13 Plant Tasks You MUST Do In Winter

It's December and winter is well and truly here. I don't know about you but some of my plants are struggling for the lack of light and we'll cover that in this video. But plants do continue to grow in winter despite what you might have read or heard and that means there is always things to do. So I'm gonna show you the things that I'm doing with my plant and why. And we're starting with a string of hearts. So I've got this string of hearts on the shelf here just underneath this grow light. Having a grow light on top of the plant at the base is important because otherwise they go a little bit bare if you haven't got enough light at the top. So that's a top tip. But as you'll see, these stems are quite long and lanky and they're nearly touching the floor. You'll also notice that they're all twisted as well which is always the case with a string of hearts. They're an absolute nightmare plant so I just leave them be now. I don't bother trying to untangle or anything. But when the stems are nearly reaching the floor, you need to get your pruners out like these. Just go through and just snip. Don't need to be too delicate about it. So I'm just gonna snip along there like so. Take these off. So that evens up the plant. And then the beauty of doing this as well is that the stems will branch out. So you get more than one branch from where you make the cut. So you end up with a nice bushy plant basically. So these should all branch out. And then with these cuttings that we took, we don't want to chuck these out. I'm gonna show you what to do with these in the other room. So I have my string of hearts stems and I've just spent the last 10 minutes or so just unpicking them, untangling them. So I've got individual stem pieces like that. And what we want to do, we want to find the leaves and just cut before and after each of the leaves, sets of leaves. So that you end up with a little piece like that. So I'm gonna go through and do that for all of these. So what we are now left with are lots of cuttings that we can propagate from and create a brand new string of hearts plant. And for that, I've got this clear plastic pot, which is a bit taller than your average pot, which is good for the string of hearts to start flopping over, which is what you want. So I've just pre-filled it with Cybotanica soil and I've pre-moistened it as well. And all you want to do is just lay them on top of the soil. Just try and get the stem piece touching the soil if you can. It doesn't necessarily need to be buried that much, but just go through and press the little cuttings into the soil and they will root dead easily. And this is how we propagate a string of hearts. So in lots of cases, to get a bushier string of hearts, we can take a stem piece that's growing down the side of the pot, bring it back up and wrap it into the soil, just rest it on top. Then at each leaf node, roots will grow into the soil and that's how you get a bushy crown of the plant basically. But, so you can either do that this way, that way with the propagation, or you can take little individual cuttings like this, which is what I tend to do. I just find it a bit easier to place into the soil like I'm doing here. Okay, so I like to pack it quite full because you won't get 100% success rate. You will get a couple that die, but generally if you pack it nice and full, you get a nice healthy plant at the top. So this will start growing. Once I put it somewhere nice and bright, it'll start growing new stems, new roots and we'll have a nice string of hearts clone. You might have a fit owner in your home, like this guy, that you want to clone because it's a beautiful plant, isn't it? But you might be a bit worried about their lack of growth and lack of humidity during winter. So you might put it off until next year, but that would be a shame because we do like to do things during the winter to our house plants. And I've got a cheeky little hack that will guarantee the success of your cuttings. So I have my fit owner here and I'm just locating a nice, healthy stem piece, just hanging off the side because it'd be easier to cut. I'm just going to cut underneath where a leaf is growing, like so. So I'll get a nice piece like that, put that to one side, we don't need any longer. So there'll be lots of leaves coming out of this stem. So we just want to remove the bottom few leaves because when we plant these up, if they're in the soil or water, whatever we're doing, then they're going to rot, basically. So we just want a nice, clean stem piece, like so, with some leaves at the top. And then I've got myself a little pot, like so, filled with Cybotanica Universal Mix. You can get a 10% discount with the link in my description, by the way, to all their soil. So I've pre-moistened it and then I'm going to stick the stem piece without dropping it, in the middle, like so. Press the soil around. And then, just got a bit of a leaf broken off there, no big deal. So that's in there nicely. I've already watered it, so there's no need to water it. And then this is where the magic happens. I've got myself a jar. This is an old jam jar. So to prevent it drying out in your home with the heating on, et cetera, you can pop it onto the lid, like so, and then put that over the top and then screw it on. And that has created the perfect humidity environment for that plant to grow roots and then grow new stems. So once it starts growing new leaves and new stems and reaches the top of this container, you can just simply just take it off and then let it grow as it normally would. So in winter, our plants can start to look a bit ropey, can't they? Can I get an amen? That's exactly what is happening to this caliphate alga grass. As you can see, it's got some floppy yellowing leaves. A lot of them have gone crispy brown, like that one. And just generally, it's looking a bit like a dog's dinner, isn't it? And to a beginner, they might see this and want to chuck it out into the bin. But a quick tidy up and we'll get this guy looking its former glory and I'll show you what to do. Here she is. As easy as that, looks as good as new. So I took off a fair few amounts of leaves, anything that was yellow or browning, I just took off with my snippers. I showed no mercy whatsoever. So I think the problem with this plant was that it was too bushy. So getting rid of all the leaves that were dying off has opened it up and it's created more airflow to get into the plant and more light as well. So we should now start to see lots of new growth. There is new growth coming through in the middle, which is a good sign it's not dying, but just basically I haven't got around to pruning it back. It's looking much healthier now. Got my Monstera Alba here, which is a beautiful but slightly problematic plant because of the large white sections going brown, but that's a story for another day. But this guy is looking a little bit floppy, a little bit unsupported, isn't he? So I like to support all my Monsteras these days, give them something to climb up. So they've got these aerial roots at the back of the stem and they want to attach onto something to then climb up to support as they grow higher and higher, taller and taller. So this guy needs support and I've got just the thing for it. A support system that I absolutely love that I use on lots of my plants is this trellis. This is called the Zella, you'll be able to find it on the website. You get a 10% discount with my link in the description. I like using these to support my plants because it looks attractive. But where should we put the stake? So basically a Monstera will have a front and a back. The front is where the leaves will face and in the back is where the aerial roots will come out of the stem. And that's where you want the stake to be, up against the aerial roots. Sometimes it won't look quite so black and white because as in this case here, I've got my two aerial roots facing kind of behind me now and then the leaves are kind of veering off to the side. That must just be where the light has been shining on it, facing that way. But to correct that, all we need to do is put our stake in the soil up against where the aerial roots are coming out of the back of the stem, like so. There you go. So it's dead easy with this trellis because they've got nice feet to put into the soil that are rubber coated. And then just to make sure that the plant knows that it's there, I like to tie it on using this green Velcro tape that you can just buy online from Amazon probably. So I'm going to pop that through that hole there, anchor it nice and tightly, like so. There we go. Much better. So now that plant knows that this trellis is there and it will start attaching its aerial roots to the wood and it'll start growing taller and taller. On this shelving unit behind me, I have my spider plant, which is looking absolutely glorious. So this guy is fairly new to the home. I've had it about three or four months, something like that. And it was flowering the other day. It's since gone by the wayside now. First time a spider plant has flowered in my home. But as well as the flowers, they're also producing lots of these pups all around the plant, little baby pups that sprout from the mother. Quite interesting feature of this plant. So you can either leave them on the plant, which is quite a good thing to do because they look quite nice, don't they? Quite interesting. Or you could do something else with them. So with the pups that this plant is growing, we can easily cut these off to grow new spider plants. That's basically what these are for. So we can take a couple of cuttings. I'm just going to do two into one pot, like so. We don't need that anymore. So if you look on your spider plant pup, you should start to notice the beginnings of some roots growing at the bottom of where the leaves are coming out of these pups. So I've got myself another pot filled with Cybotanica soil, and I've pre-moistened it. Just grip my stick. It's just dead easy to propagate these. The easiest thing you can do with your houseplants, just make a little hole like so, and then pop that in there to make sure that the bottom of that pup has good contact with soil. And that's it, really. Dead simple. So I'm going to put two in here, like so. And that will grow on. I'll put that somewhere nice and bright, and that'll grow on to be a nice, healthy spider plant. If you're struggling with things like yellowing leaves, brown leaf tips, or wilting, and you're not sure why, then make sure you download my free troubleshooting guide, which is linked in the description to this video. It goes through all the common problems, why they happen, and then what to do about it. And you'll also get the opportunity to sign up to my weekly newsletter, Houseplant Digest, which is a lot of fun. So make sure you check out the description. Winter can be a really tricky time for sun-loving plants, like succulents, cacti, and aloe vera, for example. I've got my aloe arborescens, or aloe candelabra, I think it's called, here, which is an interesting plant with spiky leaves. But it lives about one and a half, two meters away from the window, so it's not getting enough light at the best of times. And now that we're heading into winter, it's starting to look quite stretched and leggy. The long central stem at the base, going all the way up here, is looking quite leggy. And if I don't do something about it, it's gonna start to get a bit top-heavy, I think. So we need to correct this now. Now, it might look drastic, but you can get your large pruners, like so, and then, just gonna get this out of the pot, you can go quite low down on the plant, if I can get in there, like so, and chop its head off, like so. And then we can remove these lower leaves to expose the kind of stem piece. So aloe veras, you can reset, or aloe arborensis, or whatever this is called, but you can do the same thing to aloe veras as well. You can reset them like this when they start to get a bit leggy. They will grow roots from the stem piece. So I'm just removing these leaves until I'm left. Just gonna tidy this up a little bit. There we go. One more leaf. There's one there, let's just, okay. So we have a piece like that now, with the stem exposed. So you should really let that callus over for maybe a day, maybe even two days, just to let that dry off, because plants in this family don't like to be over-watered. And because that's quite an exposed, fleshy stem piece, it might start to rot, because it's very moist, I'm feeling it in my hands. But for the purpose of this, I'm just going to show you how to repot it. So I've half-filled a pot here with soil. I'm just gonna hold the stem piece, and then just fill around, dead simple. Quite low down, like so. So like I say, it will grow roots dead easily. Then it'll continue to grow taller and taller. So this is something I like to do to my succulents as well. I like to kind of reset them normally every year, just to stop them from becoming so leggy. So fill that up with soil. There we have it, a nice compact plant now. So I would give that a water, as I repot any plant, I always give it a water, a drink of water, just to make sure that the stem piece settles into the soil, makes good contact, and then it'll start growing roots. I'll put that somewhere bright, and I'll have a happy new plant on my hands. If you're a subscriber to the channel, then you would have seen me unbox this bad boy in a video about three or four months ago, something like that. This is my Monstera Thai Constellation that I got from Amazon of all places, and it was in good condition. There was some thrip damage on some of the leaves, but I think they eradicated that before they sent it to me, because I've not noticed any more damage. But this guy, I stuck on my fireplace half here, which is a good one and a half, two meters away from that window here in my living room, and that's not enough for a Monstera. If you have a light meter, or a light meter app on your phone, then you want really 500 foot candles as a minimum for your Monstera. So this plant wants to be nearer to that window, and you can tell when your Monstera is struggling for light when the petioles become long, like these have here. The petiole is just the piece that links the stem to the leaf. If they're getting long, like this one here, then that means that that leaf is trying to get to that light as much as possible, and it's stretching the petiole to try and get there. So really, in an ideal world, I would move this even nearer to that window, or I would put a glow light maybe up here, just shining down on this light to give it the 500 foot candles that it needs. But I'm not gonna be doing that, because I'm moving in the next week or so, and there's big west-facing windows in my new house. I'll be able to plonk it somewhere much brighter. Something that I absolutely love to do is to create mixed planters. So I've got one on the go in my living room already. I'm gonna show you how to do it with some Pothos and Philodendron plants. So they want to be plants in the same family. So I've got, I've taken cuttings of various plants. I've got my Philodendron, my Pothos Devil's Ivy cutting here, a Neon Pothos, Philodendron Brazil, a Pothos Enjoy, and then a Satin Pothos. And I think these will look very nice together in the same plant. So basically, we're propagating, but we're putting multiple different plants, different types of plants into the pot. So we just want to tidy up these cuttings, basically. So I think that's gonna be too big. So I've cut just underneath a leaf node, and that's where the roots are going to develop. There's a leaf attached to that piece at the bottom, so I'm gonna discard that so it doesn't rot. And that's the first one. So I'm gonna pop that into my pre-filled, bit too long, pop that into my pre-filled pot with Cybotannica soil, like so. So that's one. And then next, my Neon Pothos. So again, probably don't need that. Discard these lower leaves. So roots will grow at each point here, here and here. So again, and pop that into this pot, like so. Philodendron Brazil, which is a beautiful variegated plant. What we can do with this, I'm gonna cut that there, get rid of that leaf, then pop that into the pot as well, like so. So for these plants, I'm not planning on staking them. I'm planning on just having a bushy plant that overflows each, overflows the pot, basically. And then my penultimate plant is this Satin Pothos, which is a beautiful plant. Where's the stem? Get rid of that leaf, that leaf. Gonna get a bit awkward. There you go. I'm gonna pop that just in there, like so. And then the last one is my Pothos Enjoy. So like before, nearly cut my hand off there. I'm gonna remove the lower three leaves on this one. Roots will grow out all along there. I'm gonna pop that in this side here. Make a hole with my finger. There you go. Doesn't look perfect now, but once it starts to grow roots and new stems, this will really bush out. Just move that to that side. So you don't need to propagate in perlite or water. Propagations can happily just go straight into soil and you don't have to mess around with transferring from water to soil. So this is a good option. So I think when this grows out, it'll be a nice little mixed Pothos philodendron planter. And I'll keep you updated in future chores videos. When you buy a training plant in the store, such as this lipstick plant here, which has finished flowering for the season, they often come in these rather ugly plastic pots with plastic hooks, don't they? And I've got mine hanging up here, but I think I can do much better than this. And the solution to that is to get one of these. This is a macrame hanger or a macrame hanger, however you want to say it. I think it's a French word. It's gonna look much nicer in here than it does in there. So I'm going to make the transformation now. And there she is. Looking much nicer in a macrame hanger, much nicer than the old plastic hook that they gave me. So it was a bit of a challenge trying to get this plant into the macrame hanger, because you do kind of need to get it evenly in there so it doesn't flop over to one side. And I did nearly drop it on a couple of occasions. But you're never gonna get it perfect, basically. Just get it in the macrame hanger and then move on, basically. So we're heading into winter. And in my climate here in Sheffield, I get about six, seven hours of daylight a day, which isn't a great deal, to be honest. And for fussy plants like alocasia, that's not enough. And they tend to go dormant. That's what always happens to my alocasias in my house. The leaves go yellow, they die off, and then they come back in spring. So to combat that, and if you have alocasias in your home and you're not getting the light that you need in the winter, then I recommend sticking them under grow light and do that now before it's too late. Because once they start to turn, they'll just continue to go downhill, basically. So last year, my alocasia friadeck lost all its leaves, pretty much. But this year, since putting it in this spot, much better. Look at that. Big leaves. This is the biggest my alocasia friadeck has ever been. They look really healthy. No yellowing or dying leaves whatsoever. And there's new growth coming out of the base of the plant from corms that are in the soil. So that's looking really healthy. And then also, next to it, I've got the offspring of that mother plant, little alocasia friadeck that I put into this pot, I think it was spring. So for a plant this small, this would definitely lose its leaves in winter in my climate. But putting it under this light that I have on for 12 hours a day, it's keeping its leaves. And there's a new leaf there as well, which is good. Normally, in my climate, in the winter, doesn't produce any new leaves. So the fact that there's a new leaf coming through is good. It looks like that one's on the wayside, but as long as there's three strong leaves there. And then I've got my alocasia dragonscale that was looking like an absolute dog last winter. I think it was down to one crispy leaf. But since moving it here on this IKEA cabinet, much healthier, no yellowing leaves inside. Very handsome plant. So you can get a 25% discount off Sansi Light with the link in my description. So check it out. Something that I love doing, one, because it's thrifty, and two, because it looks nice, is to repurpose containers. So on this shelf here, I have got one of Mrs. Sheffield's favorite items. It's a little tin, the Marquise of Queensbury Selected Blend of Indian Tea. So it's an old tea tin. God knows when it was from. Don't know where she got it from, but she has it displayed on there because it's quite a retro look, isn't it? It looks quite interesting. But I reckon we can turn that into a plant pot. Why not? So there's no drainage holes at the bottom, and that is okay. A plant doesn't have to be in a pot without drainage holes. I do recommend it in my videos because I'm normally talking to beginners on the channel. So to avoid them drowning their plant, I always say put them into a pot with drainage holes. But if you're a bit of an intermediate, you've got a few plants and you're good at watering your plants, you know how much to give. Got a bit of experience, then you can just put it into a pot without drainage holes. So that's what I'm gonna do here. I've got this little snake plant here. That looks quite nice there, but I reckon we can combine the two and create something much more aesthetic. I've got my container and I've just filled with soil, Cybotatica soil, universal mix. And I've put a little indentation in the middle using the pot of the spider plant to allow me to get the plant in there a bit easier because it might be a bit of a struggle otherwise. So I'm just gonna pop this out like so. And then I'm simply gonna just pop that in and then give it a shake to get the soil around the root ball. And I just need to top up with some more soil, which is what I'm going to do now. It will make a bit of a mess, but nevermind. Press that in just so that the existing root ball has good contact with the new soil and the new roots will start to grow into it. So you might be thinking that the pot is probably a bit too big for the size of this plant. And that is a valid concern that you have, my plant friends. But because we're more experienced at this plant game, we know that we don't need to water this plant that much. So we're gonna keep the soil relatively dry at all times, particularly for this snake plant. Okay, so I think we're nearly there, like so. Okay, so I do have a bit of a mess on top, but I think that all adds to the appeal, doesn't it, of this rustic container. There we go. And that looks quite nice, doesn't it? Now you might've read or been told that the plants in your home stop growing completely in winter. But in my experience, that's not really the case. Even for me, here in Sheffield, where I only get six, seven hours of daylight a day in the winter, they still continue to grow. They still continue to push out leaves. So if you've got normal indoor temperatures and you have some daylight, then they will continue to grow. So therefore, it would be a big mistake to stop fertilizing your plants. So basically, I feed my plants the same, more or less, all year round, because I do get growth. So I put a capful of fertilizer into this six-liter watering can, and I add a bit of water conditioner. I've repurposed this dropper that I got from Mrs. Sheffield. I put some water conditioner in there. So I put a dropper full of that in there as well, just to protect my plants, my fussy plants, like califare and spider plants, against brown leaves. Then I fill it with water, and I'll go through and fertilize my plants as normal. I have with me here a beautiful poinsettia. I'm sure you recognize it, because these are ever so popular in the lead up to Christmas, aren't they? So I've got with me here a nice pink variety. It's a little bit early in the season for me as I'm filming this, so I couldn't find any red ones. So I picked up this pink one. So these guys are often found at the entrance to the store, aren't they? Because the store wants you to go in through the entrance, be dazzled by these beautiful, colorful bracts, and then purchase it, basically, which is what I did for this guy, £7.50. But the problem for the poinsettia is that that spot near the entrance to the store is the worst place for it, because they hate cold. They hate getting blasted by the cold outside. And when they're sat at the entrance to the store, they're going to get blasted by cold, aren't they? So when you're choosing one of these, you want to make sure you find one that isn't in that spot, basically. If they are, then kind of steer clear of it. And when you are choosing a poinsettia, just want to make sure that there are no yellowing or blackening leaves, because once a poinsettia starts to go downhill, there's no saving it, basically. And normally, yellowing leaves and black leaves is a sign of cold damage. So the bracts may look beautiful on the top, but when you unravel it and get it home, it might start to deteriorate, because my poinsettias normally always die off. Don't know about yours. So we're going to look at this guy. He's wrapped up with a nice bow. We're going to look at him, because I can see there's some yellowing. So this guy was sat at the entrance from a local store. I'm going to get him out. Sopping wet, so obviously been watered a bit too much, which is never a good thing for a poinsettia either. And as you can see, it's in a bit of a state, isn't it? So you just want to be sure to check things like yellowing leaves. This is a real bad state. Got some mold issues and stuff. So this guy, he's on death's door, unfortunately. Really not in a good state whatsoever. So I don't think there's going to be much that I can save this plant. I'll be surprised if it lasts until Christmas, to be honest. Got some moldy leaves in here. So obviously this cellophane wrapper is not the best thing for it. But if you do manage to find a poinsettia that isn't living somewhere cold in the store, and you get it home, first you want to make sure that the shop assistant wraps it up nicely to protect it from the cold on the way home. And then when you get it home, just put it somewhere nice and bright and warm, away from any doors or windows that get opened. And it should last until Christmas at least. Well, that's it for this video. Lots of things for us to be getting on with over the weekend. And if you liked this video, then make sure you watch this one next, and I'll see you there.