Transcript:
Hello, folks. Annie from Mountain Crest Gardens here. And we’ve got plant mail. Today’s plant is the string of dolphins. This is an incredibly cool, rare hybrid and it’s making waves around the world because this plant truly looks like a pot of dolphins just leaping from the sea, but unlike a lot of plants that go viral, you can a actually get a hold of this one and B. You can successfully grow it at home. I’m going to give you all the background info and the care tips you need, so let’s dive in string of dolphins goes by the scientific name, Senecio peregrinus or Curio Peregrinu’s, depending on who you ask, and it’s a hybrid of two South African species, the very popular string of pearls and our funky little candle plant over here, and I really love a hybrid like this where you can really see the influence of both parents in this plant because it’s got the long, stringy stems of our string of pearls, but its leaf shape is a lot more like the candle plants. The string of dolphins definitely has a trailing growth habit and over time it can develop these massive cascades of branching stems and each stem can reach up to three feet long so because of that. I really always like to plant them in a hanging pot. The iconic dolphin-shaped leaves on this plant are really fleshy because they’re full of water, storing tissue, but the foliage has another cool adaptation to it. It’s kind of in this area here where what would be the back of the dolphin? You can see a little strip of translucent tissue, and that’s what we call a leaf window. It actually allows that leaf to absorb more light. Dolphin plant is a solid green to blue green tone and its stress coloring isn’t as extreme as that of other senecios, but if it is in a lot of direct sun, it can get the slightest hint of a Magenta blush to it. String of dolphins is a really fun bloomer. It’s flowers I don’t know. They always kind of look like little white pom-poms to me, and they even have this subtle clove fragrance to them, which is pretty cool, and this is a member of the composite family. So with things like sunflowers and daisies, it’s made up of lots of little mini flowers that come together to make what looks like one big flower, and as that flower dries, it turns into this little puff ball, and at this point, you could easily snip it off with scissors or just pluck it off to care for your string of dolphins. You’re going to want to give this buddy? As much indirect diffuse light as you can so indoors, that means a room with a sunny window and outside keeping it in a bit of partial shade. And fortunately, this is a plant. That’s really great at showing you. If it’s getting too much or too little light. So I’ve got an example here. This is one that I’ve intentionally been depriving of light horrible. I know, but it’s a good example because you can see its leaves are starting to flatten out. They’re not really looking like dolphins anymore. And all the growth is reaching towards where that light was, so it’s a little bit unbalanced and on the other hand if a plant’s getting too much light, those leaves are going to darken, They’re going to dry up and go crispy and eventually fall off when you’re ready to pot up, go for a container with a hole in the bottom and choose a gritty well-draining soil like a cactus and succulent mix from your local garden center or you can always check out our video on succulent soil. If you want to make your own at home and as for fertilizer, I like to fertilize a couple times in the spring just to encourage growth, but I usually dilute something like quick start down to about 50% and I’ll apply that once a month for two to three months in the spring. Not unlike dolphins in the ocean. Your string of dolphins here likes water and that’s just because it’s got these really thin stems, so it’s going to, like a little bit more frequent water than your other succulents, but succulents aren’t really big on a regular watering schedule. It’s really better to wait until your plant shows. You signs that it’s thirsty. So what, I’m going to do, I’m going to wait till the soil is completely dry and I can feel that it’s dry down at the drainage hole, and the leaves should just be starting to pucker in a little bit and at that point. We’re ready to soak it. So you could water from the bottom. I really like to Drench mine from the top, and I’m gonna drench this until there is water dripping out the drainage while at the bottom perfect, just like that, and now I can leave this be, and I can let it dry out and I’m going to wait to water again until I see those signs of thirst as with other senecios, this is a soft or tender, succulent, which means it can’t tolerate frost. You could keep yours outdoors in mild weather, but it also makes a really good indoor plant in my experience. This plant doesn’t have a lot of issues with pests and you can go a long way in preventing them just by having great air flow and that really rapid gritty drainage. We talked about, but if you do, get a bug, it’s usually a mealybug like a little white cottony thing, and you can treat them really easily. You just want to spray the whole plant very thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol and keep doing that once a day until you see no more evidence of bugs. One of the best things about the string of dolphins is that it’s actually a really fast grower. So this is one that I planted just a couple months ago and you can see it’s already going crazy like these are very long stems and the great thing is, they’re also really easy to prune and re-root from stem cuttings because this while it’s really impressive is starting to feel a little leggy to me and a little bit imbalanced. Because it’s got this this bare patch on the back. So what, I’m going to do? Let’s see maybe about it here. I’m just gonna use a pair of clean scissors and cut both of these stems off, and I could let these dry for a couple days to callous over or I could just make sure I don’t water for a little while, and I’m going to go ahead and pop them right back in the pot. Back here! Use my handy dandy planting chopstick, kind of shove them in snugly and the next one in there, and so these are going to shoot out new roots and give the whole planting a little bit of a more filled in complete balanced. Look to it, but you could also do the same thing in a fresh pot, so I’ve got a couple stem cuttings here, and eventually all of these stems can shoot out new roots anywhere along them, So I’m just going to go ahead and leave them on the pot. Those little roots, I can bury a little bit, but for oops, get back in the pot. This is your new home. Okay, hold still, all right. These ones here have not created stems yet not created roots, so I’m just going to lay them on top, and they’re going to figure out which way the soil is and you can see. I’m leaving a little bit trailing over the edge there, and that’s just going to give it a direction to start growing in. Give me some instant gratification like that, so this one’s going to want a little bit more water while it’s trying to re-root, but in a couple months. This is going to be a nicely rooted filled in pot. You can find your very own. Dolphin plant at mountaincrestgardenscom. Do note these tend to sell out fast, so if it’s not in stock at the moment, go ahead and click the button that says email me when product is available and you’ll be notified as soon as we release our next pod of dolphins. I hope all of your dolphin growing goes swimmingly, but if you have any questions, feel free to drop a line below, don’t forget to subscribe and click the bell to be notified when we release new videos until next time. Happy succulenting!