Albuca Spiralis Care | 'Frizzle Sizzle' Plant

What's up everyone? Kevin here. Today we are looking at a really cool plant that I own that's grown considerably since I first got it from, where did I get this from? I think a local nursery up in Encinitas in San Diego. And it's a Frizzle Sizzle. It's Albuca spiralis, a really interesting plant. I mean, look at, just look right here. Look at this dangling guy. Little corkscrew. It just has an incredibly visually appealing look to me at least. Funky plants I really love. This is a plant that's native to South Africa and it's extremely easy to care for. You need to give it a lot of light. I'll show you in a second where I kind of grow this in my indoor jungle. This would be a good plant if you're in a relatively hot zone, like maybe eight plus. You could grow this outdoors totally fine. But what's interesting, there's two other things that are really interesting about it. Number one, all the growth comes out of this very fat base right here. So if I brush away a little bit of this soil, then you can see this nice fat chunky base and that's where all the growth comes out of. So that looks kind of weird. Almost looks like a mysterious type of a carrot. I have lovingly named mine Mrs. Frizzle and comment down below if you know that reference. Now the other thing you'll notice and why I decided to film this video right now is because we have a flower that's starting. So it throws out a flower spike that maybe goes like 12 to 24 inches into the air and they have these nodding yellow flowers. They kind of droop down a little bit, maybe 10 or 20 per spike. And the crazy part besides just the beauty of that is that if you give it a whiff, it smells like the instant you open a little jar of vanilla extract, like one of those little vials, it couldn't smell more like that. It's just this like not sickly sweet but very sweet and fragrant vanilla-esque aroma. And you can, like I can smell it right now and this is only one flower. So when it's really flowering, that smell is crazy. Now, interesting things about this plant, you're not going to run into almost any pest issues at all. So it's a great beginner plant for indoor or outdoor gardeners. You're not going to run into any disease issues because provided you give it the right soil, which is cactus mix, very well draining mix, and you water it maybe, I don't know, once a week-ish or so, then you're fine. The only disease you'll ever run into would be root rot and that's only going to happen if you literally overwater it. There's no other way that you're going to cause that problem. And so if you have the right soil mix and you water appropriately, it's never going to happen. So no pest, no disease. The other thing that you might run into on this plant is that the tips, see this little tip right here, this is a little bit brown. You can just snip that off. It's not a big deal. But that happens mostly if you've underwatered it severely, which shouldn't be the problem for you or when it's throwing out the flower spike. It's just directing so much energy into the production of that plant organ that let's say, you know, this little dangly boy right here might start to dry out a little bit as the plant does not have enough resources to devote to the whole structure. It's saying, Hey, I'm putting out my flowers. It's really time to develop that part of me. My reproductive cycle is beginning. I'm going to start deleting energy being sent to the ends of these growing tips over here. I don't need them as much anymore. So that's the only other thing you might see. Other than that, troubleshooting this plant is very, very easy. So indoors, this is how I've decided to grow mine. I've got it in my bamboo LED shelf, which has quite a few plants here, but it's really kitty cornered right up against my grow lights. And so it's getting a ton of light. And that might be why this flowering stalk is quite stout right now. I expect it's going to grow quite a bit and I'll have to move it. But for now it's, it's really, really happy here. This is on 16 hours a day and so it's getting tons of light and the vigorous growth is happening. You can even see right here, if we look really closely right there, you can see that an entirely separate Frizzle Sizzle is starting to develop right here. And it's just looking really healthy. Again, the Frizzle Sizzle, the Albuquerque Spiralis or Mrs. Frizzle as mine is named, is very easy to care for, beautiful plant, a showstopper if you will. And as I water it in, this is like my once a week, maybe once every 10 days water. That's it guys. I hope you enjoyed. I like covering these little quick care guides every now and then in between some of the bigger projects and other videos. But if there's a specific plant you'd like me to see or do a care guide on next, then let me know. I have a ton that I haven't done. So let's go ahead and finish watering this guy and I'll see you in the next video. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.