The Great Indoors Part 1 - Containers & Potting Mix
Over a series of videos, guest presenter and furniture designer Craig Miller-Randle will cover everything you need to know about successfully growing plants indoors.
In this first episode he starts with the basics - pots and potting mix.
Craig lives in an apartment in the Melbourne inner-city suburb of Richmond, so having a ‘garden’ indoors is a good option. He doesn’t know how many plants he has in his home but there is barely any surface, wall or airspace that isn’t filled with leafy goodness.
Indoor plants are totally reliant on you for their nutrients, water and health, which is why Craig always starts with a premium potting mix that meets Australian standards.
02:44 | Potting Mix Craig makes up his own mix depending on the type of plant:
02:59 | 1. Standard potting mix combined with 20% perlite. “I use this for the biggest range of plants.” 03:33 | 2. Pre-mixed succulent mix (for desert plants like Pachypodium geayi). “I use this for things that like good drainage. It has extra sand to make it quick drying.” 04:05 | 3. Epiphyte mix; base mix plus 20% perlite and 10% charcoal (which keeps the soil sweet and absorbs impurities). “I use this for things like monstera, epipremnum, philodendron – these are forest floor plants. They need larger particles in their mix.”
05:04 | Containers If a plant feels tight in a pot its roots have probably filled the pot completely and it needs to be potted up to the next size of pot, plus some fresh soil. Craig prefers traditional plastic nursery pots that are lightweight and can be washed and reused. He also cuts down larger pots to make a shallow, wide pot that suits plants such as Maranta (prayer plant).
Featured plants: Madagascar Palm (Pachypodium geayi) Swiss Cheese Vine (Monstera adansonii) Green Velvet Alocasia (Alocasia micholitziana) Maranta (Maranta leuconeura cv.)
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Hey, everyone. Welcome to my home,
or as I like to call it, Houseplant Central.
And if you look around, you can see there's a lot of plants in here.
In fact, it's pretty full to the brim.
Exactly how many, I don't know, and I'd actually rather not know.
I think it might freak me out a little bit.
All I know is I love plants, I love them indoors,
and I can't get enough of them.
The apartment where I live is in Richmond,
which is a pretty dense inner-city part of Melbourne,
and I don't have much outdoor space at all.
And I think that's increasingly common,
not just with young people,
but older people who are downsizing to smaller houses.
But having a big, sprawling backyard
isn't the only way to enjoy plants and gardening.
And gardening indoors can be every bit as rewarding
as gardening outdoors.
One of my favourite things to do is talk about plants.
So I am so excited to be on the show.
Look, I'm not perfect.
I still lose plants.
But over the years, I've learnt a lot through trial and error,
and I'm really looking forward
to sharing some of those tips with you.
We'll cover things like common pests and diseases,
basic things like watering and light,
and of course, styling up your plants
and how to make them look gorgeous.
Today, I want to start at ground level.
We're talking about growing media and containers.
Now, that might just sound like dirt and pots,
but there's actually a little bit more to it than that.
Gardeners are always talking about soil.
It's one of the most important things to get right
to get healthy plants.
Because indoor plants don't have a whole garden bed of soil
to draw nutrients from,
they're entirely dependent on you
and the kind of soil you give them.
The potting mix you use indoors is really important.
So let's get that right from the start.
Roots need air to survive.
If you don't create an environment that drains well,
then when you water the plant,
there's no room for air in the mix.
The roots can rot and die from fungus and bacteria.
So the key to keeping them healthy
is to make sure we provide gaps in the media for air to get in.
If you're an indoor gardener
and you're not using perlite in your potting mixes,
you really need to.
It's a fantastic substance.
It aerates the potting mix.
And like chefs use salt and pepper,
I use perlite in almost everything.
It's porous, so water will cling to it,
but it'll also create space for oxygen.
I like to use three different types of potting mix
for my indoor plants.
It sounds a little bit complicated,
but it's actually not.
Basically, what we're trying to do is match a soil
as close as possible to the natural environment
that your houseplants grow in in nature.
Now, this is my core mix,
which is the one I would use
for the majority of my plants in my apartment.
And it's basically a premium potting mix.
It's really easy to identify a premium mix
because it's got the Australian Premium Mix Standard label
on the bag.
And I tweak it by adding perlite,
which is the magic ingredient we spoke about before.
20% perlite is always a good proportion.
And then mix it through.
This is a potting mix that I would use
for things like calatheas and mirantas, for example.
Some plants like it really dry.
I've got an amazing plant called Pachypodium gayi,
which is like a cross between a cactus and a palm.
It's quite an amazing creature.
And for all of those kinds of plants,
I use a pre-mixed cacti and succulent mix.
Again, I just buy this one
from my local nursery or hardware store,
and it's got lots of added gravel in it,
which means that the water's going to flow through
really quickly.
It dries out quickly
and replicates those kind of arid desert conditions
that those plants love.
You might've noticed over the last couple of years
that a certain type of plant
has become really popular in the indoor plant world.
They're called aroids,
and that group contains plants
like monsteras and philodendrons.
Those plants grow up trees quite a lot in nature,
and their roots are exposed to lots of air,
so they need a really chunky bark mix to thrive in.
So I use this pre-mixed orchid compost,
which has lots of bark,
and into that I add about 20% perlite
and 10% horticultural charcoal,
which is great to keep the soil sweet
and absorb impurities.
Just remember with perlite,
if you're not in a ventilated space,
just damp it down a little bit.
Keeps it from getting dusty.
And that charcoal just really opens up that soil.
Just mix that through.
You can see there's quite a lot of large chunks in there,
and that's perfect for aroid roots to get a hold of.
A plant can't stay in the same pot forever.
One of the main reasons why it can't
is because the root ball grows
to the point that it's filled the pot.
And the best way to test for that
is quite simply to feel the outside of the pot.
It's quite firm,
so I'm pretty sure that that's full of roots.
And you just gently pull the plant out,
and that is a pot-bound plant.
And that's really going to benefit
from being put in a larger pot with fresh mix.
Another one of the main reasons
why we want to repot a plant
is if it's been in the same pot
for a couple of years or more.
I want to show you this example of some amazing plants.
This is Allocasia micheliziana,
actually one of my favourite plants.
And these two plants were very, very similar
in size last spring.
This one wasn't repotted, and this one was.
So you can see for yourselves
what an incredible difference it makes
to have fresh soil and a bit of a larger pot.
Apart from the potting mix,
the container you choose to put your plants in
is going to have a big effect on its health.
So my pot of choice
is just the good old plastic nursery pot.
Now, what I love about these is they're affordable,
they're easy to find,
and you can wash and reuse these pots between plants.
Then I can mix and match these pots
and put them in any decorative planter I like.
One last thing is that they're really, really easy to cut down.
Plants like this Maranta, for example,
really like shallow soil.
And these shallow pots can be quite difficult to find,
but you can just cut them down yourself
to any height you like.
And as you can see,
this Maranta is loving its shallow pot.
Indoor gardening is a really important way
for people living in inner-city areas
and urban environments
to be able to connect with plants and nature.
In fact, I know if my apartment
didn't have all of my plants in it,
I don't think I could live here.
It just wouldn't feel complete to me.
Indoor gardening comes with its own
whole range of challenges,
but it's also full of fantastic rewards.
And I am really excited to see you guys next time
when we talk about that magical ingredient, light,
and how much of it do your plants actually need to thrive?
