How To Fly On An Airplane With Houseplants! Traveling With Plants As Carry On!

Hey guys, it's Harley, and today I'm going to be doing a video all about how to travel with houseplants, specifically how to take houseplants as your carry-on on an airplane, which is what I will be doing today. While I was here in New York, I bought six plants, and buying plants is all fun and dandy while you're on vacation until it's time to get them home, and then it can become a stressful thing, but it really doesn't have to. So for me, the method I'm going to be using will make the most sense just because I did buy six plants, so I need a little bit more space. So just some things to consider when you're shopping for the plants is to be mindful of the size you're buying. Of course you aren't going to be able to buy a large size tree or anything like that. As tempting as it may be, I wouldn't recommend that. So when you're flying on an airplane, you are allowed carry-on luggage and then also one personal item. So for this video today, I'm going to be packaging these so that they are my personal item, but you could also package them in one of multiple different ways and put them in your carry-on luggage as well. I'll be bringing you along through the whole process of me getting these plants home, and I hope that you find that helpful. Yeah, let's just get into it. So some things that'll come in handy when getting your plants home, again, depends on the method you use to get them home, but for me, I'm going to be using a paper bag or even this reusable shopping bag. Napkins will come in very, very handy. Tissue paper will come in very, very handy. If you do any shopping and you get a plastic bag or something like that, that will come in super handy as well. So number one, I'm just going to sit this plant here. You want to use some paper towels or napkins. You can dampen them depending on the plant you get to just fill in the bottom of the pot. You're just going to do this so that soil doesn't get everywhere, decreasing the chances of your plant popping out of the little pot. Pack it in there really well, but of course gently. Of course, I chose to buy a bunch of peperomias, which in a way are very hardy, but are in a way also very delicate as far as leaves and foliage goes. They tend to break off pretty easily. You can also moisten the paper towel if you'd like to, but I'm going to keep it dry just because the place I bought this plant from did water these before I bought them and the soil is still wet, so I don't want to overwater the plant and smother it. There's that. You can also, if you have tape or something like that, you can also tape across the top to help hold that down as well. I would especially recommend that if you're going to put it inside of your carry-on luggage or your personal item, but where I'm going to be carrying a bag of just plants, this shouldn't suffice. You can also use a Kleenex. Just pack it in there. Again, this is just to hold in the dirt. You can moisten it if you want to. So this is where you kind of have to get creative. So this bag is going to be the perfect size to fit all of my plants in very comfortably but also snugly. And then also I have these two smaller brown paper bags that I got from another plant shop that fit perfectly sideways within there to create little pockets to hold them further in place. So what I'm going to do is just rip these bags across the bottom for some extra stability in the bottom of my bag. And again, like I've said so many multiple times, there are a lot of ways you can go about doing this, but really you just want to do what you're super comfortable with. I am going to put this Urban Outfitters Reusable Shopping Bag in this larger bag and then also put these in there as well. It may seem like overkill, it probably is, but for me it's better safe than sorry. Next, after you've stuffed your plant, you can wrap it in paper, paper bag, plastic bag, tissue paper, really whatever to help protect any delicate leaves, and then you can put them in there. I'm just going to show you how I wrap this guy. I'm literally just going to crumple up the paper around him. I don't want to wrap him in anything too sturdy because these leaves are really delicate. This is just more to make a buffer between the plants. Now this is the one I'm very going to care about a lot because it's kind of more of a rare peperomia. I'm just going to wrap him up really well. Okay, so that's what we have. What do you think, Mo? Looks good. So then, we have a few hours until we get to the airport, so I'm just going to leave these with the hotel staff, and once we get to the airport, then I'll show you how the plants end up doing and what the normal process is like. So let's do these. Oh, and really quick, something else I forgot to mention is if you're using this as your personal item, you want to make sure it's going to fit under the seat in front of you, so you want to keep it pretty low and fairly small, otherwise they're going to make you put it up above in like the stowaway bins, and the plants probably wouldn't do too well with luggage flying back and forth in there with it. So definitely, if you're going to do this, then I would make sure it's small enough that you can keep it under the seat in front of you. Okay, so we're at the airport now. I didn't film much going through the security check, just because they're kind of mean at this airport, and I didn't want to get yelled at because my heart can't handle that, but just to prove that we got through just fine and everything's looking good, I'm going to show you a little clip of all the plants that made it through security, and I just put them... I just kept them in the bag I have them in and put them on the conveyor belt in a bucket by itself with my shoes, and it was good. So let me show you. They're all in there, and they're all... I'm sure they're all doing fine. This peperomia looks pretty happy, and we got some rainbow bagels, but all's good to go. Okay guys, I'm finally back home. I missed my dogs so much. Here they are. They've been like completely by my side since I got home late last night, and I... Ooh, I just missed them so much, you know? It was only a week, but sometimes a week feels like a long time when you're away from your dogs slash husband slash multiple, many, a lot of houseplants. So all of my plants seem to be doing pretty well. There are a few that have like browning on them and things like that. Nothing too bad though. Everything's in pretty good shape considering Ryan was in charge of them while I was gone, but I just thought I would show you how my plants fared through traveling home from New York on an airplane. Here's the bag of plants. I'm going to open them all up and show you how they did. There's that guy. He did lose one leaf. Go ahead and remove the tissue paper, which is by now soaked because this plant was watered right before I bought it, like I said. He looks pretty good, pretty happy, and I'm going to repot him soon because he's looking a little compact in here. This peperomia is probably the most delicate of all of them I bought, and I don't think it lost a single leaf. So the people at security, like when you have to put your stuff down the conveyor belt, didn't even say anything. It was all good as long as you bring one carry-on and one personal item, which I use this as a personal item. So what I did was I just folded the top of the paper bag in, in, and in, and then slid it under there and they were perfectly fine the whole trip. So yeah, it was a pretty comfortable flight. Then here is the peperomia, got home safely. Let me know how to take care of this because I have no idea. I'm going to do some research, but I really want it to do well for me. There's that guy looking really happy. They look a lot better traveling than I do, so they do pretty well, I'd say. And then here I have my new peperomia frost. Welcome home, baby, welcome home. This last peperomia, see how he did. Oh, we had one leaf lost, which is fine. I mean, for me, I kind of expect to lose a couple of leaves, but nothing too drastic. And peperomia are kind of fragile leaf-wise. And it's really nice because there's no soil in the bags. I didn't have any spillage, nothing leaked through, so yeah. Something I would recommend though is if the plant soil is very, very drenched, go grocery shopping while you're traveling or whatever and you get a plastic bag. You can cut it into little squares and put a square on the bottom of the, like, plant pot and then rubber band it so that it stays and then do the wrapping from there. That way the plastic can hold in any moisture that may be seeping out of the bottom of the pot because you don't want it to leak through and, like, rip your bag or get everywhere. That's when they're going to have an issue with plants on airplanes, you know? But yeah, so all of the plants seem to have arrived in pretty good condition. Minimal leaf loss, minimal discoloring. They're happy. They seem pretty healthy. So I hope that this video was helpful for you. If you have any questions about traveling with plants, please comment down below and I'll answer every single one of them. I know it can really be a stressful thing, but it really isn't that bad. And it's so fun to travel and get new plant babies from your travels as souvenirs. It's just a really great way to remember your trip. I'm tired. I don't know if you could tell. But anyway, I'm going to go clean up my house. Love my little plant babies that I left home for a week. And yeah, that's it for this video. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next one. Bye!