Pruning a Fern & Other Plant Chores — Ep. 279

Hey guys, so I thought I'd do some chores today. There's a lot of plant chores to be doing both indoors and outdoors. So I figured I'd do a little setup here that's going to be easy for me to do the potting. Actually, that was a chore in and of itself. But I figured if I break up the chores over the course of many days, it'll feel a little less laborious. There's a lot of things that I have going on here. First is my fern. Look at this. So it's very green and leafy on one side and it's brown on the other. That's definitely something that is common if you just kind of stuff it in one part of your corner and it doesn't get any light and so it kind of grows up against the wall. You have to be pretty diligent moving your plants around so they can get even amounts of light. But in many cases, that's, you know, not something that seems really feasible. So what I'm going to do is actually do quite a bit of clipping back on ferns. I will say this about many ferns. They have a really strong root structure. So if you clip your ferns back, oftentimes they'll start to push out new growth. I know in my old apartment with my maidenhair ferns, they got nibbled on by an errant mouse that was running around in my house. Constantly got nibbled on and it's just as if it was getting clipped back and then they started to emerge again. Then, as you can see here, this is one of two pots that I've broken. One sonder accidentally broke and this broke in the wind. So I had, I put one of my houseplants outside and it just kind of toppled over in the wind. It's unfortunate because I really love these planters and I don't know, I mean, this one would take a lot of glue in order to fix. These are the burning pottery planters that I have. I have some more here that I'll plant. This is a vintage planter, so that one might get one of these plants. I'm not quite sure. I don't know if this one's going to be better for this or this pot right here. Then I have this Hoya and it's a little low on soil here, unfortunately. I just always had this in the planter pot with the intention of actually planting it and I never planted it. So that's going to get planted up today. And then you may remember in a previous video, I talked about houseplants that I wish were more in production. And I have to say, I started looking around for one of those plants. This is an Apoballis, which was something I really discovered when I was touring the Illexotics store in Philadelphia. And I was like, hey, I'm going to give this plant a shot. I'm trying not to get too many new plants, strictly because of the transition of going back and forth from Brooklyn to the Finger Lakes, which is where I am now. But I kind of had to just, you know, do a little look. So this is all of what I'm going to be doing today. I actually have a potting medium as well. It's over here. I'm going to get it. So this is the Espoma potting mix. And then I have their cactus mix and also their orchid mix, which is really good for epiphytes like bromeliads and also hoyas and things along those lines. So I think the first thing that I'm going to do is actually get my broken pot plant potted up. And I might not need too much extra potting medium in here. I do if I use this because it's actually much smaller. So what I'm going to do is mix up some of the organic orchid mix with some of the regular potting medium. I can also use the cactus mix, actually. Oh, yeah. So then this is the Espoma epiphyte mix. So you can get a sense of that. And I like actually adding that to my hoyas. And I don't have the perlite on me because normally I like to add a little bit more of perlite. And this is Hoya commingiana. I did a hoya care tips video way back in the day. And this is a plant that really enjoys a bit more alkaline mixture. So, you know, you could use some crushed up eggshells, which I usually have on hand because I saved all the eggshells for chickens. It's also pretty good for some of your plants, you know, and you just water it in and it's almost like a slow release calcium fertilizer, if you will. So, OK, so these roots look really good. I mean, this plant is in really good condition. In a nice brown pot for a little hot second and then obviously went kaboom. So I'm just going to tease out the roots. You know, I realize I don't even have a spoon. Usually I have my spoons and I put the planting mix, potting mix in here. Let me just move these so you know what I'm not going to put these on the edge. For fear I might break another planter pot. I mean, how many planter pots have you all broken in your life? I can't even I can't even imagine how many have broken. Probably a dozen. As a kid, I constantly I loved glass figurines as a kid. And I'd have them on display like in a like a dresser or whatever, but I'd always take them out and play with them and I'd always crack like one. It's not something that little kids should always be playing with. My mom was always trying to glue my glass figurines and now nothing has changed. It's just like gluing your planter pots now. If you're lucky, if you're lucky and they break off in big chunks. The other planter pot that got broken today that is not on my list of things to do is an orchid planter pot, which was blooming like crazy. I actually used one of the fertilizers from Espoma. And then I put it right up next to a southern window that gets really cold in the winter months. My gosh, it had doesn't have like 30 blooms on it now, but it had I think I counted 32 blooms on it. It was very floriferous. Okay, I'm adding some of this bark on top. Probably add the calcium eggshells later. But that's that's a beautiful specimen, right? This has yet to flower for me. I have the other one in Brooklyn and if that flowered, I haven't been paying attention to it. But I'm just going to give it a good water in. It's always good to water your plants in because then it settles in the roots. It takes down the fresh air and it settles all the soil substrate in there. So there you go. That that looks really beautiful. Okay, so that was pretty easy peasy. I'm like saving the hard one for last. Okay, so this is another Hoya as you could see. And looking a little bedraggled. But you can see it has this nice barky substrate in it. So this is not too dissimilar to the orchid mix here. But I'm not just going to add orchid mix. I'm also going to add some of this cactus mix as well. And work with what you have. Sometimes we don't have all of our preferred materials on hand. But most of the time plants don't complain as much. So here you go. I'm just going to knock out some of these dry bits. Because I think what happened is that it was just getting too dry in some places without having substrate around it and its roots being exposed to air. So I'm just going to add some of this in here. So you can see that. I'm just going to mix that around so it's not striated with wood on the bottom. And then cactus mix on top. If I want to get that nice and mixed up. So you can see that looks a little bit more like that. What's nice is that the roots are all nice and loose. I've had to deal with more root bound plants. I don't know if you remember that Hoya abovada that was so root bound. I mean this is like styrofoam. It is so root bound. And I don't even know if the roots could get proper nutrients. They're very dry. Felt so bad for that plant. But it's doing. It's like an ace now. Very hard to overwater your plants if you have a very forgiving substrate. Very aerated substrate. So quite a bit of water is coming out in the bottom. And I'll dump that out before I actually move this into my on my countertop at home. All right. And then this one I don't think I'll need. But this looks perfect for my Apoballis. Such a strange scientific name. I'm going to have to get used to that one. So this one has more of a peaty potting medium. So I'm just going to use some of this mixture here. Since it's probably more familiar with that mixture. And I would imagine that this is not an epiphyte. I could see this actually growing in the understory of the forest floor. If you remember and recall the episode I did at Ill Exotics. That was one of the conversations that I was having with Franco. Is that this has a similar coloration to a Schismatoglottis and also a Aglaonema. And it has these purple undersides. And when I see those types of things and I think, OK, that's probably an understory plant. Very similar to, you know, Stromontes or Geportias or Calatheas. Things like that. Well, this is pretty good. That was easy. I like easy potting. I like doing this with you guys because it gives me an excuse to do some of my chores that I've been pushing off. OK, this is the big guy. Look at this. Oh, so dry. I think the best thing I could do, let me get a different, I had another tool here. Here it is. I like these clippers for close work. There's a lot of green bits in here, too. So I'm going to let this go a little too gone on one side. But the funny thing is, I'm not going to change my habit. Where it is now is a place that I really like it in the house. It's just to the right side of the sink. So what I'll do is just free up some of this dead bits so that the green bits could get more and more light. And there's actually some new growth. Coming through here, I don't know if you could see that little guy coming up in the middle there. But I think if I could get some of this brown growth off, then it'll be better for it. It doesn't have to look perfect. I'm not somebody who like is working on specimen plants in the house. So it could be a little crusty now and again. I don't mind it. Also, you realize when you're working with plants outside, none of them are really perfect, especially now that we're dealing with like spongy moth outside. They're eating all the leaves of so many of the trees. And you're just like, oh my gosh, you just hope that the tree leaves will put out another flush. So you think about all the other forces at play in outdoor situation that you don't have to deal with in an indoor situation. Of course, indoor situations have other forces at play. This is starting to look better already. Just a little haircut. I'll definitely free up some of this. Look at all this. This is going to go in the compost afterwards. I think that looks much better already. It's also pretty dry. This fern, I've noticed, will start to whiten. It just lightens its green when it starts to dry out. Oftentimes, when I head home to Brooklyn, Saundra doesn't really water the plants as much as I do when I'm here. So when I get back, oftentimes that's when it needs like the most amount of water. That could be another reason why the plant is drying out in some areas. But because all the drying was so localized on one side, it's really probably because it's against the wall and it's not getting as much light as the other side where you see the green fronds. Anyway, those chores. Geez, I went through that really quickly. You know, thank you so much for doing these plant chores with me. And now on to round two. All right, guys, see you later. If you're looking to up your plant game, then check out our suite of courses and offerings, including Houseplant Basics, Troubleshoot Your Houseplants, the 125 Houseplant Care Spreadsheet, and the Houseplant Masterclass. The courses provide you a certificate of completion when you're finished and a wealth of information that you could use to impress both your plants and your friends. More information can be found over at homesteadbrooklyn.com. And if you're seeking more information about gardening outdoors and homesteading in the country, then check out our new channel over at Flock Finger Lakes. See you there.