Transcript:
Hey, guys! I got a request to do a video about my plants, so I figured I’d do something nice and quick about general tips and tricks on how I take care of my plants and also some questions that people had about repotting plants. I figured I’d talk about that as well. I mainly have succulents and cactuses, so it’ll be focusing on that, And I don’t have a whole lot. This is just a tiny bit of my collection here, because I don’t have a lot of space for them, and most of my plants are kind of like, donated or adopted because people just kind of give me. They’re half dead plants and say. I don’t really need this anymore. You know, if you can revive it, that’s great, but can you take it off my hands? And I end up with quite a few of those. So those are my kind of my patients. Um, so. I’ll talk a little bit about repotting plants. When do you do it? Why do you do it that kind of thing? Basically, when you get a plant from the store, it usually comes in a container. That looks like this. They’re sort of, like, cheap, plastic, very thin, not very useful, really, and you can keep your plants in that for quite a while as long as you want really, but I usually have a tendency to repot my plants after a couple of weeks of getting them for a couple reasons because those little plastic pots are not really the best, and because I want to take a look at what the roots look like, For example, I reported almost all of these the other week, All except for this guy. I think this is my newest plant. I just got it about two months ago and he got repotted last last week and I found out that his roots were absolutely enormous. They were wrapped all around the edge of the pot, and so he got a huge upgrade in terms of pot size, his before was like half the size of that. So on the other hand plants like this guy over here. Who’s also an aloe this guy over here and this guy over here? The actual plant itself is quite large, but the roots themselves are pretty small, so they don’t really need a huge pot to be happy. In fact, they’re much happier in a pot. That’s roughly actually almost smaller than the actual plant itself, so that’s kind of the other the other time you repot them is when the plant is outgrowing its pot, and Lastly, you usually repot them when they need some fresh soil when the nutrients and the old soil get kind of dried out and aren’t really useful anymore. If you want to avoid repotting for that purpose, you just want to get some like. Miracle Grow from the store, and you can just use that instead of repotting them all together, so you can save yourself some trouble, but I have a tendency to repot them once every year and a half or so because I want to take a look at those roots and see see if everything’s still healthy, and if it’s all good to go. So those are the main reasons to repot when a plant is new every year and a half because succulents and cactuses grow very slowly, and when you’re just when when the plant out grows the actual pot, but you won’t really know until you take a look at the roots, but sometimes when it’s just getting really enormous, it’s time. So how do you repot a plant? It’s really, really easy. You basically just separate the pot from the plant. You want to shake off as much soil as you can, but you want to be careful not to snap any of the roots. You want to keep the roots as intact as possible, So you shake off as much as you can, and then you just put it into a brand new pot. Pack it down as much as you can and get it in there. Nice and tight, so it’s not wiggling around, and that’s basically it. It’s fairly easy. The one big tip. I will tell you is never ever ever to use water during the repotting and also directly after let them sit and get accumulated and get, you know, nice and happy in their new soil and then water them after about a week or so, and the reason for that is that some of the roots will will snap during the process of repotting. And you want them to kind of heal before you can water them. Otherwise, what happens is they have a tendency to rot you to avoid rot so yes. All of these guys were repotted about a week ago. They’re all nice and happy now. And the one thing you’ll notice is that all of my pots are all of my pots are terracotta. They’re this sort of clay color. And the reason for that is because terracotta is nice and breathable. Sure, they look like that, and they’re really, really cheap. They’re really, really breathable. They’re porous and I find that my plants are much much happier when they’re in a porous pot than when they’re in a plastic glass or glazed ceramic pots. I had two planters that I put together at the same time and the plants and the terracotta planter were doing really, really good. They were really nice and happy. Whereas the other plants in a glass planter were just struggling, a little, they weren’t. They weren’t very happy. So that was, um, that was kind of my experience with with different kind of pot types, so I’ve kind of moved over almost entirely to terracotta for everything because you can get them really cheap in different sizes and all over the place. I mean, like any hardware store. You don’t like dollar stores, carry them and they’re like a dollar per pot, so they’re really, really cheap and and yet so the other tips I have on taking care of succulents and cactuses is. Basically, you want three things. You want the the soil, the water and light source. Those are its three main things soil as I mentioned you can. Repot your plants every once in a while or just give it some feed. Occasionally, the other is water, so that’s my other, really big tip. The number one death of cactuses and succulents in my personal experience has been over watering or somebody just watering it to the point where it starts to rot. And I’ll tell you if a plant is dried out, you’ve always bring me. They’re dried out plants and they say, you know. I can’t just won’t this won’t live. I don’t have time to take care of it and they give me their plants like this guy, for example, was almost entirely dried out and very sad. He was kind of drooping over. He was only about that big and that was only about a year ago and within a year he’s he’s looking much better and see there was some bite marks from animals as well. And after about a year, he looks much much better and the reason for that Is that if he’s dried out, you can revive a plant. That’s dried out. If they’re rotten, that’s kind of the end of its life. There’s not really much you can do, so you want to avoid rot as much as you can because that’s like the number One killer is people just over over, do it and cactuses and succulents, they really don’t need a lot and I find in my personal experience. Their preferred method of of being watered is to just soak them through, soak them completely through, Get the water to like, run out the bottom and then get them completely dry and let them stay dry for a little while. So I water my plants. I soak them through. Maybe once every two weeks to three weeks, depending on the plant, they really don’t need a lot. They just they’re perfectly happy. Being in fact, they’re much happier being dried out than they are when they’re when they’re kind of swamped with water. So that’s my other big tip, and then finally I give them a really really good light source. I invested in a plant light. They’re really expensive, But from what I’ve noticed is. My plants are so much happier now. They are growing much bigger. They’re much happier. They’re all happy and alive, and and they’re just. They’re doing much better with the plant light and it’s a big investment. They’re like fifty to sixty dollars, depending on where you get it from and how big it is. But if you don’t want to do that if you don’t want to invest in the plant light. My biggest suggestion is to get like a crappy old like lamp from a thrift store and get a really bright. Led light bulbs to get in there and then put that light overhead and I stay overhead because if you put it to the side if the light is coming in from the side, what succulents will start to do, you’ll notice? It’ll is, they’ll sort of suddenly grow up and then to the side and that’s when they’re looking for a light source. That is where a lot of people are like. This pot is starting to look really ugly, and they say they don’t. They don’t like it anymore. They like it. When it’s nice and like flat and it grow outward instead of upwards, so that’s because of the light. They need some really, really strong, heavy overhead light and as the seasons change. You know, right, now we’re going into winter, that’s. The number one thing is, they definitely need a lot of light because the Sun sets at like 5:00 pm. And they just they don’t have enough and sometimes it’s even better to take them away from a window sill because what they’ll start to do is they’ll start to reach for whatever light they can find. So let’s sort of reach towards your window and they’ll start to kind of get ugly so yeah, so those are my tips and tricks on cactus care. I don’t, I mean, I’m not an expert by any means, but you know, that’s kind of what’s killed my plants over the years, and and they’re much happier, basically just chillin and being on their own, so they prefer something nice and warm. They like lots and lots of light, and and they like to to not be swimming. Basically, they like to be more dried out than they do. Swamped so yeah, so those are those are. That’s my video on my plant care, and I’ll do another one for propagating succulents because that’s the other question that people had, and, and yeah, so I’ll post them at the same time because they’re really similar, but I didn’t want to make fun long video, so yeah. I hope that helps you out and I hope you enjoy your plants and I hope that they live.