Houseplant Problems Q&A - Your Questions Answered! 🌱 Indoor Plants Care For Beginners

Hello everyone and be quiet. Yoli! I don't know if we're going to be able to film at all. So a few weeks ago I put a post out on my story basically saying that I was gonna do a Q&A and send across any questions you had and I haven't had a moment to do it so I'm doing it now. So I'm going to go through and try and answer some of your questions. This is such a common problem with calatheas. I would say if it's a recent issue, if this has only been happening for like the last month or so, then it's probably down to changes in humidity. I only say that because obviously at this time of year we put the central heating on, that immediately takes away so much humidity from the air. It's like us humans getting dry skin. Your sensitive plants will get dry leaves and calatheas are super sensitive. So yes, if that is the case then I would say up the humidity. You should be doing this for your house plants at the moment anyway, just upping the humidity. If you've got a humidifier, I have mine set to about 65% which works really well for my home but obviously play about with different levels and see what works for you. But yeah, I'd advise about 65% ish. If you don't have a humidifier, just make sure that you're misting your plant as much as you possibly can really just to increase those humidity levels every day if you can and that should help. If it's not a recent thing, if it's been going on for quite a while, then I would say it's probably, I mean like definitely down to a watering imbalance because again this is so so so common with calatheas. They like to be watered on average once a week but I think a lot of the time when you say that people kind of take that as gold and be like right I must water once a week when it depends on so many things. How hot your house is, how high the humidity naturally is in your house, how much light it gets. So once a week is kind of like a guide, a guideline and when you water you should completely soak the soil, allow it to drain and then leave it. When it's drained, pop it back in its pot and I know it's a plant that likes a lot of moisture but don't be tempted to then a few days later be like oh I'll give it a bit more, a bit more because that's the classic thing of plants dying from overloving. They are so susceptible to things like root rots that as soon as their soil gets saturated and soggy then it's gonna just they're gonna end up rotting away basically but then on the other hand if you let them dry out then that again is gonna lead to issues such as browning leaves, drooping, all these all these things so it's basically just finding the right balance. If it's again if it's not a recent issue with the brown spots I would say check the roots first before you do anything just really gently lift it out of its nursery pot, have a look they should be pale and full and healthy looking and not brown and shriveled and rotty looking. If they're rotty looking then you've got a root rot. It can be fixable so do not panic, I will post below about how to fix root rot but yeah before you change anything make sure you check the roots. If they're looking fairly healthy then I would say just make sure you kind of stick to that guideline and don't go too crazy with the watering but just monitor it as well and I hope this helps. I mean it's never happened to me. I've read about spontaneous irrigation and obviously it would be amazing if it happened. I know there's so many people that say it can happen and cool I'll believe it when I say it. I personally have never had a monstera randomly just turn variegated. I guess if you wanted to raise the chances the very small chances of that happening I would just make sure you're keeping your plants in the right kind of optimum conditions. With monsteras they need loads of kind of bright bright indirect light water on average once a week. Basically just make sure you're keeping it in the right circumstances and who knows maybe it will happen but yeah sorry. I've got I've actually got a blog on my website about starter plants that I personally recommend. Snake plants the ones that are behind me they are probably I would say actually out of all of them I would recommend them as the best starter plants. They're kind of known as unkillable because they can go ages without water but they're also quite hard to over water as well. They're not particularly susceptible to root rot. They look gorgeous obviously and they've got amazing kind of air purifying qualities. So yeah I would say I would say snake plants are definitely a good shout. I know loads of people say succulents and although yes I think they're a lot lower maintenance than a lot of other plants I think the temptation is when you when you first get a plant and you're like a new new plant parent you want to love your plant lots like you want to make sure you're taking a lot of care of it and I think a lot of the time that can lead to people really taking a bit too much care of it over watering it and it will die. I mean I know for years I was not good with succulents at all because I had loads of them and I just wanted them all to live so so so much that that a lot of them didn't. I would say in my opinion snake plants are really really really good shouts. Monstera plants I've got them all here. This one's a variegated one I wouldn't start with that just because the risk of it going wrong is low but if it does this one isn't necessarily the cheapest. I would say just your standard Monstera deliciosa they are brilliant starter plants they're really hardy they're also known as Swiss cheese plants they don't require a huge amount of care but also if you do over water them chances are they will be fine. So I would suggest those probably as being my recommended starter plants but as I say there is a blog on my website and with lots of others including like jade plants, rubber plants as well are really good but top two right here. Again this is one that I get asked a lot I think if you've got a house full of hundreds of plants you're gonna have to accept the fact that from time to time you're gonna get one or two just because without using a load of nasty really harsh chemicals on your plants which I would not recommend doing then I don't think there's a way to completely get rid of them. Hello hello oh my god. So fungus gnats they basically they won't harm your plant they're not gonna actually kill your plants but obviously it's not nice having little bugs flying around everywhere they look like little fruit flies. I know a lot of people use bottom watering which is basically when you take your plants in its nursery pot and you put it in a container of water and you let it feed from the bottom up. Yes this can be this is definitely effective at getting rid of fungus gnats so from time to time I would say it's fine the only thing I would say is over time you're basically gonna take away so much of the natural aeration that needs to be there in your soil when you water from the top and you water down you're essentially pushing oxygen down into the soil and your plant needs that to survive so you don't have that if it's just getting water from the bottom up so I would say top watering is the way forward in my opinion. I sell a top soil mix in my shop which you essentially mix into the top layer of your soil it contains loads of natural safe humane pest repellent ingredients safe for your plants safe for your pets and it helps rid loads of nasty pests including fungus gnats so I use it on all of my houseplants I would highly recommend it. I know another method that a lot of people use is putting sand on the top layer of soil which yeah I mean I think it does do the trick the only thing with that is that over time as you water your plant the sand is gradually going to get pushed down further and further into the soil and you're probably going to be tempted to add more sand and more sand and the same thing will happen as with the bottom watering the soil will start to compress the aeration of the soil become really really bad and essentially the roots won't be able to breathe properly so unless you want to be repotting a lot I would say if you're using that method it's a pain in the arse but take the sand the top layer of sand out put it in a container water your plants and then replace it yeah I know that's a bit time-consuming but if you're going to use that method that is what I would recommend. So this is something I obviously speak a lot about because I love propagating avocados it's a great environmentally friendly way to add more plants to your home I tried so many different ways before I found the technique I'm using now the one that is all over the internet and everybody always tells you to do is just stick two toothpicks in and put it in a glass of water and wait that in my opinion is so hit or miss I have tried I tried it so many times half the time at work but it would take months to get a root and the other half the time nothing at all and I just end up throwing it away and it would be a total waste of time and avocado what I do now is when I've got my avocado stone I'll try to take it as fresh as I can out of the avocado I just put it in a little thing of kind of lukewarm water for maybe five ten minutes just to let the brown outer shell soften up and then really really gently just peel that off so you're essentially peeling off the skin of the shell the pit sorry and then I take a piece of kitchen roll wrap it in I'm not explaining as well at all take a piece of kitchen roll wet your kitchen roll but not like soaking just damp so squeeze it out a little bit take your peeled avocado pit put it in the kitchen roll wrap it really really loosely and then pop it into a sealed sandwich bag or a Tupperware pots and just leave it for a couple of weeks loads of people say you need to leave it somewhere light I've left mine in the airing cupboard before with a closed door and it's still been fine I would say the most important thing while the seed germinates is that it's somewhere fairly warm not hot but fairly warm don't like stick it out in your garden shed or anything like that it essentially creates its own little kind of like greenhouse and then when you check back in a couple of weeks hopefully you'll have a root and if you don't have a root you'll almost definitely notice that your pit is kind of split slightly if it hasn't got a root yet then just leave it in there for another few days or another week and then when you look back and you see it's got a root then you want to place that root so it's the bottom half the seed into a water and that's when you can use the toothpick method and yeah then it should start to grow a little avocado tree and you can also if you've got a propagation station you could just stick it in your propagation station and let it grow some people pop those up in soil I personally really like leaving them in water just so that you can see the roots growing and you can kind of just see the whole process you don't need to put it up if you do decide to put it up then I would recommend using house plant soil mixed with some kind of course I don't know that's how you say it like coconut core coir or whatever it's called some perlite perlite is brilliant at retaining moisture in the soil and always I always use a bit of citrus soil as well just because the nutrients are so high and I'd wait until the root is at least kind of once two inches before you even think about putting it up the other thing I would recommend is keeping the water that you've used to propagate it in keeping that's one side and for the first week or so use that to water your new planted avocado tree just because it's a new environment for any way going into soil I like to kind of try and make the process as steady as possible so if you keep a bit of its old environment and use that to introduce it to the new one I find that that really helps so fertilizer should be used the spring and summer months just because that's the time where your plant basically grows the most and it will require more nutrition to keep that kind of energy up from the soil so that is why you use fertilizer in terms of how often you should do it it really depends on the type of plant some plants for example if you've got succulents and cacti that don't need to be watered every week they're not going to be want to be they're not going to want to be fertilized at the same rate as you're fertilizing all of your other plants because it would send them into shock so I would say do your research and it's trial and error at the end of the day I would always say less is more so start off a little bit and see how it's affecting your plant instead of going in with a massive hit of fertilizer and sending your plant into shock if you've got a new plant in your home and you've never fertilized it before then I would really really gradually ease it into it keep it diluted and gradually build it up over time I would say in terms of the winter months your plants don't really need to be fertilized during the winter months it won't do them any good it could actually do them more harm than good because they're not pumping out new growth at the same rate so I would say lay off the fertilizer during the winter months if you want to give your plant a bit of a boost during that time you there's I mean there's loads of things you can do to just keep the nutrition in the soil without going overboard I've got a load of things on this in my tips and tricks highlight on my Instagram but using like the water left over from boiled eggs that's a great little calcium boost putting some banana skin and water letting it like in a jar letting it sit there for a couple of days and then watering your soil with that it's great for adding potassium to the soil on the whole I would say stick to the spring and summer months for fertilizing and research your specific plants before guessing