what is up everyone my name is james and welcome to my channel simple plantation
if it's your first time here it's nice to meet you but if you've been here before
thanks for coming back i'm here to give you some super simple care tips on some common
indoor plants so if you want to see some more content from me consider subscribing and bashing
that bell notification so you don't miss a thing today's video is going to be about the
ficus tineke i'm going to be going through some lighting repotting and potting mix tips so stay
tuned
the ficus tineke is a variety of the ficus elastica range which is more commonly known
as the rubber plant it's called the rubber plant because it produces this milky white latex which
can be used to produce rubber it's found commonly in south to southeast asia and native to the
himalayas if you've ever cut one open you'll find that it produces this really disgusting
oozy white sub which can be very toxic to humans and your pets so do be a little bit careful if
you're ever pruning one the common types of the variegated range include the ruby and the tineke
the primary difference between the tineke and the ruby is that the tineke has green variegation
with off-white and pink veins whereas the ruby is a little bit more reddish and pink in color
i honestly think this is such an underrated plant i mean it is absolutely stunning you get so many
different colors in the tineke such as red pink white green so like depending on what you prefer
i mean i do know that some people prefer you know just green leaves but myself personally i
love variegated plants i just want to quickly show off my tinekein a 360 view because seriously the
variegation on this is just absolutely amazing so i'm going to spin this in the pot because the pot
is extremely heavy basically um i've been able to promote different colors just based on my lighting
conditions but here um so if i give it a bit of a spin around uh this is a little bit more green
whereas over here uh it's a little bit a bit more pinkish in color um i actually think the aerial
view is a little bit better so i'll quickly give you some shots of that but have a look at this
i reside in sydney australia and i first purchased this plant for 25 at woolworths which i thought
was an absolute bargain it was about this big and then i bought my second tineke from flower
power for about 15 and it was an absolute steal they were having this one time special i just
couldn't believe that they were selling them for 15 and there were just so many of them so i bought
myself and also another mate one of them a simple hack is i actually combine the two together into
the one pot which i will do another video later to give it a little bit more of a luscious look
pro hot tip they do take some time to acclimate so do give it a little bit of patience so i actually
found when i brought it home it kept dropping leaves for weeks and weeks on end and actually not
only was it trying to acclimate but my problem was with lighting which is what i'll go through next
when i first brought it home it quickly became one of my favorite plants in my apartment so i wanted
to give it the best possible position that i could but then i found that it was constantly dropping
leaves all the time every single week up to months and i was getting really really confused each leaf
that was dropping was like a dagger to the heart because i was losing these beautifully variegated
leaves i was messaging my friends and i was like what the heck is going on but then quickly one of
my good friends reassessed the lighting conditions in my apartment and found that i actually wasn't
giving it enough light which is what i'm gonna go through in my first topic i watched it die
for weeks and weeks on end until i fixed those lighting conditions so do reassess the position
in which you're placing your tineke tineke's need and crave light when you're looking up on the
internet and looking at the lighting conditions the official guide does say bright in direct light
but i'm going to let you in on a little secret i actually give my tineke right direct light for
one to two hours a day during the morning i'm sitting in a northeast facing apartment which
means that i get anywhere between from eight to 12 hours of sunlight a day but if you want to
er on the safe side do give it bright indirect light but if you do want to promote a little
bit more of reddish to pinkish leaves do give it a little bit of direct light and you should be right
i'm going to give you three separate tips across three different lighting conditions if you do
want to vary the variegation on your tineke so as you can probably see my tineke is actually
varying in different colors from bottom to the top and i'll explain why so i found that when
my tineke was sitting in medium light it was starting to lose the variegation and by that
the green was getting a bit deeper the whites were disappearing and also i was
getting browning of the tips here's a close-up of the browning that was happening when i first
was giving at medium light and of course i was getting a little bit upset over it but then when i
started moving it towards a bright indirect light i noticed the variegation was promoting again and
i was getting more of these off-white leaves which i absolutely love and then the browning of the
tips started to disappear which was great i then started moving it to bright direct light and note
that it was only morning sun for about one to two hours and it was promoting more of this reddish
pink leaves that you can see i personally like to vary my variegation on the tineke i'll move
it further and closer to the window depending on what color i would like and finally make sure you
rotate your tineke from time to time from the window naturally you'll find that it'll start
leaning towards the light source but then if you move it towards the other way it'll balance out
in my case i actually use stakes to promote it to go upwards so it actually doesn't have a choice
but really i still rotate it to ensure the other leaves on the other side are getting enough light
let's get down let's get down to soil that was so lame so if you brought it home for the first time
i do recommend you probably leave it for some time to acclimate i left my original tineke for about
six months before i repotted it but then when i got the one from flower power i was a little bit
itchy to combine the two together i personally use a 30 cacti 30 orchid 20 perlite and 20 charcoal
mix there's no hard and fast rule as long as there's a lot of aeration that allows water to
flow through freely through the soil out of the four soil components that i listed i'm going to
go through in a little bit more detail on what is actually included in the bag cactus mix includes
control release fertiliser which distributes nutrients as plants need it for up to six months
a wetting agent which ensures nutrients get to the root zone trace elements which include
micronutrients vital to plant growth calcium which supports nutrient uptake and stronger plant cells
potassium which promotes steady growth and protects from pests and disease
and coarse grit which allows for drainage and aeration in the mix for optimal plant
establishment and development i found that the orchid mix also had all of the above
except for coarse grit by replacing that with orchid bark which provides ideal aeration
for roots my last two ingredients include perlite which form spaces around the soil
to allow for aeration and for water to flow freely around the root system and preventing it from
root crop whereas my charcoal sweetens the soil and absorbs odors to prevent bacteria and pests
so i actually made a few mistakes when i was trying to combine these ratios for the first time
i actually got a nursery pot and scooped it and then tried counted one two three four that was
like really dumb so don't do that i just basically after that learnt that i could just mix everything
together in two proportions there were about roughly um the ratios and what i wanted thank you
so much guys for getting to the end of this video if you liked what you saw today please consider
subscribing it would really mean a lot to me i'm going to try to upload videos once a week to a
fortnight so if you do want to see more content from me turn on that bell notification so you
don't miss a thing until then stay safe stay happy and i will see you in my next video bye for now