EVERYTHING You Need To Know About Cabinet Growing + Getting The Best Out Of It 🌿

why do people use plant cabinets what kind of plants do well in there is it expensive which plants hate it where do I start these are the most common questions I get asked about growing plants in a cabinet environment what are the pros and what are the cons so today I thought I would break it down and attempt to simplify cabinet growing so that you can get a better understanding of it and learn how to use it effectively and cheaply to keep your own plants happy but first if you're new here hi my name is Claire and this is Yoli I make videos all about house plant care sharing tips and tricks I've learned over the years to help keep your plants happy and healthy and there's a lot of things that I wish I'd known about sooner when it comes to Cabinet growing from setting up a cabinet to getting the best out of your plants in a cabinet environment so yeah I hope you find this useful and I hope you enjoy it let's get into [Music] [Music] it so firstly let's start with the obvious question why do people grow plants in cabinets what difference does it actually make in a nutshell a cabinet is simply an indoor Greenhouse it's the same as a grow tent yes it might look pretty but essentially that's all it is it creates a little microclimate for the plants inside which you the grower can control compared to controlling the elements in your entire living room for example putting it simply you could hypothetically choose to grow your plants in a baking hot humid space without having a baking hot humid home because it's a small contained space you're able to manipulate the conditions in the exact way you want them in order to replicate the natural growing conditions of certain plants therefore keeping them happier and growing well a cabinet space Also provides a physical barrier meaning that if you've got a bouncy dog with a Waggy tail for example or small children that are prone to grabbing things your plants can be protected when we talk about controlling growing conditions the main factors we tend to focus on are humidity temperature and light and as a general rule of thumb for a lot of tropical house plants increasing all of these things is a really good way to help them to grow faster and size up quicker for example this one here is a drymonia cherry bagana and this one's native to the rainforests of Ecuador so obviously it enjoys very humid conditions as well as lots of light and lots of warmth so cabinet life is very well suited to this plant and if I was to grow outside of a cabinet environment like in the middle of this room here for example chances are it might still survive but it definitely wouldn't be thriving in the same way as it would be in this environment here and oh my goodness this one is loving it in the cabinet I only got this at the beginning of the year and this is all new growth in the last month and a half which is just crazy but this doesn't mean that I can't ever transition this plant out of the cabinet at some point for example if it starts to outgrow the cabinet and I want to grow it somewhere else in my home but notice how I just said transition instead of move remember that because I will come back to that in a moment so what do you need in order to get set up and started well the first is pretty obvious you need a cabinet itself and cabinets come in all shapes and sizes none of the ones in my collection were actually made for growing plants in they're all just standard glass display cabinets and I have converted them into little planty grow zones I thought I would just have a quick look on eBay and Facebook Marketplace and I can see actually quite a few listed here that start at under £10 so I would definitely recommend doing a little bit of local Di in your area also the one that I've got through in the bedroom I found on eBay a couple of years ago I think for under2 which is in my opinion a really good price for a really decent sized cabinet lots of the ones that I can see coming up here are ones like this which as you can see is made of wood and glass and although it's absolutely fine to use that I would just be a little bit wary when you're using wood if it's untreated wood in fact I would probably treat it with some sort of waterproof coating just because if it's in a very humid environment over a long period of time it's probably going to rot if you don't do that if you can't find anything you like within your price range I've also seen people create their own mini cabinet environments by using things like plastic sheeting and sealing it at the edges after all a cabinet is simply a contained space I've never tried doing this myself but it's an option worth bearing in mind the next thing to think about is light and because you're creating an artificial growing environment artificial light is also going to be needed and this is where grow lights come in grow lights are great because you can not only control the intensity of the light that your plants are receiving but also how many hours each day they receive and this is something that people just don't think about enough some tropical plants would ideally be receiving up to 16 hours of light a day so even if you're keeping them right in your south facing window and they're getting lots of sun from morning till evening chances are this still might not be enough for them with some types of plants the Hoya Wilbur Graves for example I've noticed that the hours of light at sees are actually a lot of the time more important than the intensity and this one was growing so ridiculously slowly for me for such a long time also if you look at the size of the growth it was giving me you can see it is significantly smaller than what it's giving me now and I just kind of thought that maybe that's just how the plant was and that there was nothing I could do about it but when I increased the hours of light that this plant was receiving that's when I really started to notice it kick into action and it started giving me be ful growth despite the fact that the actual intensity of the light it was receiving hadn't changed at all here in the UK we actually spend most of the Year with much lower lighting conditions than our tropical plants actually need so even if they are surviving in our care it doesn't necessarily mean that they're thriving in the same way as they would be if we were to increase their lights there's so many grow lights available nowadays it can be really hard to know where to get started in my little countertop cabinet here I've just rested some cheap grow lights I found on Amon on top and the light they provide seems to be keeping these plants pretty happy the only con with using these lights is that I found they often don't last very long so I've had to replace them quite a few times over the years the grow lights I use here in my bigger cabinets are by a company called mother and although they're a bit pricier they're super reliable and will literally last you forever I've definitely spent more money over the years replacing bad quality grow lights than I have on actually investing in decent ones like this but I know The Upfront cost can sometimes put people off if you need help justifying it money aside just think about the time and energy you put into your plants do you see this as a short-term hobby or a long-term Obsession once you've got your grow lights just be aware that even if they don't emit a huge amount of heat your plants may still be able to burn if they get too close and this one here back in the day when it could actually fit in my cabinet because as you can see she's very very big now but this one's leaves just grew towards the light and I didn't notice it for a couple of days and she's scorched really really badly and I ended up having to chop back about four or five of her leaves which was heartbreaking so yeah just make sure you're keeping a very close eye on your plants and not letting them get too close particularly if there are delicate foliage plants like this one this is how I've currently got my plants positioned in comparison to the grow lights and it's working really well for me but if you're in any doubt start by placing them slightly further away and gradually moving them closer some people also choose to use fans in their setups and to be honest that's not something that I really bother with nowadays but if you look back at my older videos on YouTube you will see that I used to do that a lot and the reason people recommend doing this is just because whenever you've got a contained space without good air flow your plants and soil both become much more susceptible to things like mold and mil which are both things that you don't want to be dealing with the reason that I don't use fans nowadays in any of my cabinets is that personally for me it just seemed to be a little bit of a waste of money I know for some people it is necessary but one of my fans broke in my bedroom cabinet and I didn't get around to replacing it for about 6 weeks and over that period of time I was like okay I'm just going to see what happens in here I'm going to see what changes and for me absolutely nothing changed and I think the reason for that being is just because I do regularly open and close my cabinet doors and I think for my cabinet space is that is enough airflow if you're not opening your cabinets for weeks on end then perhaps a fan in fact fan definitely would be useful but in my case it just wasn't worth it so yeah I personally do not do it nowadays and I haven't had any issues because of it and to be honest I've got to say the same thing about humidifiers I used to run little humidifiers in my cabinets but honestly now a days I don't think it's necessary as plants transpire they naturally produce humidity so when they're crammed together in a sealed environment they essentially act as a humidifier for each other so that along with lots of damp moss and damp soil tends to keep the humidity levels pretty high it's up to you how high you want to keep the humidity in your cabinet but for me I try to make sure that my one L stays over 70% humidity at all times sometimes it will go to 80 or even 90% humidity which is amazing but if I do notice it start to drop below 70% typically what I'll do is I'll just fill little cups or bowls with water and I'll put them in there so that as they evaporate they'll naturally raise the humidity levels without the cost of running a humidifier so those are the the basics and one thing that I should have absolutely said as well is that if your cabinet has any gaps around it I would highly recommend sealing those I personally just use a shower seal or something like that to just run around the edges just to help the space remain even more contained if you want to make things a little fancier with your cabinet setup you can start thinking about things like backing boards and shelves for your cabinet like I've done with this one here which is really great because it allows you to just optimize the space fit loads and loads of plants in there and also play about with each plant's proximity to the grow lights if you live in a very cold environment as well and you want to raise the overall temperature in your cabinet you could also think about adding in a heat mat I'll link everything I've used for my cabinet here down below although there's really no rules on how you set Yours up at one point I was using transparent pots turned upside down as little pedestal shelves for plants the one thing I will say is be careful if you're using anything made out of wood or chipboard in your cabinet as over time it can start to rot if you don't treat it first and I've spoken a little bit about plants that like life in a cabinet but how do you really know how can you tell which plants are going to love it and which are going to hate it the best place to start of course is by researching your plant looking at where it's native to looking at what its natural growing conditions would be and assuming you set up a cabinet space similar to what I have so this is a tropical cabinet my plants in here receive about 15 hours of light a day I try to keep the temperature around 24° C and the humidity never drops below about 70% assuming you've created a cabinet similar to mind then you'll be able to immediately say that okay most tropical rainforest plants are going to love life in here and yes I know I do have a lots of tropical plants outside my cabinet as well so when I'm trying to decide which ones go into the cabinet and which ones don't I tend to go with the ones that I find the most difficult to grow ones that might have given me grief ones that just might not be getting on particularly well in normal room conditions those are usually the ones that I pick to go into the cabinets because it just tends to make my life a little bit easier some tropical plants are just hardier than others for example the Phil adenan Jose Bueno here would probably love life in the cabinet in fact I know it would love life in the cabinet but it's never given me any reason to believe that it needs to be in a cabinet environment because it's giving me lovely growth in standard room conditions however for example the ver at rapid for Tetris Sperma this one was growing outside of a cabinet for the first few months of me owning it and it didn't give me any growth at all it was it was doing okay it was surviving but it just wasn't doing anything and I put it into the cabinet and within the space of a week I was noticing it was starting to give me growth so some plants do just need cabinet life I've also noticed there's been quite a few velvet leafed types of plants that don't enjoy life in the cabinets and this doesn't apply to all Velvet Leaf plants but for example my allocation Mitchell itana my variegated allocation Fred deck certain types of Velvet Leaf antheriums as well have just seemed to hate it in the cabinet and have done much better in standard room conditions I wish there was just a simple straightforward answer to this question but honestly besides thoroughly researching your plants natural growing conditions and using this as a guide it does simply come down to trial and error I've known some people grow a certain type of plant wonderfully in a cabinet and for me it hasn't responded well at all and vice versa and on the note of changing your plant's environment remember what I said earlier in the video about transitioning your plants out of the cabinet instead of just moving them and this is where acclamation comes in and I think the word transitioning and acclamation kind of go hand in hand because acclamation is basically just the process of adjustment that your plant goes through in order to be happy and healthy in its new environment when it's come from another one so instead of just a sudden move we want to make this a gentle and easy transition so that your plant doesn't go into shock going back to my big aliccia jacine that I showed you earlier as I say this one did get so big in the cabinet that I had to take it out and acclimate it to normal room conditions and there's a few different ways that you can do it but how I did it with this plant cuz obviously this was a ginormous plant I put it right by my humidifier so it was getting very similar humidity levels to what it was used to in the cabinet I had it in a south facing window so again again its lighting was very similar and just for the first couple of weeks I really made an effort to keep this room around the same temperature as it was receiving in the cabinet and then gradually as conditions started to change back to my normal this plant just adjusted with it but if you're talking about a smaller plant if you've got a plant for example this size that you want to take out of the cabinets what I typically do is I'll either just take it out of the cabinet for like an hour a day for the first couple of days and then put it back in with this plant it was so big that it needed to come out of the cabinet immediately so that wasn't an option but yeah I would just make it a gradual transition take it in take it out and then start leaving it out for longer and longer and longer until it's until it's acclimated and the other thing that you can do as well is just put a clear plastic bag over the plants because that just helps to keep kind of It kind of replicates cabinet conditions it helps to keep the humidity levels really high and means that then again you can just take the bag off for an hour or two and just do the transition in that way something that can be both a pro and a con of cabinet growing is dealing with things such as pests and obviously if you were to get pests in the rest of your collection and your cabinet plants are sealed away then fantastic they're all safe and secure it's not going to spread as easily however if you get pests in your cabinet oh my goodness it's something you need to deal with very quickly because they spread like wildfire and also because typically a cabinet environment is a lot warmer that can just increase the rate at which certain pests multiply so it's just really important to stay super super on top of your pest checking and if you see anything that you suspect might be pest related taking that plant out of the cabinet and isolating it straight away putting preventative measures in place such as using biological Pest Control AKA predatory mites in a cabinet environment is honestly what I would recommend I use it in all of my cabinet spaces and it just makes life so much easier I've made videos as well before about predatory mites because I know a lot of people have lots of questions around them and lots of common misconceptions so I will link those videos down in the description box below it's possible to create really effective designated zones for your plants by using cabinets as well and I know I said that the cabinet that I've got through in my bedroom currently isn't in the best way previously I have been using it for Rehab like Rehabilitation plants plants that need a little bit more attention a little bit more TLC it just is really useful for me to be able to know that they're in a space that is controlled I can monitor their environment and I can keep a closer eye on them in a way that I probably wouldn't be able to do if they were just in with the rest of my collection another massive benefit of tropical cabinet growing is that I found it creates the perfect environment for many plants to propagate in again because you're able to control the conditions and raise things such as heat light and humidity lots of my plants root faster and have a much higher success rate than if if I were to propagate them outside of a cabinet personally I've just found that growing a lot of my plants in this way has not only made my life a hell of a lot easier but it's also just really allowed me to bring out the best potential in a lot of my plants and just achieve some really amazing growth that I probably wouldn't have been able to achieve without having a cabinet and yeah I was going to say as well I've also made stepbystep setup videos of exactly how I set my cabinets up so I will link those down below in the description box but I really hope you found this video useful and I hope you enjoyed it and if you did please make sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel have a lovely day and I will see you in the next [Music] video Stay Sexy F lovers