Transcript:
Hi, guys, Louie here and I’m coming from our backyard on our potting. Shed and I want to talk to you about houseplants and for today. I have this crusoula A watch chain plant. Its called watch chain plant for its close resemblance to a jeweler’s chain links for pocket watches, which on close inspection. I would tend to agree that that’s the appropriate name because I own a couple of pocket watches myself. However, that name only held true for me until I found that it’s also called the zipper plant, which again on close inspection could look like the teeth of closed zippers. The plant that I have in this terracotta pot is very healthy and vigorous growing and while the intricate form of the watch chain is a great addition to any collection for any planned parent like I said, they grow very long and they can become leggy and pop heavy. I wanted to show you how we can contain this the proper way because it has gone leggy. This is probably about eight inches long from the crown of the plant all the way to the tip of the front. And so how do we keep them without snapping off all these fronts, which are important in keeping this particular house plant? So I found a solution that I wanted to show you now. The remedy is to make plant supports for potted plants, not steaks as in the case of bamboo canes that you stick in the pot plant supports made of wire. Let me show you how, um, the materials that I will be using, and they’re fairly easy and fairly handy to get so first one would be a piece of wiring and this is just your 18 gauge aluminum wire that you can get from the hardware store and a pair of pliers First thing to do is bend the piece of wire. Bend it where each end will have equal lengths What you will end up? Having is a u-shaped wire, So I’d say I probably have about 20 inches of full length wiring for this. So once you fold the wire into almost like the shape of a hairpin there. We go you get to about and put the plant forward. Determine how deep you will insert the wire into the pot place. The folded wire next to the vessel measure the length of wire from the bottom all the way to the top frame of the pot. Because we will be inserting this there right about. I’d say three inches is where we will bury it now. Once you determine that, it’s about three inches and you add about a half an inch or an inch from the bottom of the wire and you bend it this way. So what you end up having is a shape that’s similar to this. So what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna insert this right up this way and we may have to rework the shape the shape of that curve, So I’m making it a little narrower than how I actually got it the first time, and then now from there, you just bend this up. I guess at this point, it doesn’t matter whether whether they’re even or not, but again you end up having a shape of the wire that looks like this. And what you do. You get the plant in this case. I have a lot more. I have a lot more of that. Frond swooping down this way, and I do need to bring it up that way. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna insert this. Oh, wait a minute. It would be easier if you have an extra pair of hands working with you, but just carefully insert the first wire and bring that there. We are stick it all the way. You gotta be very careful, so all these little, Um, bracelet type. Things are not going to be snapping off the part of the plant and because it is wire, you can actually bend it even further just to elevate the side where you initially got the wire into into the pot. Okay, now, let’s do another one. Not sure what it looks like from the side, so they’re both the shape again. We bend it this way, then you end up having this shape and then from the opposite side of the plant, actually not the opposite, the entire opposite, but right over here is where we will insert. You can insert this, actually all the way on the inside part of the of the pod kind of capture every single front that you can capture and insert that all the way in and we can try and be very careful. Oh, that’s what I’m worried about is a piece of it with snap, but if you take a look at this already is developing some roots so that we can just insert into the potting soil and that will grow on its own properly, inserting it. Of course, which in this case I may have to. We have to get a toothpick. Um, to create a nice, easy hole for this to get inserted into. Maybe that’s it. Yep, gently glide it in and coax it in now just by doing that, we have pretty much raised up the canopy of the plant and over time as this developed more fronds, then we’ll see the difference, and that’s what it looks like from the side. See, the wire is holding all the the base almost over the base of the plant since the wire that we used for supporting the plants is made of aluminum. This will last several years they won’t break what it does is gently support, but not choke the plant. In other words. You put them in. They will discreetly support and disappear into the foliage really quickly as the plant grows. What we can do is we can also make maybe one or two more that would go here to support that side and raise that up even further. You can also put another one maybe and support. Because I I made a big diameter for the arch. We can do a smaller one. That will further support the the lower half of this open area. This project is pretty versatile. Anyone can make it out of an 18 gauge, even a 16 gauge wire, which is a a little firmer compared to an 18 gauge. But the kind of wire that I got works Really well, all right. After several trials, I decided to put four individual wires. That’s the first one number two number three number four is the one that you see on the bottom half of the pot. Now what it does is really effectively raise the entire canopy of the plant. You don’t see anything draping over and cascading over the side, So this not only saved the leggy, lanky branches fronds of the crosula, but also gave it a neater tighter. Look so! I hope this helps you guys out. If you have any type of plant condition like this when they become leggy, this by the way is the same principle that I use for when I start supporting my actual, The bigger plants, the perennials that are in the landscape in the garden. Pretty neat thing I think it can. It can be used in many situations and many plant scenarios. So we hope you’re enjoying our content as much as we enjoy putting them together for you. If you haven’t already click on that subscribe button and also the bell icon that way you’re notified of content that we’re putting out often regularly throughout the week. Thanks for joining me here in the backyard for this how-to video, I’ve also included some links on other how-to videos on the video description. I hope this video finds you well. This is Louis and we’ll see you back here in acorn hill.