- This episode sponsored by CuriosityStream.
So, since being in quarantine and lockdown again,
I've become a lot more obsessed with plants.
Maybe it's the fact
that I haven't seen a single soul in months,
or maybe it's the fact that I'm over 30,
and suddenly somehow enjoy doing chores.
This is literally what I do in my spare time now for fun.
Here's the thing.
I am incredibly bad at taking care of plants.
Surely, every plant you've ever seen in one of our videos
is taken care of by Greg,
because I'm just scared of putting it in the wrong spot,
over watering it, neglecting it,
completely forgetting about it.
Can you tell I have anxiety?
So, I wanted to create an experiment
where I would test which plants
last the longest in zero light,
because I need something low maintenance.
But first, let's talk about the plants
that we're actually gonna be testing.
I reached out
to one of my favorite plant YouTubers, Nick Pileggi,
who has almost 500 houseplants in his home.
So, which plants are facing off in our challenge?
- [Nick] ZZ plant,
Chinese evergreens, or Aglaonemas
are probably the best foliage house plant
for lower light corners.
Dracena, pothos is a great option for a hanging basket.
Spider plants, peace lily or Spathiphyllum
is another great option for a floor plant that's large.
The Satin pothos or the Scindapsus
is just a wonderful house plant.
Snake plants, ferns are a great option for low light.
Prayer plants or Marantas
are a much more showy houseplant.
The fishbone prayer plant is a ctenanthe.
It's very closely related to Marantas.
However, I think in my experience,
they're much easier to care for.
- Nick, be honest.
Is this sacrilegious
that I'm intentionally taking light away from the plants?
- I'm actually very curious to see how this would go.
Maybe on my end,
people might look at me and think that's not okay,
but for science, I think it's fantastic.
- Dear plants,
this is your last few moments of light.
Do you have anything to say?
Good luck,
and don't fuck it up.
We thought it'd be fun to name them.
This is Beyonce.
Beyonce.
- This is Shakira.
- Lady Gaga.
- This is gonna be Viola Davis.
- Charlie XCX, 'cause she's like, alternative.
- Halle-yoo.
This is, Shangela.
I said, that's so bad.
Like halle-yoo!
- Into the dungeon.
This room has zero windows.
Look around.
We're in the basement.
They're just gonna stay down here.
Bye, sweeties.
Do you have any advice ahead of time for this experiment?
Stuff I should be aware of or look out for?
- Honestly, just to be mindful with the watering.
I think a heavy hand
is really going to be the death sentence
for this experiment.
So, when in doubt,
just do not water your plants
until you think they absolutely need it.
- Of course, not much happened in the first week,
but around the 10 day mark,
the first signs of trouble showed up.
Okay, plants day 10.
Time to see where we're at.
- Looks kind of the same, which is a good thing.
I have been coming in here every few days,
checking the moisture levels, watering as needed.
Zelda.
So, I feel like this one is maybe suffering the most.
- [Greg] Oh, wow, yeah.
- So, most of the tips are starting to kinda go.
I'll keep an eye on this every day and see how much worse--
- [Greg] 'Cause I still wanna salvage it.
- Yeah, no, we won't let her get too sick.
Another 10 days, and the first casualties started falling.
Day 20.
- [Greg] Wow.
- We're gonna go take a look at how the plants are doing.
For 20 days, they're mostly looking pretty good.
Don't you think?
I'm really impressed.
Shangela is not looking bad,
but you can start to see some of them are yellowing.
- [Greg] It looks pretty bad.
- Do you think?
But I feel like it's still okay.
There's still lots of greenery on this.
These two, I haven't watered a single time.
Look, fully wet.
Zelda's really suffering.
All the leaves are crusty.
- [Greg] I think we should save that.
- Literally, Zelda always has to be saved.
I don't know, day 20, Bad Bunny.
Do you think that's okay to take it out?
- [Greg] We have to save Bad Bunny.
- Zelda, Bad Bunny, you're out of the competition.
Okay, Zelda,
time to go to our little plant sanctuary over by the window.
Hope you'll do better here.
You too, Bad Bunny.
Come on, let's go.
By the window.
There you go.
Around 30 days in,
and a few more were ready to come back to the light.
- Keith, oh no.
You did good, Shangela.
You don't really want a plant to look like this,
and this is one of the ones
that I think's really pretty, and wanna keep.
So, Shangela, I'm gonna save you now.
Okay, girl, you can come over here with these ones.
Now that we're slowly collecting these injured plants,
I thought it would be prudent
to have a segment I like to call--
♪ How to Rehad Your Dying Plants ♪
♪ After You've Completely Neglected Them ♪
♪ For Days Or Weeks Or Months Even ♪
- What is the best way to rehab a plant that's dying,
or has parts of it that are dying?
- First and foremost, I would say to increase the lighting.
Of course, I wouldn't necessarily just throw it
in a bright South facing window in the Northern hemisphere,
because that's gonna have a lot of direct sunlight
that's just gonna burn your plant.
But if you have a North or an East facing window,
that's gonna be much more dappled light.
Of course, trim up your plant.
Remove any brown edges, or yellowing or browning leaves.
You can actually just kind of like lightly pull it off
with your fingers, but if you want to be more careful,
you can just use some sheers,
and make sure that you're being the best plant
parent you probably could.
- After taking care of my wounded little angels,
something happened, or rather something didn't happen.
Okay, you're not gonna believe it, but it is day 63,
and I have not taken any plants out
since the last time I went in, which was around day 30.
To be honest, I kinda forgot
that this challenge was going on,
because a lot of the plants that are in there right now
don't require a lot of watering.
So, I've just left them.
Then, I just kinda went on with my life,
forgot that this was happening.
A lot of the plants that are left
also haven't really required a lot of water,
so that's why I was able to sort of leave them.
But there are maybe one or two
that I could have taken out a few days before this.
So, hopefully I'll be able to recover them,
but let's go take a look.
Okay, there they are.
The remaining plants.
It looks like that one probably should have come out sooner.
Honestly, shocked.
How do you look literally the same, ZZ?
Or what did we call you?
Viola Davis is killing it.
Obviously, snake plant literally feels just as firm as ever.
Also, literally in 63 days, have not watered these ones.
Beyonce really has her hair down.
This looks worse than it is,
because it just hasn't been watered.
Normally, once I water it,
after a day or so, it pops back up.
But definitely lots of dying leaves.
I need to save Beyonce.
I'm sorry, Bey.
We'll take you out.
So, I'm not gonna take out Lady Gaga yet,
because even though she's losing leaves,
she still looks stunning at the top.
But you can see a ton of growth trying to find light,
all popping up all around.
So, I'm gonna bring her out as well.
Still looks literally the same.
So, I'm taking Beyonce, and we're taking out Charli XCX.
Let's go home, girls.
63 days.
It's still pretty reasonable choices
if you're looking for a plant
that can survive low light, let alone zero light.
So, I think I might've left this one a little too long.
So, I'm taking it out now.
It is the satin pothos, otherwise known as Shakira.
Not looking so good,
but I'm hoping I can rehabilitate her, and she'll come back.
I hope this one doesn't die.
All right, day 82, I think?
We've got Lady Gaga, or the Chinese evergreen
that I'm gonna take out, 'cause there's a ton of leaves
that are turning yellow, falling off.
All of these top ones are still green.
I technically could have kept it
in a little longer, I think,
but I didn't really want a plant
that was just a straight up tree.
So, unfortunately,
I'd love to have not any more of it die,
so I can rehabilitate it.
But I will say the parts
that are green are very flourishing,
and you can really see this new growth coming out,
presumably in the same way some of the other plants
trying to find the light,
on which obviously it was never going to.
Did you think Lady Gaga should have won?
(laughing)
Should she have won?
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for our final plants to fall, I want to take a second
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Now, back to our final three plants.
All right, it's day 89,
and my favorite plant is suffering.
It almost made it a hundred days,
but in the last little bit, it just totally fell over.=,
started completely curling on so many of the leaves.
It was doing that throughout.
Like, sometimes at night or for a few days,
it would curl, but then they would open back up.
But that seems to not be happening now,
and so I'm just a little worried
that it's gone through too much shock.
I need to bring it out.
I wanna bring it back into the light,
and hopefully rehabilitate it,
because this was my favorite one.
I want this one to survive.
So, it's still amazing
that it made it 89 days without light.
I think maybe I only watered this once.
I'm definitely happy with that,
and hope I can bring it back to life.
It's day 100, and I'm honestly so shocked.
I did not see any plant making it this far.
I didn't even think they'd make it to day 30.
I thought by day 30, we'd have a clear winner or two,
but we have two plants that have not only made it 100 days
with zero light,
they've also made it 100 days with zero water.
So, let's go take a look at them,
and see where they're at today.
Come on.
Would you believe that this has not seen light
for a hundred days,
has not touched water for 100 days?
- [Greg] You haven't watered it?
- Not a single drop of water in these two.
Probably they need water now,
because they're really dry.
This one does have some tiny yellow leaves,
but that's now been there for probably over a month,
these like, dying ones.
But these sprouts in this last month have really shot up.
So, my assumption is that it's starting to be like, okay,
this location's not working.
Time to find something taller, some light.
Viola Davis will probably be happy to find some light.
The snake plant feels just as robust as it was
the day I put it in here.
So, we got Severus and Viola Davis.
- [Greg] Wow, they killed it.
- What an odd pair.
Let's get them out of here.
Let's get them some light, let's go.
So, these are the clear two winners,
even though there were a couple others
that made it to the 80, 90 day point.
I had a really fun time doing this experiment.
I now know these are my first two little babies
that I'm gonna take care of.
Greg can take care of the rest now.
I'll practice on these, cause I can just like,
leave 'em in a corner, and not worry about them.
I hope for any other beginners out there,
this might inspire you to think that you can do it.
You can neglect a plant and keep it alive.
Just don't over water it.
As Nick let us know, sometimes over watering
can actually be the problem.
- I'm amazed also, because like I said,
this is something I've never done.
I feel like you've essentially
just put the plants in the closet.
- All the plants are looking good.
They'll find a permanent spot in our home now,
where they will forever receive at least some light.
If you want to hear even more about houseplant care,
Nick actually came on our podcast, which is on YouTube.
We'll link it down in the description below,
or somewhere on the screen.
He gave us some honestly mind blowing advice
about taking care of your houseplants.
So, go check that out.
Otherwise, if you have suggestions
for experiments or things you want us to do on this channel,
let us know.
Make sure you subscribe, like this video,
and we'll see you next time for some more science.
Peace.