake or a trellis or sometimes large pieces of wood are put
behind it because the plant itself has these aerial roots, and you can see this
one here was in the greenhouses and it was hanging up, and you can see the
aerial roots are climbing down. Now, these actually, if they get too long, you can
trim them off or they could be put back into the pot where they would take hold
and and form roots that actually become terrestrial.
In terms of its culture the plant, as I mentioned, is a low-light plant, and that
is one of the reasons why it's so desirable in terms of a house plant,
because it will actually tolerate light conditions that are fairly dim. You have
to remember though, that plants that tolerate low light, if you put them in
too low a light, they actually don't grow. They will actually just sit there, and of
course, if it gets too dark the plant will actually go backwards. These plants
have been used for decades as indoor plant-scapes or indoor decorating plants,
mainly because they can tolerate the corner of a room away from a window and
still look great for a long period of time, and even to some degree, grow some.
But, if you want to get the most out of these, remember, you need to give them
good quality light, which would be keeping them near a window. If they get
too much light, and they're not adjusted to it, the leaves themselves will bleach
out. But as I mentioned before, that they are climbers that grow in the under
storeys of the jungles and then climb up and actually find themselves very high
light in the tops of the trees, so they have that versatility of both high and
low light.
In terms of their needs for moisture and water, typically as we do with most
plants, we dry them down and give them a drink. So, right now this potting mix here
is moist, you can see the color is very dark. Once that dries out you want to
give them a thorough watering and allow the water to drain through the pot into
the saucer, and then recycle back to dry again and then water, and dry again. When
growing them under lower light conditions, they'll need less fertilizer,
and that's typical of all plants. When growing them under higher light conditions
you'll need more fertilizer. And, in order to get the most out of these
plants, as with all container plants, we need to actually feed them periodically.
Now, these are not what we consider heavy-feeders, in that they don't grow really,
really fast, and have huge demands for fertilizer. But, they need to have
applications during their active growing season, which is generally spring to fall,
maybe once a month with a dilute solution or a top dressing. One thing you
can do is you can use a soluble salt fertilizer. They either come in the
liquid or granular that you dissolve in water. You simply take a small amount. Now
this is calls for a half a teaspoon to the gallon.
I would actually go down to an eighth of a teaspoon, so that's not very much. And
we simply want to dip that out and put that into our watering can. This
is a half-gallon watering can, so an eighth of a teaspoon is a half a
teaspoon to the gallon. And then you want to thoroughly water it in. This is almost
at the level of a constant feed, but as I mentioned, if you're growing them under
lower-light, you want to back off on that; probably do it every other watering. And
because they have a great tolerance to a wide variety of cultural
conditions, a little less fertilizer isn't going to make any harm. Too much
fertilizer, of course, can cause burn, and that would be a condition where
fertilizers build up in the soil over many waterings, and then start to burn
the leaves. So this is a half a teaspoon to the gallon of a soluble salt
fertilizer, and we simply just give it a good drink. Thoroughly saturate the
media, and generally when you're watering, you want to have a little bit of water
come out the bottom of the pot. And one of the things about monsteras, they have
high resistance to root-rot in the soil, so, unless this plant is actually sitting
in water for long periods of time, there really aren't any problems with over
watering, in terms of getting disease into the root system. Also with
fertilizing, we can use granulars; this is a granular organic, and you simply just
take out a teaspoon, and sprinkle it onto the surface of the pot. On large pots
like this, you could put a tablespoon. An even larger pot, you put two or three
tablespoons, and the benefit of an organic granular fertilizer is that it
has a slow-release to it. Rather than putting fertilizer into your watering
can every time and dump and watering with it, you simply sprinkle it on the
surface, and over a period of time that fertilizer leeches into the pot. So
generally with organic granular organics we apply it once a month during
the active growing season. There's also less of a problem with burn on organics
because the fertilizer concentrations aren't so available and so high.