Side-by-Side Growth Comparisons 🌱 How My Plants Are Changing + Evolving | What's Working?

Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, hi, my name's Claire and this is Yoli. I make videos all about houseplant care, sharing tips and tricks I've learnt over the years to help keep your plants happy and healthy. And today I thought I would take you through and give you some growth comparison updates. I haven't made a video like this in a while and I really love making these videos, I really enjoy putting my plants side by side, seeing what's changed, what's worked, what hasn't. And so yeah, I hope you enjoy it, let's get into it. So firstly, you might have noticed I'm filming from a different angle today and that is because I've just got a new camera and oh my goodness, I am unbelievably excited about this. I've been filming on my phone for literally the whole time I've been on YouTube and so this feels very bizarre, it feels a little bit weird and I'm still getting used to it but I'm hoping it's going to make everything look much better and the plants look a lot better as well. So yeah, let me know what you think in the comments below because I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts. But the first plant that I want to show you is my Hoya sp. Bertone F and the clip that I'm going to compare this to is one a year and a half ago when I first got this plant and I got it from the first plant swap, this is what it's looking like now, but I got it from the first plant swap and it was literally just like one little strand of plant and Hoyas can be quite well known for being quite slow growing plants and I've never particularly thought of this one as being like very, very fast but when I look at that clip and when I look at this, it just amazes me how much this plant has grown in the time that I've owned it and it's really starting to fill out now as well, like considering this started with literally just one strand that I propagated, it's obviously kind of getting quite bushy, it's just, oh my goodness, it is just so unbelievably beautiful. And the thing that I really love about this Hoya and I have said this before in other videos is the texture of its leaves because obviously Hoyas are quite kind of robust and waxy in their structure, but this one, its leaves are just like velvety soft, when you stroke them they're like bunnies ears, they're absolutely amazing and I've also said this before and I know this is perhaps a slightly weird thing to say but when you look at it, it just looks very much like a planty plant, like if you ask somebody to draw a picture of like a standard vining plant, I feel like this is the plant that they would draw but it's also just got these beautiful colours within the leaves, like different shades of green and I didn't notice that as much at first when I first got the plants and that's definitely been something that's kind of developed in the time that I've had it, I don't know if it's down to potentially lighting, I do have this one hanging in a window at the moment so it's getting very kind of bright light, no direct sun because it is west facing the window I think, but it's just kind of getting all round bright light and the plant seems really, really happy. And I am currently trying to get it even fuller and bushier, I've been tempted to buy other sections or other cuttings and pop them back up with this plant but what I've decided to do is just take lots of cuttings, so I've got loads of sections of this plant propagating around my home, it roots really, really quickly and as you can see I'm propagating this section in semi-hydro, this is Soil Ninja semi-hydro mix but you can absolutely just propagate it in soil and to be honest more and more with Hoya that's what I've started doing, the sections that you can see coming out of the top just here I literally took cuttings and planted them straight down into the substrate and they've rooted really well. This one currently is just in a really chunky soil mix, I don't really, I don't do that much to it, it's a very low maintenance plant but it's one that just makes me really happy and I think it's just, I think it's just so beautiful to look at and as I say it's so beautiful to feel as well, so it ticks a lot of boxes for me and it's one that I would under no circumstances consider getting rid of, I know I have had a little bit of a plant purge this year, I've taken lots to swap, I've sold some things and this is one that just kind of stays like a constant favourite in my collection and, oh hello Yoli, hello baby girl, Yoli's obviously feeling left out, she suddenly got very needy but yeah it is one that's just kind of remained a constant favourite in my collection and as you can see as well it's not a particularly tendril-y hoyer because hoyers are again quite well known for putting out those kind of big long tendrils that like to kind of wind and climb and some people, I've seen some people growing this plant on a trellis but for me I've never decided to do that just because it doesn't seem to be getting too leggy so I quite like the way that it's growing but yeah it's definitely due for a pot upgrade soon so when I do repot it I will also be potting the other sections back up with it and I'll come back to it in another few months and I'll give you another update and we can see how much it's grown again then. And this next one is my red coral cactus and I'm going to compare this clip to how it looked about nine months ago and oh my goodness this is a plant that you wouldn't necessarily think is particularly fast growing but the thing that I've noticed in the time that I've had it is just how much it's filled out, like although maybe lengthwise it hasn't got that much longer it has just become so much more bushy and I just think it is the most beautiful plant, I love jungle cacti anyway, I'm slightly obsessed with them at the moment but I just love the way that this one grows and the amazing thing about this plant as well is that although it's amazingly adaptable when it comes to different lighting conditions when you put it in direct sun and this is where it gets its name from it becomes really red and pinky and just look at the colour of that, isn't that insane? And this one currently lives over in one of my window boxes on my windows over there and so it does get quite a lot of full sun when I first got this plant and I put it in full sun it did actually burn so it is like a process that you have to kind of build up over time gradually acclimate the plants to higher light so that it doesn't kind of go into shock burn start doing weird things but now that it is used to that lighting it is as I say giving me this beautiful ready sun stressed growth and it's also just putting out so much new growth as well like I know I'm doing a growth comparison but I think it's important to say as well I have chopped this plant back so many times since I shot that clip I've sent out cuttings of it I've taken bits to the plant swap before and that's maybe why she's not quite as big as she could be but apart from that similar to the plant I spoke about before this one has really caused me no drama at all in the time that I've owned it I haven't struggled with pests it's been as I say really adaptable to different lighting conditions it's just been for me a really rewarding plant to grow and I always bang on about texture in plants and this one I think is just like a prime example it's so beautiful and strappy and so different to anything else that I've currently got in my collection so yeah it's a plant that I just I really enjoy owning I feel very proud of this plant I love it when you get a plant and you can really see kind of very noticeable changes in it and like I say with the sun stressing that's something that has just blown my mind and before I actually I saw a picture on Instagram that somebody posted of this plant when it had been in full sun and it was all over just bright red and I'm not usually the biggest one for colorful plants they just don't really do it for me but I saw this picture and I was like interesting I was like I wonder if I could get mine to do that and that's when I started kind of building up its tolerance to direct sunlight and that's when it started doing this so yeah it's a plant that I would highly recommend I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying it's also non-toxic if I'm wrong about that I'll put a note on the screen but so yeah if you've got small children pets anything like that then it's a really a really good one to own but yeah again I'm really excited to see what this one does I'm not focusing on filling it out too much more for the time being I think I'm just going to kind of let it be not chop it back that much anymore and just try and get it a little bit longer I think again it is definitely due for a repot I haven't actually repotted it in the entire time I've owned it which I think has been about well I don't know if that nine month ago clip actually was the first time I got it between nine months and a year let's say so yeah I think it's definitely due for a soil upgrade but it's beautiful it's just a very characterful plant and I think it's wonderful and this next growth comparison update might not look amazing when I put them side by side but it is the philodendron varicosum and I thought I would include this one just because it has been a little bit of a struggle plant for me and it's one that I'm still kind of trying to get my head around the clip that I'm using was from just over a year ago and this is what it looks like now and considering it is a very fast growing plant you would obviously expect it to be much bigger by this point but I have chopped this plant back so many times so the little section of it that I showed you just over a year ago I got that going it was giving me new growth and I think the first thing that brought it down was spider mites and honestly this plant is an absolute magnet for spider mites almost every single time I've tried growing it something's gone wrong with pests and usually spider mites so again I chopped it up I restarted it I've done that several times and up until recently these sections were just in my propagation box I was almost a little bit scared to take them out of the propagation box and introduce them back into like a normal room environment because I was like the same thing's gonna happen again so I've currently got this one in my kind of like rehab cabinet in my bedroom and that's the cabinet where I keep all of the plants that have either been a little bit of a struggle need ridiculously high humidity like that cabinet can go to like 90% humidity it's crazy and it seems really happy in there but again it's getting to the stage that it's it's getting big and I'm probably going to need to take it out quite soon and that's where the drama for me starts again because I'm not quite sure how this plant's going to respond and I don't know I just feel like I don't know how to keep this plant safe from pests if you've had success for this plant please by all means let me know what you do because I'd be really interested to know I know a lot of the time I get comments saying like would you make a care video on this plant or that plant and if I've had a plant for a while and I haven't made a care video on it usually that's because it's a plant that I don't feel like I've completely got my head around yet and I don't think it'd be fair to put information out there saying I know what to do when I just don't so yeah I love it I want to be able to get it to size up I want to be able to just have it in my room with my other philodendrons that are doing so well in this environment and I want to be able to appreciate it outside of a cabinet but at the moment it just doesn't at the moment it just doesn't seem possible to me so it's a work in progress and I will 100% keep you updated for this plant because I think I've had many many many struggle plants in my time of owning plants and a lot of the time I'll kind of like turn a corner I'll figure something out I'll find something that works and I'll be like oh my god it's amazing and then everything seems a lot easier like for example my variegated alacasia frydeck most recently is one that I have kind of I feel like I've suddenly got to know and all of a sudden caring for her is really easy but I haven't got there yet with this plant so yeah any tips let me know and we'll come back to her soon and see how she's going fingers crossed and then this one is the hoia carnosa and oh my goodness I adore this plant I got this plant nine months ago and that's the comparison that I'm going to use the clip that you're seeing is when I first got it nine months ago and my lovely friend Lottie came to stay and she brought this as a massive massive hoia cutting from her granddad's plant and I thought that was so lovely and I just wanted to make sure that this plant did well that it survived that it thrived and putting the clip side by side I think it's safe to say that it's done incredibly well in the time that I've had it I actually propagated the sections of this plant in very different ways this is when I first started playing about with propagating hoia not in moss because prior to the beginning of this year I was almost exclusively propagating hoia in moss and it worked really well for me but I tried this in water I tried it in soil and I think I did a section in semi-hydro as well and to be honest the most effective way that this plant rooted was in soil and that's kind of what's turned me to propping hoia in soil more and more nowadays previously soil propagation just freaks me out a bit and I don't know why but it's putting out so much new growth and again I I've already spoken in this video about hoias being quite slow to grow sometimes this one for me again considering I haven't got it onto a trellis has just been amazing it's got so many growth points it's constantly got little bits of new growth like this coming in and it's sizing up beautifully and I'm still kind of figuring out how I want to grow this plant long term whether or not I kind of want to just keep it going as like a trailing plant or potentially train it to climb up a wall or something I don't know how the plant's going to be happiest usually as I say when they start putting out tendrils without leaves that's when they're looking for something to climb and that's when you kind of need to listen to the plant a little bit and get them get them going in that way but currently its growth all seems very condensed very bushy and I just really like it like this so yeah it's a plant that I previously had never owned I'd never owned just a true hoia carnosa I once was sold a plant I think about four or five years ago that was labeled hoia carnosa and it wasn't a hoia carnosa so I don't know I think they're potentially quite hard to come by I don't see them about that much at least where I'm from so I feel really really lucky to have this plant and the fact that it's come from my friend's granddad as well just it makes it really special and I feel very lucky to own it so yeah I'm really looking forward to again coming back to this one looking at it in maybe like five six months seeing what it's doing for me if I do decide to change things up with its growth as well then I will absolutely let you know and I'll bring you along for the journey of that but yeah the other thing I'm so excited about is to see this one bloom because I'll put a picture on the screen of what its blooms look like but they are just stunning I love hoia blooms so much but this one is just beautiful so I'm really hoping that potentially at some point soon it gives me some flowers I feel like it's got enough growth to be able to give me some flowers but it doesn't currently have any peduncles so yeah I will let you know and I'll keep you updated and seven months ago now I can't quite believe it's been seven months but I potted up my anthurium clarinervium berries from the anthurium that I pollinated and the little babies now are doing really really well and they're actually starting to kind of look like little clarinerviums because it does take them a while to get going and the process from start to finish I did make a full video on of how I pollinated my anthurium but from start to finish with my clarinervium it took about nine months to even get the berries but then I had I think about a hundred seeds in total so I've got lots of little baby plants now and this one to be honest is probably the one that's doing the best that I'm using for this kind of I call this a growth comparison I guess this is just an update but I thought I'd use these ones just because they're really starting to take shape and they are they're doing well and it's just making me feel like a very proud plant parent and I know I've had quite a lot of messages from you guys on Instagram saying would I send out some of my clarinervium babies and as I say I'm showing you one of the most established ones so far I'm currently not sending them out in the post I've given a couple away to people in person I'm probably going to be taking some to the next plant swap but at the moment the answer is no just because they're still quite small and fragile most of them are only about that big and I don't want to risk it because they are so delicate and they just seem very temperamental at this stage in their life like anthurium clarinervium on the whole is quite a robust hardy plant and I've said it before mine has lived in so many different lighting conditions it's been in so many different environments and nothing has kind of affected that plant that badly whereas with the babies I feel like you change out something with their environment and they can go downhill very very quickly so I'm just kind of taking things very gradually with them but I'm hoping I'm going to have loads of beautiful clarinervium babies at some point again soon and the thing that I'm now really excited to do is potentially try hybridizing anthuriums because it's something that I've wanted to do for a while and I've never had two active ones in the inflorescent stage at the same time I'm sure there's a better way of saying that but I do currently have a few so I'm going to try some cross-pollination and I will be documenting that on youtube so I will let you know how that goes but yeah I'll also keep you updated with the babies as they continue to develop and grow because I'm really happy with them I'm really proud of them and I'm excited to see what they do next a little warning has just come up on my camera with a thermometer which I think it might mean it's overheating it is very warm in this room but I am not entirely sure what I do now so I'm just gonna take a moment figure things out because I've never done this before uh and then I'll be back one eternity later okay I think I've played about some settings and I think that we should be good to go now this camera is so confusing but the next growth comparison update I wanted to give you was on my alocasia jacqueline and the clip that I'm going to use was shot just over a year ago um in fact it was probably about a year ago because I got this plant for my birthday and it's my birthday again next week but this is how much she has grown in a year and as you can see in the clip that I showed you before she's teeny she's only about that big and now she is absolutely ginormous and this is a plant that I had in my cabinet for quite a long time and she loved life in my cabinet she was very very happy in there but she just got to the stage that she completely outgrew it and so I have taken her out of the cabinet and I was actually saying this in a patreon video the other day but I was really surprised that she didn't kind of go through a bigger acclimation process or maybe a more dramatic one when I took her out of the cabinet because the humidity in my flat on the whole is not particularly high unless I'm constantly running humidifiers which I don't do all of the time just because it's expensive but I've honestly had no touch wood no issues at all since taking her out of the cabinet she's just over there by my window again now and she seems so happy and she's putting out the most beautiful beautiful growth but this is another plant that I have struggled with pests with and I've managed to get her to bounce back every time but it has kind of been a bit of an ongoing struggle and I know alocasia can be quite well known for just being a little bit like this in general I've had multiple allocations that I've struggled with pests with but this one honestly I have had mealybugs I've had thrips I've had spider mites I've had pretty much everything you could think of and mealybugs with this one were the worst because they get like you look at the plant it's got these tiny little kind of like fine hairs on it it's not soft they're kind of like scratchy in fact you can probably hear them um but they get right into the little hairs and they are so difficult to get rid of like every time I thought I'd got them I'd suddenly see a load more and I'd it just it took a very long time to get them gone and I did talk about in a video how I how I did that I used an alcohol rub and I did sprays and I did all sorts and now what I'm doing is just very careful monitoring accompanied with predatory insects biological pest control and that does seem to be working really well for this one but the other thing that I've done that I think has really helped to achieve some amazing growth in this plant is I have got it into semi-hydro this one's currently in pure pond and I've spoken a lot about my love for pond when it comes to lots of plants but specifically alacasia just because I didn't have the best experience when I first started experimenting with semi-hydro I don't know why but it kind of just put me off trying it again for a really long time and then at a loss with my variegated alacasia frydeck recently I think about maybe six months ago now um I decided to put her in pond because nothing else was working and oh my goodness she turned a corner and just did amazingly so that kind of gave me the courage to start experimenting with some other plants and semi-hydro and I've actually now got I think all of my alacasia into into either pond or a semi-hydro equivalent and they're doing amazingly so if you are struggling with alacasia that is personally what I would recommend it's just also a really low maintenance easy way to make sure that your plants stay happy I've recently come back from holiday and in the time that I was away I wasn't really worried about my semi-hydro plants just because I knew that I could just fill the reservoir a little bit higher and they would probably be fine and touch wood they have all been fine so yeah but this one just continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger and I'm really hoping I mean my aim for this plant is to get her potentially to size up from ground level to like my waist by the end of next year I don't know if that's an achievable goal but I like setting myself growth goals and trying to meet them so let's look back in a year's time and see if I actually manage to do that but I'm hoping because I think she's gorgeous I think she's such a beautiful statement plant again amazing texture amazing color in the leaves and just one that makes me I know I say they all make me happy and it's because they do they make me really really happy so yeah I'm excited to see what this one does next and I will keep you updated with it and the next one's my monstera dubia and the clip that I'm going to show you is from just over a year ago and for obvious reasons I'm going to show you two sections of growth because this is what she's looking like now and you look at this plant and to me I don't even think monstera dubia like she's got these amazing fenestrations her leaves are just continuing to get bigger and bigger and bigger and she's so different in her mature state to how she is in her shingling form and if you've watched my other videos you'll have known that I essentially did a chop and extend on this plant so that I could conserve the shingling bit of the monstera dubia and continue to get the mature section to size up because honestly I love the plant in both its kind of states but I kind of wouldn't feel right having one without the other if that makes sense but this one I think more than anything it just makes me feel really really proud that I've been able to get her to this stage and kind of just bring out her full potential because obviously growing in the wild typically this is what this plant would look like and that's kind of the goal with all of my plants it's not necessarily I know I just spoke about like setting myself growth goals but it's not necessarily about getting them to be like as big as possible but just as healthy and as representative of how they would be in nature in my home and I feel like we're really getting there with this one and she's doing it so brilliantly and also if you look at the back of her moss pole you can see her roots there are just incredible and this one as I say that I did a chop and extend on so what I basically did was I put a section of moss pole on top of her plank that she was climbing at the time I let her grow onto the moss pole form her own root system and then I essentially completely chopped that section and started it as a new plant so for quite a while she didn't have any roots in the soil at all however she has since then put out amazing roots to the point that I think I'm probably going to need to repot her really quite soon she's she's growing out of this pot at a crazy crazy rate and I'm trying to think when I made the chop but I think it was only maybe five or six months ago and getting started when I first did the chop she did take a while to get going I kind of expected her to continue to grow at the same rate and obviously that was probably an unrealistic expectation she didn't put out any growth for quite a while and the growth that she did have you can kind of tell has got a little bit of yellowing on it it doesn't look quite as healthy as it did before I chopped the plants but literally in the last month she's kind of she's got going and she's given me these top two leaves and she's already getting ready to give me another one so I'm thinking she'll probably go back to how she was before now and just grow very very very quickly because oh my goodness at one point before I chopped this plant she was giving me probably not a new leaf a week that might be an exaggeration but every couple of weeks she was starting to put out a new leaf and I couldn't kept her in the room at the size that she was reaching because there was nowhere for her to go so yeah this plant is literally my pride and joy as I say I love the shingling version as well this is just the one that I use as the comparison because it's very clear to see how much she's grown but yeah again as always I will keep you updated with her hopefully I'll be coming back with some really exciting updates soon as she's now started to get going um but yeah I will let you know and then this is my Hoya macrophylla which I was sold as a macrophylla red and the clip that I'm comparing it to was 11 months ago so as you can tell it has given me some really incredible growth in the time that I've had it and as I say when I first got this plant I was told that it was a macrophylla red and I've had very mixed opinions from you guys as to whether or not that comes down to sun stress or whether it is just the type of plant but I grow this one currently in my cabinet under very bright grow lights literally right underneath them and I have seen no signs of it being red so that's my experience with the plant so far so I'm gonna just say it's a standard macrophylla but when I first got this plant it was an import plant and I completely chopped it up and there were essentially just three leaves in the soil and it's put out such great growth since then obviously the size of its growth has decreased a little bit so I think maybe this is one that I might try getting onto a trellis because again I just love to be able to get it to size up as much as possible and if you look at its original leaves in there they are huge like that is like that big which is just crazy and I love a big chunky robust kind of statement Hoya I know I bang on about my Hoya Sarawak all the time and this one kind of I think has the potential to have the same wow factor I think it's still gorgeous but I think if I was to get it on a trellis and kind of encourage its vines to climb a little bit it would just help to increase the size of growth even more so yeah I'm probably I know I always say I'm going to do these things and then a lot of the time they slip my mind but I'm aiming to probably do this in the next month or two it is currently putting out quite a lot of new growth so I think this would be a good time to do it also I think one of the reasons it's growing so quickly for me at the moment is my cabinet is currently so hot my main cabinet over there um it's currently so so so warm like the temperature in this room hence why I think my camera overheated before tends to get to kind of like the late 20s at this time of year and my cabinets have been up to like 40 degrees celsius which is just insane but this plant is really enjoying it so lots of new growth is just kind of a bonus but it is one that I again have struggled very badly with mealybugs with up until recently I did just give it a check over as I took it out of my cabinet to show you it for this video and I couldn't see anything but I have found several I mean not like an infestation but I've just it's been a plant I've just continued to find mealybugs on over the past kind of four or five months which is weird because I haven't had any other cases of mealybugs in my cabinet Hoyas are just a magnet for mealybugs a lot of the time they love the kind of robust succulent texture of the plants but it means that this plant has also spent quite a lot of time in and out of isolation and finally for the first time in a very long time it is back in my cabinet and it does seem to be pest free but it's one that I'm just constantly kind of keeping under very close supervision I'm constantly checking under all of the leaves in the little kind of I don't know what you call them the point where the petiole meets the stem the little dents just there that's often where you spot mealybugs and obviously on new growth as well new growth is so susceptible to mealybugs oh oh my god I've just seen one do you see that that little white speck that is a mealybug I thought we were in the clear okay I'm gonna leave this plant out I'm gonna get my isopropyl alcohol out after this video give this plant a treatment for that one and just a general check over because if there's one there's likely to be more so that's fun but yeah she's growing beautifully aside from the mealybugs and I will let you know how she's doing in another few months hopefully there won't be any more issues but yeah she's great and I really really love her and with this next plant it's funny actually because in the clip that I showed you of it that I'll insert in a minute which was just over a year ago I was saying that I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this plant I wasn't sure if I was going to get rid of it it's my philodendron golden dragon and since then I've been I've been on a bit of a journey with this plant but it is now potentially one of my favorite philodendrons I just think it is so gorgeous but the journey to get to the point of loving this plant was not necessarily straightforward I got this again this was an import plant I think potentially in the same order that I got my hoia macrophylla and all of its growth arrived looking very much like this and you'll probably be able to see in the clip it's like it looks a lot different to how the growth on it looks now like now it's a lot more shiny and conditioned and to be honest I never really got to the bottom of why it was a little bit I want to say like warped before and a little bit bumpy there didn't seem to be any underlying issues but for the first kind of few months of owning this plant that is how all of its growth was coming out and it just wasn't doing it for me so I sent out lots of cuttings I many times considered getting rid of the plant I in fact chopped the whole thing up to propagate in order to send out cuttings and then when they started putting out new growth all of their new growth was coming out more like this and that's when I was just like oh my goodness I think I love this plant and since then I just haven't really looked back it's just one that brings me a lot of joy without having to do a lot too like it's such an easy philodendron it's such a low maintenance one it kind of grows like a weed like considering I've chopped it up so much in the time that I've had it and in fact since you saw that last clip I've it's putting out so much growth and because again again I've got it in semi-hydro currently all I do is just fill its water reservoir I obviously pest check and all the all the basic things but apart from that I really don't do much to this plant at all I tend to just kind of get it into the shower once every month or so give it a shower down it kind of dusts its leaves and if there are any pests or anything like that usually helps to deal with them as well so yeah that's honestly all I do but every single time I walk into my bedroom because I've got it on top of my grow cabinet in my bedroom it just makes me really happy to look at because it's one that is in pretty much I'm not no light but it's in very very very low light it gets no direct light whatsoever definitely no direct sun and still continues to put out beautiful big growth at a very good rate and just look really healthy without me having to do a lot and like I've said before in other videos I think when you've got a lot of plants like if you've got a lot of plants chances are you're like me and you absolutely love plant care and I do but also sometimes if you've got a plant that you don't really need to do that much to it's also just quite nice like if you've got some low maintenance ones along with your kind of very tropical high maintenance ones it can just make oh hello my girl hello baby it can just make life a little bit easier and a bit more enjoyable I think so yes hello again she's wondering I think why I'm filming over here because usually yes okay usually I'm sat on the floor with her and she's not liking this very much um but yeah it's one that I'm really excited to see what it does for me I have been tempted to get it onto a moss pole but as you can see at the bottom its growth is really quite condensed and I don't think at its current stage it really needs to be on a moss pole so I'm just kind of letting it grow wild bush out do its thing uh but yeah if I do change anything with this plant I'll let you know and we can talk about some more updates in a few months time and this is a plant that I do talk about a lot I know but I thought it would be fun for this growth comparison to go back to when I first got this plant which was a year and a half ago now it's my philodendron splendid and as you can tell she's done pretty well in my time of owning her and it's another one that I feel incredibly proud of so I got a cutting of this plant from the first plant swap that I went to and this had been a wishlist plant for me for absolutely ages at the time even cuttings of this plant were still very expensive and it just wasn't something that was particularly attainable I wasn't on the whole spending that much money is that fair to say I wasn't I wasn't making big splashes out on plants perhaps in the way that I have done since then and I got this from Memo who's house planty goodness on YouTube and it was a little I think probably about that big cutting and I got it onto a moss pole as soon as it had rooted and it just started giving me the most beautiful growth and was growing very very well but wasn't sizing up quite as much as I'd like it to have been and then I think about five five months ago ish I'll put a clip on the screen but about five months ago I decided that in order to kind of conserve the bigger growth that it was starting to give me at the top and give this plant the best chance of really sizing up I was gonna chop it in half I was going to extend it and this is another one that I did the chop and extend on so this one at one point just had a root system purely in the moss pole and nothing in the soil whatsoever I think it's starting to give me some roots in the soil now I'm not sure but since I've done the chop and extend I know I said with my Monstera dubia that kind of put a halt to its growth for a little while it wasn't as big it wasn't as full this one has just not stopped it's been giving me leaves pretty much constantly and this is its most recent leaf and I don't know if you can quite gauge how big that leaf is but if I put my hand next to it you can see the scale of its growth it's just incredible and I love this plant for many many reasons but one of the reasons I love this plant is because I know I said I struggled quite a lot with the philodendron varicosum and that's one that I'm kind of on a bit of a like learning journey with at the moment because I still haven't got my head around it but this is actually a hybrid plant this is a philodendron varicosum cross philodendron melanocrysum and it's obviously got the beautiful darkness in its leaves of the melanocrysum with the lobeness and when its leaves are new and they're coming in the lovely red backs of the varicosum so I know that hybrid plants typically do tend to have more resilience to things like disease and pests and even root rot and stuff like that but I kind of feel like if I've found a balance that works with this plant I should hopefully be able to get my head around it with the varicosum as well it's just taking a little bit of time but yeah it's one that I absolutely adore I honestly cannot imagine having my plant collection without owning this plant it is potentially my favorite plant I know my plants my favorite plants change quite a lot but this one this one is always up there like in pretty much every favorites video I make I think I almost always include this plant because it just blows my mind and I don't care that I talk about it all the time it makes me happy and I love it and then the comparison that I'm going to make with this plant was about nine months ago when I first moved into my flat here and it's you'll be maybe a little bit surprised about how I'm growing this plant but it is the philodendron silver sword and I know that typically this is a plant that loves to climb a philodendron as a genus typically loves to climb but this one just kind of naturally started oh trailing out of its pot was still sizing up I know this is an awful angle that I'm showing you oh bear with um started naturally sizing up uh and I just kind of thought to myself you grow lots of other types of philodendron as hanging plants why not try growing this one as a hanging plant and so very recently I have actually put it into a hanger and it's currently hanging in my window and I love the look of it it almost there's something about it and I know it actually like doesn't look like the plants but there's something about it that kind of reminds me of staghorn vibes I think just because its growth is quite irregular its leaf shape is just a little bit weird that when you stand back and you kind of look at it from a distance it almost reminds me of a staghorn fern the way this one's growing I know it doesn't actually look like a staghorn fern um but yeah I don't know if this is going to be a long-term thing growing it in this way but the plant does seem happy and as I say it is putting out lots of lovely new growth if it stopped putting out new growth or if there was something about the plant that just wasn't seeming happy in this way then I would absolutely re-evaluate but the thought of having this as a beautiful full trailing plant just makes me really excited so I thought I would give it a go and also very recently I did pot up a small section of silversword that I've just put at the back there as well because I have got so many silverswords I'm kind of constantly propagating this plant and I'd like to eventually get it just as full the pot as full as possible so yeah that's what I'm doing I'm just kind of in the ongoing process of potting lots of sections up and then hopefully at some point getting it really really lovely and full but yeah let me know if any of you also grow this plant in this way I don't know if I've ever seen anybody grow the silversword as a hanging plant before I know typically it is just growing upright but I would be very interested to know also the thing I just love about this one is the colour of its leaves they're so bluey silvery and I've got such a soft spot for plants like that I just think they're so beautiful they're almost they're very ethereal that it almost just doesn't look real and for me that just blows my mind but yeah so those are those are the growth comparisons that I wanted to do today I've got a load more that I could do so I will be trying to make more videos like this in the upcoming what am I saying soon but I really hope that you enjoyed this video and I hope you enjoyed it shot like this maybe you don't notice a massive difference I certainly do uh but as I said I just dropped its hanger uh but as I say do let me know your thoughts I'd be really interested to know and if you did enjoy this video 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 video hey sexy pot lovers