Transcript:
What’s poppin, everyone? Kevin, here from epic gardening. Today we are very literally hanging out with my string of hearts plant. It’s very old, Sir. Petia, Woody. I very pretentious sounding scientific name for this plant. I will not call it that anymore. We’re gonna call it the string of Hearts chain of hearts or the rosary vine. It is a fantastic, trailing indoor succulent with both flowers and leaves that look absolutely beautiful, so in today’s video we’re going to take my old still in its nursery pot string of hearts and learn exactly how to care for it. Light, water, soil, fertilizer, pruning propagation and repotting, including a couple pests and diseases or just growing problems that you might run into so without further ado, let’s go ahead and learn how to grow this bad boy first thing to talk about, of course, light without correct lighting. Everything else does not matter at all. So this is an east-facing window. My north-facing windows over there. The combination of the two of those plus its placement may be six to eight feet away from that means it’s in semi bright indirect light, Actually, a little bit less than that, and this is a plant that can tolerate a little bit less light than most, Although, honestly, this would probably be a little bit better, maybe right over here or potentially right down there. So if you’re growing it indoors, you want to give it What’s called bright indirect light, which usually means as close to the window as you can possibly get it, and if you’re growing it outdoors, it’ll tolerate sunny conditions, but if you’re maybe transitioning from indoors to out, you kind of want to harden it off by gradually exposing it to more Sun, and if you’re growing in outdoors, temperatures have to remain above sixty degrees Fahrenheit or else it’s really going to have a hard time, so it can do well outdoors. I personally think it’s a beautiful indoor plant. Although do what you want as you might guess with this plant, it does not want to be over, watered at all. That’s the quickest way to kill it. In fact, sometimes as you can see, it’s not the one that’s been on the top of my mind in my indoor house plant garden so sometimes. I’ll forget to water it for two three weeks, and it actually is perfectly fine. It won’t come back. You just want to make sure not to overwater what I like to do is Ill? Give it a little quick drench just to kind of hydrate that soil mix because it can tend to be a little dry if you’re not watering it and then. I’ll come in with a little bit of a deeper water. A nice, good soak, but it’s just very infrequent And what I’ll do is I will look at the leaves I will say. How is the texture of the leaf? Is it sort of crinkly? Is it drying out if that’s the case? I’ll know it’s definitely in need of a drink, and I try to water it just before it gets to that point, so it’s nice and healthy all the time so for soil. Mix, it’s going to want a loose, Well draining mixture. This is some that. I’ve just mixed up that I’m actually going to be repotting with later in this video. So stay tuned, but you can see or maybe you can’t, but is a cactus and succulent mix, so there’s larger chunks of perlite in it like this. There’s a fine amount of sand in here as well. I threw a little worm castings in there just to mix it up just to kind of provide a little boost Because I’m gonna be repotting that it hasn’t been fertilized in quite a while, But that’s what you’re gonna want. You could even use a modified orchid. Mix it just doesn’t want as much bark as the typical orchid might. So I would say, just go ahead and get a cactus and succulent mix. You’re gonna be in a pretty good spot When it comes to repotting. It prefers to be a little bit crowded, but it’s been in this nursery pot for a while, so I’m going to size it up Just about 1/2 an inch, maybe 3/4 of an inch and this terracotta pot, which will lose moisture out of the sides. So that’s helpful to prevent a little bit over watering as compared to this plastic pot we’re gonna do is. I’m just gonna take remember. Always have a saucer if you’re gonna use a pot with a drainage hole. Protip there. I’m just gonna take some of my mixture. We’re gonna put it in the bottom here. And it’s a pretty standard repotting process. This is just such a good plant for set it and forget it and have a beautiful plant. That’s kind of the recipe that that I’ve come to call the string of hearts because it really does not need a lot of care at all, but that being said we’re going to go ahead and pop this out very gently. I want to damage it more than we may already have. So you can see it’s not really root bound at all, so I could have just left it in that pot. It would have been perfectly fine, but I am going to just lightly Break up the roots here now. One thing that a lot of people are very scared about is damaging their root system. Now that can happen and you can definitely decimate your root system If you’re not careful, but I’m just gonna gently massage it and kind of break the root system up slightly and part of the reason for that is because I’m putting it into a mixture. That’s a little bit different. It’s not the same soil mix as the nurseries, right, it simply can’t be. That would be not very possible. So this is a cactus. Mix this mix that. I’m I’m messing with here in the pot. Feels a little bit. More fine-grained feels like it would hold on to. It’s just a little bit more water, So I’m just gonna mix it up and make sure I don’t create this like moisture pocket in the new pot and just give it a bit of a little break up, so we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna place it in just so it’s just below the soil surface or the pot surface here. I just completely tangled up my vines and those of you who are ready. String of Hearts owners know that that’s quite a quite an annoying thing to untangle. I’m just gonna come through. Do a little cleanup here. I want to make sure that I got a nice, beautiful looking plant. Some of these stems that have dried out, and these leaves that have dried out. Aren’t that pretty? So let’s go ahead and take those out but again. This is a simple plant to propagate to. So if you do tend to maybe neglect your plants a little bit like. I can sometimes do or you know you. You shift your interests and you oh, crap! My string of horses is suffering a little bit. You can easily propagate which we will go into in just a bit, so just a little quick cleanup and what I’m gonna do now is backfill around the rest of the root ball. Here we’re gonna be messy because I’ve got my little handy thing right here, so I’m just going to go ahead and gently fill in and what I like to do to make sure we have a nice tight. Seal, you’ll want to leave too. Many air pockets is to just tap the edge of the pot, so let’s go ahead and do this and we will be right back with the final grounds. So we’ve done our repotting. We just need to hydrate our soil mix and again. I give it that little quick hit of water. Let it absorb. Just wait a sec. Exercise some patience in the garden here, and then we come through and give it a nice, deep drink, and it’s fine to give it a nice soak here because I haven’t watered it in a little bit, so we are going to go ahead. Give it a nice one, and it should be really, really well acclimated to its new home in this terracotta. I think you have relocated my into an area with a little bit more light closer to the window, and at least while I’m starting seeds, quite a bit of ambient light around here from these Leds, but one thing I would say is if you’re gonna move it. Just move it once and make sure it’s in the right spot because these vines look very beautiful when they are trailing like this, but the leaves tangle up really easily should get this big Bunchy mess of nonsense that just took me 15 minutes to untangle just to even look good, so make sure that you actually put it in the place. It’s kind of gonna be for a while. The last thing we’ll talk about before we get into any potential problems you might run into or propagation techniques, so I don’t have any on the plant right now, but there are these little Bowl bills that you can cut right below, and that will route very very easily. However, you can also just take a cutting like this. Maybe six to eight inches long right below a leaf node and then Nestle that in the next bit of potting mix that you want to put it in just kind of press it in there provide some bottom heat to actually speed up germination a little bit, you just to be really patient with the propagation of string of Hearts because it can take quite a while, But you know if it ever gets too long like it does right here. My knee was actually sitting on it right there, but this one is maybe seven or eight feet long. This particular vine. Right here You can see, there’s even a little split going on right there. I could go ahead and say you know what I don’t want it sitting on the floor. Maybe I will go ahead and propagate it and actually in a future video. Let me know down below. If you’d like to see me. Do a string of Hart’s propagation, specific video, but that’s pretty much it as far as pests and diseases. You’ll get a food, You’ll get mealy bugs. I have videos and techniques And I’m sure you guys know how to deal. With those as far as diseases, root rot is probably the only one you’re gonna get which stems from over watering and actually that ties into most of the problems you’ll run into is as long as you’re not over watering. You won’t get Crinkly leaves, and as long as you’re over water, not over watering, you won’t get root rot. You won’t get dying leaves. You’ll get dry looking leaves. That just means you haven’t watered enough, so don’t completely forget about it, but besides that if you want the color or the appearance of the leaves to change a little bit, more light will cause them to dark, darken up and cause the patterning to more distinct and less light will cause them to kind of pale out a little bit, Although the plant will still be just fine. So that is it for string of hearts care. I hope you guys enjoy the video. It’s it’s one of my favorite beginner. Trailing vine plants to grow very, very simple, very fun and very prolific. This thing just sits, there grows forever and ever and ever so enjoy good luck in the garden and keep on growing .