Pink Princess Philodendron Care Guide | All You Need to Know!

If you want to get something exciting in the mail and not this wasteful junk, then get on the list at plantarina.com. That is where we tell you all about our sales, our discounts, new arrivals, and other really great things, like a discount on your first purchase if you sign up, so don't be wasteful and get on the list. Welcome, how are you? My name is Amanda from Planetarina, and I'm going to talk about one plant in this video, one plant that deserves a mention, and it's the philodendron pink princess. Long and away, it's called the pink princess. It's called the pink princess because there are pink, actual, real pink markings on its leaves. It has very pale, beautiful, sometimes bright pink, too. Sometimes it's like a hot pink, depends on the light it's getting, right? So it has not a lot of variegation in general. The smaller the plant is, meaning after it's grown, it's actually been growing from tissue culture lately. A lot of people are growing them in tissue culture or by propagation, and I don't even know. I've never seen a philodendron pink princess seed. I'm sure they exist, I don't know. Here's a general rule about the pink princess. I find that the brighter light it's in, the more indirect bright light that this plant gets, the better the variegation is, but it's not always the case. They sometimes just revert back to green, just to green leaves, and I don't know why this is. I find the bigger they get, the less variegation they hold on to. I would recommend, if you want your pink princesses to stay pink, that you cut them back and propagate them. I'll show you how to do that. You basically take a cutting, you cut from underneath a node, and from that node, you will actually grow roots. You won't grow roots, but your plant, your cutting will grow roots, and then it will start producing more leaves once the roots have established. You have to have some patience and take your time. Let it take its time, and it will happen. Pink princess philodendron is a vine. It's a vining plant that will start, it will start grabbing onto a support, any support you provide it with, with its tendrils, with its aerial roots, and it just adheres to it. I know that because I've had many philodendron that have stuck to my walls, stuck to furniture. When you're not looking, especially the faster growing plants, they tend to do that. The pink princess philodendron isn't the fastest growing philodendron on the planet, but it does grow when it has the right conditions. The right conditions are temperatures that are between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit consistently. It likes bright, indirect light, and it absolutely likes to be fertilized when it's growing. Fertilizing really is about just giving your plant the nutrition it needs because they're in a pot, and pots don't hold a lot of nutrition, and they use it up, so the bigger the plants are, like this big one, it will probably require fertilization in the beginning of the growing season and throughout. And I like to use worm castings on the soil, and I put it in the soil, and I kind of rake it in a little bit, and then I will feed it with a liquid fertilizer, a complete liquid fertilizer with equal parts potassium, phosphorus, and, what's the other one? Nitrogen. I got it all reversed. And I dilute it to a quarter of the strength of the recommended suggested use because I like to fertilize more often than not when I have a plant with big leaves and the need for food. And so the pink princess actually is really super easy to care for. Like most philodendron, they just want to be left alone after you've done your little duty. You fed them, you watered them when they're dry, completely let it dry out. I've noticed that if you water it too often and you have new foliage emerging, it'll start turning brown because it can't handle, it just can't handle it. I don't know why. It's just waterlogged, and then your roots will probably die, and it's not good. Underwater before you overwater. Yeah, that's a general rule, okay? And the other thing about, this is an interesting thing about the pink princess, when you do cut it to propagate it, the sap is red, and it stains. So if you're wearing white pants like I'm wearing, don't, or just keep, you know, cut away from your white pants, or cut away from a rug, just make, I'm warning you, it's going to drop like beet colored sap. And it was a little shocking when I first saw that, I was a little shocked. I was like, are you an alien? It's just, it's a plant. Alien plant. And the markings are not, the markings are not always just pink, there's white, and there's this green putty color, which I just noticed, which is gorgeous, and you know, it's just, it's a pretty plant. It's a pretty plant. Pretty plants. Pretty, pretty plants. You'll want to stake your pink princess philodendron when it starts getting this big. You'll want to stake it up, because I find that vining philodendrons with large leaves, if you don't stake them up, they'll, they can cascade over the side of the pot, but the weight of the leaves and the stems might pull it out of the pot. So you're probably going to want to stake a plant like this, to grow up in a vertical formation with very secure staking job. Stake it securely, because when they fall over, they can break, the whole thing can break off. I've had that happen before too, so just words of warning, stake it securely, vertically. And then this is another great thing about that, the leaves will grow bigger. I've noticed when you stake a plant, and it starts growing up, and it's getting the light it needs, the leaves become bigger, and hopefully more variegated. I once had a very large pink princess, that I sent over to the greenhouse, and it got propagated, and this is actually one of the cuttings, many, many plants came from that one plant, and that's what's very exciting about this whole thing, this whole thing with plants, is that you start with one, you get many, you can get many. So if you're having trouble, or problems with your philodendron pink princess, you might again take some cuttings, and start planting them, and you can plant them, you can put them right in soil if you want, you can take the cutting, put it in soil, you can take the cutting, you can put it in water, and then you'll have insurance, in case something happens to the main plant, you'll have a backup, they're backup plants. Backup plants become actual, real, beautiful plants like this one. So it's exciting, isn't it? You have the ability to keep on making more beautiful plants with one big, beautiful plant. Should I get technical? It's not going to happen. So the philodendron pink princess, sometimes I call it, not, I don't call it a pink princess, when it loses all its variegation, I actually call it some bad names, I do, why'd you do that? And I blame myself sometimes, and I realize, it's probably not me, it's just the way it's going to be. Plants like to revert, and revert means they go back to the original plant that they were, because a lot of these plants that you're seeing lately are hybrids, and they're cross-bred to have a different character, a different trait. Sometimes that dominant gene just kicks in and says, we're going back, we're going to be whatever this was, a imperial green, I don't know whatever this came from, but back sometimes. So take the cuttings of the variegated leaves and propagate them, and then you'll have a better variegated plant. I've noticed there's been some chatter about tissue culture, and people are not so happy sometimes that a plant came from tissue culture, but tissue culture is really just like micro-propagation, there's nothing wrong with it, it's not like we're genetically altering anything. I'm not even doing it, I don't even know how to do it, I've seen it done once, I don't do it. So although this particular plant, I'm not sure, I don't think it was tissue culture because I got it a long time ago, and I don't think anybody thought about mass-producing pink princess, but a lot of them are now, and I noticed this, the tissue culture plants are pinker, they have pink on almost every leaf, and they stay pinker for longer periods of time. These, maybe forever, I don't know yet. These plants are not fed with any chemicals or given any chemicals to falsely induce color, this is just a natural variegation, so that's the good news of that. Do you just, listen, why do I say listen? I don't know why I say it, I never used to say that. But my whole theory with the pink princess, it's not a theory, my whole thought process is enjoy it while the variegation's there, and if you lose the variegation, enjoy the plant for what it is, it's a beautiful plant. It actually has a beautiful form, and you can train it to look any way you want it to look. It's super narrow, you can train it to be bushy by cutting it back, and take a bunch of cuttings and put them together in a pot, and you'll have one big, lush, gorgeous pink princess. I didn't think I could talk so much about one plant, but pink princess means a lot to me. I don't, it's one of those plants that I had to have in the beginning, I had to have it, and I got it, and I babied it, and I did all these, I put it in diapers, I did not put it in diapers, almost. But then I propagated it, and I didn't have one for a while, because, like I said, I sent it to the greenhouse to get, to get, I sent it to the greenhouse to get cut, and it got cut, and look what happened, that is it. Okay, so I don't know if I've covered everything, you probably need to know about a pink princess. Oh yeah, there's one more thing, let's talk about the humidity. As with most indoor plants, except for cacti, which I happen to have right here, they like extra humidity, if you can provide it. Philodendrons, they're not screaming for it, they're not begging for it, but they benefit from higher humidity, so you'll see bigger, healthier leaves, you won't see any browning on the leaf tips, and you'll probably see it's better growth in general. So if you can provide over 50% humidity, that means it's 50% water in the air, and sometimes you don't really want high humidity in your home because it affects wood, it affects furniture, it affects, it's good for you, it's good for your face and your skin, but sometimes not for furniture, so you can keep it around 50, even 60, or you can kind of localize, centralize your plants in an area and put a humidifier in that spot, so they'll love it, your plants will love it, and also plants that are grouped together look really nice too. That is it, I'm done, I'm done talking about pink princess philodendron, that's, that's a lot, that's a lot, and if there's anything else I forgot, I'll just put it, I'll put a little something in the description, so maybe it's just like a cheat sheet, how to take care of your pink princess philodendron, in like three sentences. This could have been like a one minute video, anyway, you guys, thank you so much, I'll see you soon, enjoy your plants, and take care of them because they take care of you, take care of you here.