How To Make A Full Potted String of Hearts Houseplant Care Tips

Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome back to my channel. For those who's new, my name is Christian and this is my crazy plant life. In today's video, we are going to be potting up a few smaller string of hearts together to try and make one full potted plant to have here at the shop and try and recreate the one I have at home in my condo. For those of you guys who've been following my plant journey, you should be familiar with my iconic string of hearts that I often get the question, how do you get it to grow so full and thick and long and lush? And although I've shared in my previous videos on how to care for your string of hearts or how to grow a nice, thick and full one by cutting it, propagating it and then planting it back with a mother plant, it does help to start off with a nice full potted plant already and a bit of length. Now when I did first get mine about three years ago, you guys can see here that it was already in a six inch container. It was nice and full. It also had about a foot and a half of length on the vines and I did untangle this when I first got it because I really wanted to make sure it was tangled free as it continued to grow downwards and really create that nice current and waterfall look. Now obviously it wasn't as dense or as thick as it is today and that pretty much has been done just through the years of caring for it and just making sure I was providing it the right environment in order for it to thrive. Originally I wanted to bring the one I have at home here at the shop but he's really happy in my condo and I really love that plant so I wouldn't want to do anything to disrupt his happiness right now and I figured it might be a good idea to just recreate a new one here for the shop so that way the shop can have its own statement piece and its own string of hearts. So I began looking for a nice full potted one and I don't know about you guys but every string of hearts I see at the store even from my suppliers, they aren't as full as the one I found three years ago. So you guys can see here that this is one of the six inch pots that I bought for the shop from one of my suppliers and it is nowhere near as full as the one I found three years ago. There's a lot of space here at the top. In addition, the vines aren't as long so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a couple of these, we're gonna pot it together into another six inch container because we don't want to necessarily go too big. It'll be interesting to see what the roots look like and to see if this is a mature plant or not because that will definitely help determine what kind of potting medium we want to use. So let me get my potting station ready here. I'm gonna pull up the other camera so that way you guys can see what I'm doing and we'll get started. Alright guys so we have here a few string of hearts that we're gonna use so we're probably gonna use maybe two of the six inch one and then two of the three. Again the goal here is to try and make a nice full potted one to start off with so that way when it does grow and starts trailing it'll look really beautiful and it might actually be even better than the one I have at home so maybe that's the goal we should shoot for. So first thing we want to do is I'm gonna unpot the six inch one and try to see what the roots look like. It'll be interesting to see if it's mature or not. If it is mature what often you'll find is actually a lot of tubers in the root system. String of hearts does have naturally like shallow roots so you do want to be careful on how you go about potting this up into a new pot. Again this is a similar method if you wanted to combine a whole bunch of like little three and a half inch that you saw at the shop because you can find a nice full potted one. So I'm just removing the soil lightly and you guys can already see that the roots aren't as thick and as mature as probably the one I have at home. I don't see any tubers so far and again I just want to gently shake off the old soil. So far the roots are looking really good again just very shallow so I want to make sure that my potting medium is gonna be nice and airy so I'm mostly gonna use cacti soil a bit of regular potting mix and then some perlite. My ratio is probably gonna be like 50% perlite and then 50% potting soil and that's a combination of the cacti as well as the regular or organic potting soil. So we un-potted one and you guys can see right here look at that the root system and yeah you guys can see that this isn't as full as I wish it was especially in a six inch container so I'm gonna move him to the side and then we're gonna remove the other one just to see what this one looks like so let me go ahead and un-pot him. There's a lot of soil for this small string of hearts and that's another thing too you gotta be careful if you do end up buying one of these like six and a half inch ones and it's not as full and there's a lot more soil than there are roots you just gotta keep in mind on how you go about watering your string of hearts don't obviously over water because these guys do have a tendency to rot and die if you do over water them so this one looks pretty good as well again I'm just gonna shake off the old soil and root system looks pretty good okay yeah you guys can see right here again it wasn't as full look how much soil there was in this pot for a very shallow roots probably wouldn't recommend keeping it in this big of a pot okay so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna remove all these old soil out of the way I'm gonna bring my new pot and then bring some fresh soil and we're gonna start potting these guys together actually let's take a look at this three and a half inch I'm curious to see what this one looks like because we're definitely gonna need a few more of these see this is better in a three inch because you guys can see that the roots were somewhat like reaching the bottom and that's always good again you don't want to go too big if your root system isn't oh and this one even has a tuber I don't know if you guys can see right there so this is a really good one okay so we are going to do the other one and let's take a look at this one yeah you guys can see beautiful roots alright guys so let me clean up here and let's get our new pot and our new soil ready and then we're gonna start potting these guys together alright guys so we have here our two 6-inch string of hearts and then we have two of the three and a half that you guys see here so all of this combined together in the 6-inch pot I should be enough to kind of make a nice full potted one to begin with now this is a little deep you guys can see that the pot is a little deep so again the roots on a string of hearts is quite shallow so what you want to do is make sure that you have a nice airy potting mix you know you can add a bit more perlite maybe in the bottom half of the soil and then the top should be more of the even mix but let's go ahead and put our layer of potting mix here and then begin planting the string of hearts so again the potting mix I'm going to use is pretty much like 50% perlite and then 50% potting soil and the soil consists of regular potting mix as well as cacti soil so I'm gonna probably fill up the pot halfway with soil and then start planting these guys so the key when it comes to planting these guys together is I want to make sure that the vines are facing out that way it can trail over the pot and over the edge again similar to the one I have at home so I'm gonna put this one on one end for now yeah you know what I'm gonna put some more soil because like I said the roots are quite shallow so you want it to be sitting pretty high up as well okay right there I have it facing one way and then we're gonna use this one to face the other way okay that looks good so what I'm gonna do before we add the three and a half inch one is I'm just gonna add a bit of soil over here now if you happen to you know cover some of the hearts that's okay they will grow through the soil so no big deal if you end up covering some of them it might actually be good so that way it can continue to kind of produce and I'll grow additional vines on some of those nodes that might be buried within the soil I'm gonna add this now to the corner which is our three inch again let me sure that the vines are facing out there and then we are gonna do another one right here so I'm actually really curious if this is gonna grow to be better than the one I have a home I think it will be I'm actually I'm determined to do it even though the one I have a home seems perfect because he is perfect I'm gonna try and make this one uh is there another word for more than perfect super perfect I'm just kidding okay so we have it there potted so now what I'm gonna do is just again you know cover the roots that are exposed with additional soil if you happen to cover some hearts or some nodes not a big deal so I'm now gonna try and kind of untangle the vines are somewhat tangled to make sure that they grow nice and evenly as it begins to trail down and then that way we can see where the gaps are or where there's certain bald spots and maybe what we'll need to do is take one of the vines to kind of wrap it around that bald spot area because that will also help promote like a nice full potted plant with those nodes touching the soil there's a bit of roots exposed here so I'm gonna want to cover it some more potting medium okay ta-da there you guys have it look how full this one looks very similar to the one I bought three years ago and man I'm excited to see how this thing grows nicely here at the shop I'm gonna give it a nice drink right now because the soil that the string of hearts came in was somewhat dry already and I want to make sure that the roots settle in nicely with this new potting medium and then we're gonna attach the hanging basket and then I'm gonna attach a hook in the ceiling near that west-facing window that's where this guy's gonna hang out and hopefully we can start seeing him trail down when it comes to caring for the string of hearts really the key for me is giving it as much of that indirect bright light as possible the one I have a home is a south-facing window and here at the shop is a west-facing window so West is still very good lighting gets a lot of light during the afternoon and evening so I'm confident that he will do just fine in a west-facing window and again you want to make sure that you allow the soil to dry it completely if you have more of a mature string of hearts with thicker leaves and bigger hearts if you have a baby one allow the soil to maybe dry between like maybe 80% or 90% before you do decide to water it again and if you're looking to grow a nice full potted string of hearts and you don't have the patience to start off with like a small one by cutting propagating and planting it back with the mother plant and if you can't seem to find you know a nice full potted six-inch one like this then just get a whole bunch and then pop them together similar to what I did and over time you'll have an iconic string of hearts similar to the one I have in my condo so there you guys have a comment below and let me know if you think this string of hearts is going to be more iconic than the one I have at home hopefully you guys enjoyed this video until then we'll see you soon peace