Transcript:
hello! Everyone, merry plant. That was really aggressive. I think I just oh, hello. Everyone many plant myths where I am going to be uploading a video every single day of December and the lead up to Christmas. Today’s video is going to be all about one of my all-time favorite plants, the Ledeburya socialist plan or the Silver Quail, as it’s more commonly known as the reason Why I did wear this white jumper is so you could actually see this pan in the background in the forest. Oh, I forgot! I had my antlers on I. I need to pull it together today. So you can actually see this plant in the forest that I have going on behind me. The ledeburya socialist is such a beautiful, beautiful, bulbous plant. This is a perennial, it’s not actually a succulent, despite what myself and so many other people think upon doing research for this video. It’s not a succulent it turns out it’s not a succulent, although it behaves like a succulent, it does store quite a bit of water in these little bulbs here, so it can go a while without watering. It’s not a succulent, so ignore whatever I’ve said In previous videos, it’s not a succulent, I’m correcting myself now, but it is known for these beautiful hence the Silver Coil nickname it’s known for these beautiful quill-like leaves that are just the pattern on them as incredible. This is by far one of my favorite plants in my collection. It’s been such a horrific grower for me. This did look better I need to. I need to admit something so I was preparing for this video this morning, and this was so full and so beautiful, and I took out the grow tent and almost got excited that I was opening the grow 10 amazes. My cat got excited that I was opening the glow tank because he likes to sleep in there and jumped to try and get into the glow 10 and landed right on top of the plant and we did lose so many of the leaves on this. I’m so I’m so sad about it. It pains me to talk about it. So I’m going to leave it there. This was a lot more full and beautiful before almost destroyed it. But that’s what you get. When you’re a cat owner and a plant owner at the same time. This plant is native to the eastern Cape province of South Africa, which means that that is the only place in the world that that plant or this plant sorry. This plant grows wild. You will not find this naturally growing in the wild, anywhere else in the world, except from this little part in the grand scheme of things. This little part of South Africa. That is just that is crazy to me, but based on where we know this plant is from in the world. It gives us a good indication of the care that this plant needs caring for this plan is so so easy. This has been such a joy to grow. You can grow it indoors. You can grow it outdoors. It’s not really fussy as long as you give it enough light. That is the challenging part. I assume for a lot of people. I’m actually growing mine in my grow tent at the moment because outside my garden isn’t getting the light anymore. Now that winter has come around. The sun is completely moved. So I am growing this in my grow tent at the moment because I don’t want to let it go to sleep. I’m being a really bad plant, mom, and I’m not letting this go dormant. It does go dormant in the winter. It doesn’t lose its leaves or it shouldn’t depending on the environment that it’s in, it won’t really lose its leaves. It’ll just not really grow for you, But it’s super super easy. Just give it as much light as you possibly can even direct light. This plant is completely fine with the actual color of the leaves is reflective to the light. So the reason why plants do have a kind of silvery hue to them is to stop the sunlight from burning them, so this plant is more than capable of taking direct light. No problem, I think in the summer I was given this direct like maybe four or five hours out of the day and you can see, it’s such a beautiful, healthy plant. It does grow to be 30 centimeters tall. I hope I hope. I hope that mine makes it to see there. It is, I think we’re about halfway there. I would say about halfway there Because the bulbs, of course, are still on top of the soil. You don’t want to actually plant the bulbs. They sit on top of the soil there, but I hope that that makes to see there is enough of yours. Maybe I’ll do an updated care video in a year’s time, and you’ll get to see the size of that, and hopefully it will be to be 30 centimeters tall. So this plant does handle temperatures literally down to freezing. You can leave it out in most places pretty much year round, and it’s not going to bother, although it will stop growing, it will go dormant at about 15 degrees. This is in Celsius, It’ll stop growing at about 15 degrees Celsius, and it’ll go dormant like I mentioned before it doesn’t always lose its leaves, but it can. It just really won’t grow. So when it comes to actually water in this plant, it is a bulbous plant. It does store water in the bulbs if it needs it. It is pretty drought tolerant. Although if you want it to keep growing and pushing out those big, beautiful leaves, you do want to water it pretty often. At the moment I water this, I would say every week and I fertilize it in the growing season. I’m not fertilizing it now because I really shouldn’t be. I should really literacy, but I do also fertilize that every single time I watered it when it’s growing and it’s been and really do think it’s helped its growth because this has been a crazy grower for me, but I have been fertilizing it every week every single time I water it with a cactus fertilizer. I did think this was a succulent at the time, so I don’t know if I should be given this some other sort of fertilizer, maybe even that a houseplant fertilizer. I don’t know, this has been taken the cactus and succulent fertilizer very very well. I’ll put a picture on screen of the of the fertilizer. I actually use for it, but like I said, I did fertilize that. Every single week, definitely over, fertilized it, but it didn’t mind so we do want this to grow well and fast I would water it when the leaves kind of flop again. This is a plant that shows you when it needs water, so you can see that. The leaves at the top here are kind of more bouncy. They don’t really want to bend as much, but if we go down to these leaves here at the bottom of the pot, you can see I can bend those. Can you see you can see? I can bend those right over without them. Snapping, and that is a sign to me that this plant needs to be watered. I kind of just Gage by the leaves. I know the feel of the leaves now. When you actually get this plant, you’ll be able to tell I can feel by the weight of the leaves. Once it’s lost, its moisture, so that is when I’ll go ahead and water it, but since doing that, I have learned that once a week has been roughly the water in schedule for this plan in direct sun all pretty much all day long, and now it’s in the grow tent, so it’s getting that that harsh growth hint light all day long, and I’m still watering it once a week. I’m just not fertilizing it now because the grow tent light is, of course, nothing compared to the sun and I do have this and a house plant mix literally just soil. I haven’t added any pearlite or any bark to it. I have it just completely in house plant soil, and that is because I don’t want to have to water it every single day it is in its haircut a pot, so the terracotta does suck up quite a bit of moisture and I just love the way it looks in a little terracotta pot so to supplement that I have just put it in a plain houseplant soil Mix, literally just straight out the bag into the pot, and it’s been so handy for me. Because can you imagine having to water a plant like this plants sitting in direct sun all day long, and you’ve got it in a fast draining mix. Goodness, Megan is me, so I just have it. In plain houseplant soil. And it’s worked wonders for me. I have all my cacti and succulents in just a plain houseplant mix. I don’t have them in cacti. I know this isn’t a cat tire. Succulent, but just just to give you the gist of it. I have all my outdoor cacti. Succulent’s plants in just a regular house plant mix. Because I don’t want to have to water them so often and I’ve never ever had a problem with any of them. I mentioned it at the beginning, but you do want to plant the bulbs above the soil. You don’t want these bulbs to be under the soil? You don’t want these to rot and you don’t want them to struggle with pushing out new growth because the way that you do propagate this plant is it will push out pups from the bulbs. You can’t actually just take a cutting from this. Unfortunately, but it does push out pops like crazy. I think when I first got this punch, You know what I’m going to put in a photo because I want to see how much this has grown, but I think. When I first got this plan, it maybe had about five bulbs in it, and now it’s just gone crazy. I’ll actually put in a little clip of how these grow. So it puts out shoots from the bulbs and eventually those bulbs will separate and it kind of peels like an onion peels, kind of like an onion when the bulbs separate. And I just I’ll leave. I’ll leave that I don’t pick it out. I just let it do. It’s own thing and again. I’ve never had a problem with rot. I’ve never had a problem with pests from this plan. It’s just it’s been an absolute joy to grow. My my little legs are going. Numb sitting like that. I did write myself a little a little checklist of things. I wanted to talk about, but I’ve kind of just gone on a tangent. So let me just check and make sure I’ve not left anything out. I’ve talked about watering. I’ve talked about Propagating. This does bloom and it can. You can get it to seed. It is quite difficult and it does take a long time for this plant to grow from seed. I would love to be able to do that, but if you are looking to propagate this, you just separate the pups, and I think I think that’s it. I think I’ve covered everything. If you do have any questions, feel free to leave them down below and I will try and answer to the best of my ability. Thank you so much so much for watching this video and I will see you tomorrow with a brand new blackness video.