Episode 213: three quick jobs to help your houseplants
Transcript
Episode 213
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Jane: This is On The Ledge podcast, where getting your hands absolutely filthy is just part of the fun! I'm Jane Perrone, host of this here houseplant podcast and in this week's show I'm sharing three things you can do right now to help your houseplants and I've even come up with a set of initials; it's R P M! Find out more shortly! Plus I answer a question about forking Ferns. Yes, I did say forking: f-o-r-k-i-n-g!
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Jane: Thanks for all of your lovely feedback on last week's show with the delightful Raphael talking about watering. This very day I am launching The Plant Ledger, my new email newsletter for the UK houseplant scene! Apologies if you've got my On The Ledge newsletter because I put the wrong link in to sign up, so I shall correct that in today's On The Ledge newsletter and put the right link in, so there's still time to sign up for the newsletter which is going to have lots of great stuff about what's going on in terms of shops and plants and accessories and fertilisers and all kinds of interesting stuff you need to know if you're in the UK and you're into houseplants, so do sign up for The Plant Ledger now, link in the show notes, as always, or just go to janeperrone.com and there's a Plant Ledger link in the top right hand corner for you.
Thank you to Christine, Heather, Bridget and Anne for all becoming Ledge-ends on Patreon this week and unlocking loads of fab extra content. One of my Superfans, Lynette, gave an extra one-off donation. Thank you so much, Lynette! I massively appreciate your extra support - what a lovely gesture. I totally understand, though, if you're not able to make any kind of financial commitment to the show. If you still want to show the love for On The Ledge, then you can always leave a review, tweet about it, lean over the garden fence and tell your houseplant-loving neighbour! This is all grist to the On The Ledge mill and I'm eternally grateful to you for helping me spread the word about the show.
On The Ledge sowalong news - we have germination! I repeat, we have germination! I checked my seeds the other day and my Euphorbia obesa seeds have all germinated. It looks they're kind of odd-looking, even from the get-go, but I'm delighted to see some signs of life because there aren't any signs of life from many of the other five pots yet. I need to check again, actually, today, but it can be a slow burn, this seed sowing business, but I'm excited to see that those Euphorbia obesas are germinated.
Over on the Facebook group, Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge, Jeffrey is looking for Sinningia seeds in the US for a sowalong for a college environmental club, how fascinating and fantastic, so if anyone can help Jeffrey out with that info, that would be great. Tate has been sowing up a storm: Epiphyllum oxypetalum, the gorgeous night blooming orchid cactus what a great one to grow; Anthurium scandens, oh I wonder where you got those seeds from, Tate? Hoya RHM515, catchy name, and Dioscorea elephantipes, a lovely plant. Wow, you've been doing really well, Tate, well done for that! Colette's got a lot of chilli plants which have come out of the heated propagator and been pricked out and Tracy is sowing Asiatic Lily seeds, as it's autumn in Tracy's part of the world - yes, I do need to bear that in mind, don't I? That lots of you are not in the northern hemisphere - and it looks like she's got some germination going on there and is using - I love this - Tracy has lined the seedling pots with her poodle's wool! She's posted a picture of the white wool of the poodle that went into the pot! I love it. What a great way of reusing all of that hair, Tracy. So do keep on spreading the word about the On The Ledge sowalong and use #otlsowalong to share on social media and then, hopefully, I will be able to see where you're at.
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Jane: So, onwards and upwards! Let's talk about three things you can do right now for your plants. Now, if you're anything like me, you love to set aside a whole day to waft around doing planty things and having a lovely time repotting your plants. But, life doesn't always allow this, so these things I'm going to suggest can all be done in under five minutes, I would say. So it's a quick win, if you can put it that way, and remember the initials RPM. Let's start with R. What does R stand for? R stands for rotate. So we all know that plants generally will be stretching towards the light, especially over winter when light levels tend to be lower, they will be growing in the direction of the light and stretching towards it. That can put them on a little bit of an asymmetrical path. Now, don't get me wrong, some plants actually look better this way. Certainly my Monstera deliciosa isn't really turnable, it has a particular way that it wants to go and there's not much point in turning it, plus you can do yourself an injury trying to turn such a heavy pot, but for most other plants, they will benefit from a turn every now and again. Now, I am not a scientific person, so I'm not going to tell you to turn them 90 degrees, 180 degrees or 270 degrees. I'm going to just say give them a little bit of a twist and that will do very nicely. If you can remember to do that every few weeks, it will really help your plant to grow evenly and have a nice shape that really complements the plant.
While you're at it, if you've got a couple of extra seconds, get under that pot with a cork mat, a trivet, an old piece of tile, an old piece of slate, whatever you can find to just add an extra cushion under the plant that will also protect whatever piece of furniture that plant is on. I like the cork mats the best because they do absorb any water and they are soft and you can also just recycle them once they get a bit old or if they get damaged. So, stick a little bit of a coaster under your plant as well, if you get the chance.
While you're rotating, you may notice that there's some P to be done! What does P stand for? P stands for prune. If you're an outdoor gardener, you probably know the principles of pruning already and these apply to houseplants often just as well as they do outdoor plants, so when we're thinking about pruning, the first thing we think about is the four Xs. I know, I'm using a lot of little initials today, but hopefully this will help you to remember! The four Xs: the first X is anything that is dead, I mean an ex-leaf, if you know what I mean? So, any leaves of the dead need to be removed. Sometimes it's just a question of pulling them away, sometimes you might need to use a sharp pair of scissors, depending on the kind of plant and, being a bit of a messy person, I just like to chuck them on the floor and then hoover up later because you're going to make a mess, that's just the way it is, so that's the first X.
The second X is damaged. So if you've got a plant that's got lots of leaves and you've got a few that are damaged, oftentimes you can cut your losses and literally cut off those damaged leaves. If you leave damaged leaves on, sometimes a damaged leaf that's been ripped or eaten by your cat or your toddler, that can be a vector via which problems can enter your plant. So removing a damaged leaf is often helpful and, at this time of year for those in the northern hemisphere, moving into spring, lots of growth should be coming and so removing the odd damaged leaves shouldn't cause the plant any problems whatsoever. Reasons to leave a damaged leaf as it is? It's not going to repair itself is the first thing to say. A damaged leaf, unlike human skin, will just stay damaged, but sometimes there are plants where removing a leaf is just going to ruin the overall look of the plant. Certain succulents just won't look good if you take away a vital bit of the architecture of the plant. So, for example, the old classic Monstera deliciosa, if you have a leaf that's damaged, if you take away the whole leaf you might be left with a bare bit of stem which won't necessarily look that great. What you can do with those really big Monstera leaves, if you want to, is just get a pair of scissors if you've got browned areas, say on a variegated leaf, you can get a pair of scissors and just cut off that brown segment, making sure that you cut within the dead brown segment and not the alive green/cream bit because that way you will cause more damage. So just cut the brown bit off staying within the brown section but just leaving a very small margin of brown and it will reduce the visibility of the brownness but it will mean that the leaf is still in position and photosynthesising as before.
So that's number two. We've got dead and damaged, the first two Xs. X number three is diseased. This is probably not quite so relevant to houseplants, but in the garden, you might get something like a leaf of a fruit tree that's displaying some canker and you might need to cut out some material from that tree in order to make sure the canker doesn't spread. In a houseplant context, obviously, there's probably less diseases that we're worried about and if you do have a disease then it might mean you need to throw the whole darn plant away. Sometimes you might find that, after winter, you've got something in the realm of a bit of powdery mildew that can be taken away if you are dealing with any plants and cutting pieces off them. Make sure your hygiene levels are good. So if you're using snips or scissors, make sure you wash them with hot soapy water in between each plant so there's no risk of cross-infecting between the two plants, or you can do what I do and just run them through the gas flame on your gas hob for a few seconds, that will sterilise them too. You can also buy specialist horticultural disinfectants like Citrox here in the UK, which you can also use. So, any leaves that you think might have mildew or another fungal condition can be chopped away and, indeed, if you've got whole stems affected, you might be able to cut right back to the base.
So final X of the four Xs is crossing. So, again, you're imagining an X, it's two crossing stems, quite literally. Again, in houseplants, this isn't something you'd apply across the board, so, of course, if you've got a trailing plant, like a Pothos or a String of Hearts, Ceropegia woodii, you're probably going to have some crossing stems and that's absolutely fine. On the other hand, if you had maybe a citrus, or maybe a Ficus benjamina, the Weeping Fig, then you might want to look at the overall shape of that tree and that might mean that certain stems, where they're crossing over one another, are something that you might want to get rid of. Now, even in outdoor gardening, the idea of pruning back crossing stems has been somewhat superceded, I guess I'd say, in recent years, in that now some of the advice is that crossing stems are not as bad as we thought they were. Obviously, in nature, if a stem is rubbing against another stem it can cause damage and the theory is, particularly with things like fruit trees, that could again cause a vector for disease to get into the plant.
So, a good example would be my plum tree. If you've got branches rubbing and causing a wound then the terrible diseased Silver Leaf could access the plant via that wound. However, if you're not dealing with fruit trees, oftentimes people say, well, actually now, a crossing branch isn't so bad, but when it comes to houseplants, I think you're looking at the overall aesthetic of your plant and does that particular branch look good? Is it complementing the rest of the plant? Don't feel too afraid to take out branches that are weirdly long, weirdly short, just look wrong when you step back and look at the overall shape of the plant. Whenever you're pruning that's the main thing to think about, is take a snip and then step back and look. Don't just snip, snip, snip at close quarters and then step back and go, "Oh, gosh!". And make sure that you're turning the plant as you work, so that you can see exactly what's going on. A little trick here; if you've got an old Lazy Susan, one of those rotating trays for dining, you can stick your plant on it and turn as you're pruning, which means you can see the plant 360 degrees. Makes pruning a heck of a lot easier, but even then, step back across the room and see what it looks like and stop at every point so that you don't make any serious mistakes.
With pruning any houseplant, or indeed outdoor plant, what you have to remember is pruning stimulates growth. So when you're cutting back at this time of year, it's going to prompt your plant to put on more growth, so that's why you don't do it in autumn when the plant is trying to slow down a bit. Now is a good time to do it if you happen to be in the season of spring.
Once you've dealt with those four Xs, disease, damaged, dead, crossing, you can then look at other kinds of pruning that you might want to do. This could be things like taking sections of stem that are not flowering, so that you can propagate that plant. Why not flowering? Well, flowering stems tend to be putting everything into flowering and therefore you don't tend to get good root systems developing on those plants. When you're looking for propagating material that you can prune off, look for good, healthy, vigorous growth. That's the kind of thing you need in order to take cuttings. Don't be afraid of taking out a whole stem and then just using part of it to propagate and chucking the rest away. Sometimes it's better to take away one whole stem rather than cutting back every single stem, it depends on the effect you're looking for. If you've got a long stem remember that cutting off the end is going to affect the hormones within that stem so that it should shoot from the sides of the nodes, so you'll get more bushy growth. Turning that upside down, if you've got, say, a Fiddle Leaf Fig, if you nip out the top of it, or an avocado plant, for example, that you've grown from a stone, if you pinch out the tip that's going to, hopefully, produce a bushier plant.
What other reasons might you have for pruning? Well, it may just be that your plant has outgrown the space that you have for it and you don't necessarily want to extend that moss pole any further. You might just have reached the ceiling and not want that plant to start bending in weird ways to try to keep going towards the light. In that case, again, cut back. Think about the shape that you want and if you're talking about things like a Fiddle Leaf Fig, or a climbing Monstera, or other Aroid, you want to pick a point just above a node as your point to trim. The point where the stem meets the leaves, that's where new growth comes from, so you don't want to be left with a section of stem that isn't going to turn into anything, so cut just above that node and that should work really well.
All the time, you'll want to be looking and obsessing where the good growth is and, of course, the other kind of pruning you might be doing is deadheading, removing old flowers of things that have finished blooming. In some species, this can prompt more flowers to grow. For example, if you've got something like Streptocarpus, the plant may well start putting out new growth, but it also helps to prevent rotting material that might damage the plant. When it comes to something like an orchid, that might be very much the only pruning you're doing because there just isn't any other pruning to be done. Maybe you'll be cutting back a few roots that have died back but other than that you might just be cutting back that dead brown flowering stem. If it's gone brown all the way to the bottom just cut it right back to the base, if it's still green and you want to give it a try, you can cut to just above one of those scaly bits on the flower stem, just above that, and the plant may sprout a new flower stem from that point. It's a quicker way of getting it to flower but you might not get as much flower as if you wait a bit longer and cut right back to the base.
There are some plants, of course, that really should not be gone anywhere near with a pair of snips. Most palms, you're not going to need to prune them at all and, of course, cacti and succulents. It really depends on what type you're talking about, but if you're talking about a globular or a columnar cactus, if you do a chop then it will regrow, but it's more of a dramatic kind of effect. I'm thinking of something like Euphorbia trigona, the African Milk Tree. You can take sections of that away but if you cut into one of those columnar shapes it will regrow but it might not grow quite as attractively as it did before, so do think carefully before pruning and check on the individual plant that you've got.
Let's finally move on to the M in RPM and that stands for mulching. Now, again, it's something we do in the garden an awful lot, but there are good reasons to think about mulching your houseplant pots at this time of year. If you've got really big plants that are not something you're going to be able to repot, the best thing to do is to just lift up the pot and try to cut off any roots that are coming out the bottom and then scrape away at the surface of that pot removing the old potting mix as carefully as you can without damaging any roots and then top dress with fresh compost. That will give them a bit of a boost without you having to repot.
Indeed, you might find that you've got some houseplants where the soil level has dropped for one reason or another. This can sometimes happen if you've got, as I sometimes have, earthworms mooching about in your potting mix and they tend to move some of the soil through the drainage holes and out the bottom and you'll find the level drops. So, at that point, provided that you're not going to bury the growth points on the plant, you can usually just add a bit of potting mix to the top but you can also add an inorganic mulch to the top of the pot. Now, let's be clear from the beginning, this is not going to solve a fungus gnat problem. Why? Well, it's all very well to think that a handful of sand, or some expanded clay pebbles, will stop the fungus gnat females from getting to the soil and laying their eggs and there is some truth in that, you may have a small impact on the overall number of fungus gnats you're facing if they struggle to get to that surface, however, fungus gnats are incredibly good at finding places to lay their eggs. If you've ever shaken a houseplant that's got fungus gnats you'll find you get a little cloud of flies coming up and they come up from all over the place. They can very easily get between the soil and the edge of the pot and get in that way. They can also fly down to the drainage holes if the drainage holes are at all visible and get in that way. So there's lots of ways that fungus gnats will find their way into soil. So let's be clear from the start, mulching is not necessarily a way to rid yourself of fungus gnats.
What the heck are you doing it for, Jane? Well, the reason why I mulch is twofold. One: it tends to look more attractive. So, if I've got a nice layer of expanded clay pebbles over the surface of a pot, or even some decorative pebbles, or glass, if you want to go really crazy you can get some really colourful aquarium substrates if you fancy going down that route and you want to have a really jolly look to your houseplants, that can make the top of the pot look a bit more interesting. Mulching is quick, easy, it takes five minutes. If you are going to use expanded clay pebbles and they're new, do make sure you wash them because they do arrive covered in sediment which you need to get rid of, so do give them a wash in an old sieve, make sure all that sediment is gone before you add them to the top of the pot. Depending on the size of the pot will affect the depth of the mulch you use. It just means that you've got a nice surface to your pot and if you are watering from above it will help the water not to splash around and create that really annoying hole that you sometimes get when you've got a freshly repotted plant and you've been a bit overzealous with your watering and the pressure of the water has forced a hole in the compost, the mulch helps to stop that happening, so it's a really, really handy thing to do.
It can also help with plants that dry out very quickly, just helping to seal in a bit more moisture. It won't make a massive difference, but it will help a little bit and provided that you're using some kind of probe, or your finger, to make sure how moist the soil is before watering, the mulch shouldn't affect that. The other downside of mulches are that if you're moving pots around, that mulch is not going to have any roots holding it together as the potting mix does, so if you're moving plants about it does tend to fall out, which is a bit annoying, but that's why I tend to go for larger mulches, like the expanded clay pebbles, because it's easy enough to pick up a couple of stray pebbles, with sand or small grit, it's a bit more of a pain. It depends how you're growing your plants and where you're growing them.
So that is RPM; three things you can do right now for your plants and maybe you've been doing them while you've been listening to the podcast, in which case, giant tick for you!
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Jane: Now let's move on to Question of the Week, which comes from Emily. Emily wants to know what on earth is going on with three ferns, including a Boston Fern and an Asplenium nidus and one other that has no ID. Now, Emily is finding that these plants are branching in unexpected ways. The ferns are thriving, well, well done for that Emily because not everyone can make ferns thrive, but they are beginning to branch. Those fronds are branching and even becoming rather frilly, so Emily wants to know what on earth is going on and has sent some lovely pictures of these forking ferns.
I think what you're experiencing here, Emily, is fasciation and it's something that's very, very common in ferns. Fasciation is really any distortion of the growth pattern of plants, so you might see it in flowers, you might see it in stems, you might see in leaves. What's happening is that the growth point on the plant, the Apical meristem, we call it, has somehow been affected at some point so that you get this flattened growth rather than the normal growth you'd expect to see. It can be caused by any number of factors; damage, viruses, bacteria and just a random mutation of the genes. It does seem to be particularly common in ferns and if you've got any cactus or fern that's described as a cristate form, then that means that fasciation is something that people want to happen,it's being promoted and, indeed, specifically marketed for those qualities and this is the case for these ferns. Oftentimes, you do get ferns that branch, or have little frilly edges, and just make the plant that bit more interesting.
If you get into the world of ferns, you'll realise there are just huge, huge numbers of different fern cultivars that have arisen as a result of fasciation. It does look particularly handsome, I think, in ferns. Oftentimes, I think, when flowers are fascinated, it can get a little bit too weird for my liking, but I do like a fasciated fern. Indeed, breeders have artificially brought on fasciation in order to create particular effects with plants. They can use things like radiation, light exposure and applying chemicals to get these same fasciation effects artificially. So I wouldn't worry about it Emily. It's something you can enjoy. I wouldn't recommend taking off those leaves because I suspect the plant will just do what it wants anyway. I do hope that helps, Emily, and if you've got a question for On The Ledge do drop me a line: ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com
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Jane: That is all for this week's show. I shall be back next Friday for more planty pronouncements! Until then, make five minutes in your day for a bit of RPM, why don't you? Bye!
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Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids, by Komiku, and Plantation, by Jason Shaw. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
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Only got five minutes to give your houseplants a lift this weekend? I suggest three jobs that will only take minutes to complete, plus I answer a question about ferns.
On The Ledge sowalong: Thanks for all your onoing efforts to join my project growing houseplants from seed! If you are new to the #OTLsowalong, it’s the podcast’s annual project to get everyone growing houseplants from seed - you check out all the past sowalong episodes here.
Three five-minute jobs to help your houseplants today… remember, R-P-M!
ROTATE
Turning the pot a little every few days or weeks helps plants to grow evenly rather than leaning over. (Some plants may not be suitable for this: they just have a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ side, and that’s ok.)
PRUNE
Remember the four Xs the first things to remove from your plant are: dead, damaged, diseased and crossing.
Step back and look at the overall shape of the plant: cut back where growth is going in the wrong direction, or is uneven. Snip, then step back and look - this avoids pruning disasters! Remember that pruning stimulates growth: this is why spring is a good time to start.
Smaller plants can be placed on a ‘lazy susan’ so you can rotate the pot effortlessly as you work.
Healthy plant material you remove can be propagated.
Hygiene is important: sterilise your scissors, snips or pruning knife between plants. You can use Citrox, wash with hot soapy water, or run through a naked flame.
In plants with clear nodes such as most aroids, cut just above a node so that you aren’t left with any ‘dieback’.
Remember to deadhead flowering plants too.
MULCH
If you have really large pots, top dressing is an alternative to repotting: scape away the old potting mix carefully without damaging roots, and replace with fresh.
Top up potting mix into pots where the level has dropped, making sure that you don’t raise the level higher than it was originally ie just bring it back to where it should be.
Inorganic mulches such as sand, grit, stones or expanded clay pebbles (leca) added to pots can help stop problems with ‘soil splash’ when watering from above: it will also stop a dip in the substrate forming, if you water a little too enthusiastically!
Mulching may also help to seal in some moisture in plants that seem to dry out too quickly.
Mulching will not stop fungus gnats but may slightly reduce their ability to lay eggs (you’ll need to combine this with other defences.) It may also look more attractive than bare soil.
If you choose to mulch with newly bought expanded clay pebbles, rinse them of sediment before use.
One of Emily’s fasciated ferns.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Emily’s ferns are branching in unexpected ways - what’s going on? The likely cause is fasciation, which is the distortion of a plant’s parts - flowers, stems, leaves - caused by changes to the plant’s growing point, known as the apical meristem. It is often found in ferns but also cacti, Eupborbias and foxgloves are often affected. Fasciation can be the result of several different factors, including bacteria, viruses and physical damage from pests or other causes.
Sometimes, fasciation is actively encouraged by growers because it makes a more interesting plant form - ferns and cacti that are called ‘cristate’ are a result of fasciation. I suspect that some of Emily’s ferns may be fasciating naturally, but some are probably the result of deliberate breeding.
There isn’t much Emily can do about this issue: cutting off the fronds may work, or the new fronds may just grow back the same.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Plantation by Jason Shaw.