hey there my name is memo this is my channel house planty goodness and essentially
it's a place where i like to geek out about my big passion which you might be able to see behind me
it's tropical houseplants now because i'm a new youtube content creator it does help if you like
videos like this drop a like down below on this video if you want to see more content like this
every week i'll bring out videos similar to this about two to three times a week and now without
further ado let's go into the topic of today and this was actually a request from a follower on
instagram who is just about ready to chop and prop her variegated elbow monstera now i was looking at
doing that with my two variegated alba monsteras but neither one of those two are ready to point
where i want to take cutting and rooting i kind of want to get them nice and big and bushy and become
a kind of a bit of an imposing plant probably what will happen in the future as well as those two
plants will get potted in the same pot just to have a bigger fuller plant of a variegated album
monstera now that doesn't mean that i don't have monstera delicioso which interestingly enough i
did have a friend who's just about to complete on uh her new house so congratulations to her and she
was saying that she really wanted um a monster to be serious about slightly more mature form which
you don't always get in the shops you tend to get the more juveniles with the leads that haven't
fenestrated or had the splits yet fenestrations of the splits and the leaves so i thought what i
might do is chop up one of mine and propagate it and i've already taken the cutting what i would
normally do and it was too tricky to film this as i was doing it is because i've got quite a mature
monstera deliciosa going through it with scissors wasn't an option going through with pruners would
have caused too much damage so what i've used is just a simple knife make sure it's very very sharp
and before i did that before i made the cut i obviously sprayed it down with some rubbing
alcohol just to make sure that there's no diseases that are going to be transferred
to the plant or from the plant afterwards as well now the other thing to bear in mind there
and the reason why i've used the knife rather than anything else i think this is something
that i learned on legends of monstera here on youtube and he was talking about
making as less damage as possible so obviously a clean straight cut that knife would do
without it being a jagged knife or pruners basically which will kind of bruise all the
elements of that stem both on the propagate and on the plant itself
could cause even more stress to the plant and you want to minimize that stress as
much as possible when you're going to be propagating so i've always used a
straight edge knife like this just to make a nice clean cut now let's have a look at the cutting
shall we so it's a relatively large cutting it's got two leaves and you might be able to see
there that's where i made the cutting make sure obviously that it's got a node this one has got
an aerial route that's growing on it as well now i will be showing this for demonstration purposes
but interestingly enough and this is something that i do quite a lot more monsters i shoved this
aerial route into the soil of the pot and you might be able to see there hopefully it might
focus is that it's starting to turn into a soil root so actually after the demonstration for this
video i'm not going to use the propagation method that i'm showing purely because it's already sole
root and i will put this into a pot with soil because it's more likely to do better in that
environment because it's already got a soil root i know it's not an awful lot but i want to try it
so what i do that's different than a lot of other people i'll start off with how i propagate
which is and bear with i propagate in water but the thing that i do that's slightly different
is i will always use a paint container and will never use glass and this is something again i
don't know if i was doing some research whether or not it's from a video it's from the article or
something along those lines but i found something to say or maybe it was a debate on discussion
forum somewhere the people were debating whether or not things like soil roots which is what you're
trying to get even in the water essentially eventually they will turn into soul roots
are used to be in the soil so a dark environment rather than a bright environment which you would
get a lot of the times if you're propagating in glass containers in clear glass containers
so what i've always done when i'm water propagating and pretty much at this point
i only really use water propagations for things that are quite easy like monsteras are great they
love water propagations even the alba ones as well that's how i propagated both of mine when i got
them from cuttings and they did exceptionally well using this method that i'm going to show now and
with slightly even less fussy plants like pothos like some of the trailing heart-shaped
philodendrons they will just go in some water and they will readily root out essentially but
the thing that i do that's different obviously this is okay what i would normally then do
is after you've taken the cutting the one thing you want to make sure is for a couple of hours
make sure that that cut edge hopefully it might focus there you go did the youtube thing again um
is you basically want to make sure that that's callused over and by that it just means for a
couple of hours just let it out to dry don't do anything to it don't freak out nothing will happen
to your plant however that does lead me into another little tip and trick that i've started
using over the years and it's worked really well i never ever take cutting to propagate whether in
water whichever method i'm going to use on the day where i'm watering the plant and there is a bit of
reasoning behind this essentially so if you think about it most people the way that they would take
cutting to make propagation is oh i'm going around and watering my plants yes i've seen
this plant it's becoming a bit too cumbersome or i want to take a cutting you water the plant
then you take the cutting that's not anywhere near enough time for that water to kind of go up
the stems and into the leaves and if that soil is entirely dry and then you're watering it through
that also means that a lot of the moisture has come out of the stems of the plant and
also the leaves so what you want to do and this is generally what i do most of the time is and
this is as i said any type of propagation is i'll make sure that i only take the cuttings
that i'm going to be propagating a day after i've watered even better if you can leave
it for a couple of days because then it means that it will have all the chance in the world
to pull up some of that moisture from the soil into the stems and into the leaves again
thus giving that cutting the best chance that it possibly can get because it's already got
some of that moisture in the leaves whilst it's tricky for it to try to pull it out of whatever
propagation media using even water sometimes so that is something that i always like to do
before i propagate and with this plant i had watered a couple of days ago so it's fine it's
nice plump essentially all the leaves are quite uh solid they've they've absorbed a lot of that
moisture so that's good to go normally as i said i would normally wait for the center callus over
but just for demonstration purposes of this as i said because it's not going to be the way that
i'm going to propagate this because currently i've got soil roots on this is i would take the cutting
i would put it into and i don't know whether or not you might be able to see i would put it
into the water i would also put the aerial root if there is one in the water this one i don't want to
jam it too much in there because it's gonna snap and i don't want that
so that's what i would normally do the other thing that's slightly different let me show you
the other thing that it's different i will take some tinfoil or aluminum foil for the american
people out there and i will cover it like that so basically what this does is it gives it as
close to darkness as possible in that water where the plant is propagating and i found that this
will root out a lot quicker than if it was just on a clear container out
the other thing i want to say is i've just got regular tap water in this nothing fancy at all
no amendments no nothing i know some people might put things in like a tiny bit of liquid gold leaf
or super thrive but i find until the plant has actually started to push out some small roots
it doesn't do very much it doesn't necessarily speed up the process yes if you add it in after
some of the roots have started to come in then it probably does make a bit of a difference i've seen
a tiny bit of an improvement from both of those the other thing that i will say especially for the
album on stitera is because again you're closing up the container it's not getting as much oxygen
and there's oxygen already in the water and that's how it's kind of that's how these plants don't rot
when you're propagating water if you think about it in a pot if you've got it in a lot of water
then it the roots can't get any air and then it will rot so you're just like well if it's
entirely submerged in water how does it not rot there's x there's oxygen in the water itself so
that's where it's putting it from so remember water is h2o so you can pull it in from there
but with this method what i always like to do is pretty much and some people might call me a bit
over the top with this especially if it's a elbow monster which has got density to rot a lot faster
this water will get changed daily it will get chucked out and replaced with a new bit of water
and that is pretty much what i like to do i let it in as nice sunny location as i could
possibly get it not in direct light obviously and yet just watch it root out over the next few
weeks essentially i think that's all i wanted to say about this method and how i do it if
you've got any questions comments if you do things differently than i do please drop them down below
i'd love to have that conversation with you and yeah i think that's everything so hopefully you've
enjoyed hopefully have a great rest of the day and hopefully i shall see you here soon thanks bye