Transcripts
1. Introduction: I am a big fan of experimenting with my green girls and the propagation is one of those beautiful thing. To propagate, to green up the face with the plants you already have. Also propagate to save the queen from infestation or if she is not looking healthier. And then also if you want to share your plants with other folks, the wonderful gift for your friends as well. Hello everyone, my name is Christopher Griffin, Ayutishi, and they pronounce interchangeably. I'm also known as Plantkween on Instagram, and I have over 180 plants in my little Brooklyn apartment. My Plantkween account is really just me sharing my botanical journey, things I have learned throughout this amazing plant parenthood and how I have engaged in self-care. So my green girls have really aided me in that and have been a monumental catalyst in exploring myself and how I care for others and engage in community and self-care. Follow along if you have your green girls next to you, you can bring her with you, pop her right next to you, which can keep you some company. If you have snake plant or a post host plant, those are the queens that we're going to be propagating today. We want to bring those over, feel free to do so. Or, darling, if you don't have anything in front of you. This is your moment to relax, just get your notepad out, darling, and take some notes. If you want to follow along all you need are a pair of shears and a little jar to place your cuttings in. After this class, I hope that you are a little bit more confident in your propagation skills. I hope you leave with the sense of wanting to explore and learn more about the green girls in your home. This SkillShare class was recorded live and I had the opportunity to participate and interact with a wonderful and fabulous audience. All right, darling, let's get started.
2. Why Propagate Plants: Thank you everyone for joining today. My name is O'Briana Ayushi, [inaudible] is pronounced, and I'm a producer on the classes and content team here at Skillshare, and we are so excited to be connecting you all today with Christopher. You may know them as plant queen. I'll be talking all about propagating your plants. Will you tell us a little bit about how you got started on this plant parent journey because you haven't always been a plant queen. Yeah. I actually started this journey about four, five years ago. I had just moved into an apartment in Brooklyn with some roommates at the time. The apartment had skylight with gorgeous, beautiful white wall, but it was a bit boring. So I decided that it was time to decorate, and so I hopped on over to a little local hardware store, and I got my first plant which was a marble queen potho. She grew, it was fabulous, it was fun. I loved seeing her grow. I love putting love, and attention, and care into the plant. It was just a simple joy. Four, five years later, I now have 184 of her sisters with me in my apartment. It's really just been a journey of exploration in regards to my own self-care. As I mentioned, I'm educated, so I love to learn, so this is just been like a fun area to learn new things, and it really sparked from my grandmother, and my grandmother introduced me to nature gardening plant. When I was very young, she would take me to her favorite nursery with a young little queen in Philadelphia where I grew up. Yeah, I go through this journey in honor of her, and she shared her joy with me, and now I'm going to share my joy with others. That's really lovely, that's awesome. Cool. Today, propagation of the many plant things you could share. Tell us about why propagation and what that really means at a high level before we dive in. Yeah. So propagation is basically when you take a mother plant, and you take a cutting, and you root that cutting, and you grow a whole new other plant. That's basically what propagation is. There's a bunch of reasons to propagate. I've propagate it because I want to read up my space with a plant that I already had. My marble queen pothos which I've had since the beginning of this journey, I had cutting of her all over my apartment. I have marble queen pothos plants all over, which is really fun. I've also propagated plant because the plant was dying, and I wanted to preserve a piece of that plant, so I propagated the plant for that reason. I also share my plants with friends. Sometimes if a plant really mean a lot to me, I'll have those cutting and I'll give them to friends and family members, so some some my friends have my plants in their apartment. It's like a shared bonding experience. There's a multitude of reasons why a person would want to propagate. I love that. I feel like I've always seen people with cuttings in jars propagating, I was like "My God, what is that alchemy, that looks so complex." It sounds like it is not really. No, no. Help me become those people today. Yes, indeed.
3. Propagation Basics: Before we get started, I'm going to go over what you need and the different green growth I brought to stage that we'll be propagating today. Just to give you all a little rundown of what we are going to do, I have two plants that I enjoy propagating. Propagating is a bit of a science. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it does not. I think I have an example of a situation where it did not work in these little jars. There are successes, there are some mistakes and failures, but that all comes with plant parenthood, so do not worry yourself. We will also talk about ways that we can just make sure that the plant does propagate at a certain point. To get started, if you have a particular plant with you, feel free to bring that green grow over. If you don't have any plants with you or any tool that is perfectly fine. Different plants require different propagation techniques. If you have an aloe plant, you may not be able to propagate it the same way like the snake plant or the pothos plant. I'll bring to green girls to the stage. This is a snake plant. I'm just going to bring her. This standard snake plant I'm sure folks have seen this queen before. She is a succulent, very hardy, you are going to have to water as often. I have her in a hyperbaric perlite soil mix, so that the soil is well drained because she does not like sitting in wet soil. This queen is one of my favorite queens because it's just really easy to care for. You just leave her alone, she just grows and does her own thing which is fabulous. She's also one of the best air purifier, and so there's a research study showing that the queen take out toxins from the air like formaldehyde. I didn't know that. But she also releases oxygen and moisture into the air, and so if you are struggling with dry air in your apartment, you can get a humidifier or get couple snake plant. This is one queen, and then the second queen I'll introduce is this queen right here. She is the golden pothos. Very similar there about maybe 50 plus variety, including in the neon pothos which you have Obrianna. They're about 50 variety of the pothos plant. One of the reasons I love them because they're so easy to propagate and they grow very well in water. So we'll talk about this queen in momentarily. Whenever I am getting ready to propagate a plant, the first thing that I typically do is that I do a Google research on how to propagate that plant, so I am not a horticulturalist, I'm not trained in any of that. This is my self-taught knowledge, my self journey as related to the plant. I typically just do a Google search and figure out, what is the best way to propagate this particular plant? One thing that you want to make sure that you do when you are getting ready to propagate a plant is that you sterilize the shears. The main purpose of this is to make sure that you're not transferring any bacteria, pus or anything from one plant to the other. Come on Obrianna, yes. I have a pile of junk here so luckily I am ready. I love it. I love it. You just want to sterilize it. I usually leave my shears over a burner and I just let the fire sterilize it. You could also use alcohol wipes, things like that just to make sure that you're not transferring anything from one plant to the other.
4. Propagating a Snake Plant: Now, we're going to bring the snake plant to the stage and we are going to propagate it. Now with the snake plant, there are no vine or anything like that. They just have the stalk. I remember when I was trying to figure out how to propagate this particular queen, I was a little nervous because I was like there's no vine, there's no leaves, what do I propagate? Basically you're just going to cut mid part of the leaf. I'm just going to cut right here. What you end up with is this little cutting right here. What you're basically going to do is place this part and suspend it in water. This is what it looks like, very easy, just a little snipping of the leaf. Now because I like to experiment with my plants and I propagate constantly, there's not ever a time where I'm not having something being propagated. After we have these cuttings of snake plant, and as you can see, roots have begun to grow from the bottom. Roots are going to grow out from here and begin to grow into a root system. I probably am going to put these queens in some soil over the weekend. I think these have been sitting in here, snake plants are very slow grower and so you really have to be patient with them. Patient, patient, patient. I've had these queens sitting in this water for about a month now and these are the roots that have begun to grow. Something that you want to be mindful of when you are propagating in water is that you want to make sure that the water stays clean. There may be some algae buildup, there maybe some dust, things of that nature. You want to make sure that you are changing the water and putting freshwater so that those roots can grow in the best environment possible. Another thing that you want to make sure that you do is that after I've cut that this particular leaf, I'm going to let the bottom of it callus over. I'm not going to immediately place her in water because then she just going to turn into mush. Basically what I'm going do is just put her in a shady spot, let this callus over. If you touch it, it's a little damp, it's a little wet, you're filling some of the inside of the plant. You want to make sure that there's no moisture on anything when you place her in water. That just increases the chances of the roots actually growing from the bottom of this leaf. That is the snake plant. With the snake plant, I tend to use, again, a [inaudible] perlite soil mixture. You can find perlite at your local hardware store or gardening store, [inaudible] at a gardening store. Or if you go to a pet store, so I've gone to Petco. They have in their litter section, they have these little pieces of like wood. That's what I use for the soil mixture. You want to dampen the soil a little bit because the roots are so used to water. If you put them in dry soil, you may scratch the root. You want to make sure that the soil is a little damp so that they can ease themselves into their new environment. For that snake plant, are you putting all of those leaves that have sprouted roots, all of those are going into one pot together, they're not like separating for different pots? Yes. I am probably going to go out on a little bit show and tell you-all. This was a queen that I was propagating. These were two separate leaves and I put them in the same pot. You can arrange them in the ways that you want to. I'm probably going to place them all in different pots and give them away to friends. Cool. That's amazing. You get so many plants. Somebody says, I've had snake plants in water for months and they haven't rooted but they haven't died. Should I just keep waiting? Wondering if I cut too high on the stalk. Does it matter where on the stalk you cut, like is the end less alive? Yeah. I mean, I probably wouldn't do it at the very top. You also have to think about, so the plant is still creating energy for itself. Imagine if you have a whole, entire leaf, and that plant is using that entire leaf, all of that chlorophyll to make energy and food for itself. Then all of a sudden, you snip it from its home base, and you only leave that much of the leaf, then she probably is not going to have enough energy. She's not going to be able to produce enough energy to survive. I tend to do a little lower down on the plant just to allow more space for them to take in that sunlight and to produce energy for themselves. I would encourage you if they are not dying, I would keep them in the water until you see those roots grow because you don't want to place the plant into soil and you're watering the soil, and there's nowhere for that water to really go because there's no root for the water to go through for the plant, which ends in root rot. I would just leave the plant suspended in water and then eventually chill growth in root. You've got to be patient.
5. Propagating a Pothos Plant: Now, darling, we're going to welcome to the stage, a very different green girl, the golden pothos, and we're going to talk about how to propagate her. I love the pothos because they are one of the easiest plants to propagate. If you are a beginner and you're like, I want to just try this out, go get yourself a pothos, and I'm telling you you will enjoy the experience. I know the holidays are coming up and plants are a wonderful gift. You do not have to blow your budget because you can propagate the plant you already have. There you go. For the pothos, they're easier because they are vine plant and they have something called nodes. A node is this little bump right here, I don't know if folks can see that.` Yeah. They have these little brown bump on their stem, and all of those are potential root system. The great thing about pothos plant is that they can be climbers, they can climb up tree. Look at that, yeah. Oh Briana, it's so long, so lengthy. She's huge. I love it. So good. The great thing about pothos plant is that they are constantly growing potential root system with themselves because, in the wild they're climbing up trees and they're climbing up trees and they're anchoring them with nodes that eventually turn into their root system that allow them to gather and soak up nutrient that allow them to continue to grow. Basically what you're doing is using their evolutionary root system and using that as a method of propagation. What I tend to do with this queen, I want to figure out, the first thing you want to do is just identify where you want to cut. I tried to stay away from vines that had new leaves growing and sparking. Because if you cut them, they're used to a particular nutrient system within the plant. So if you cut them off from that, they're probably not going to survive. So I try to do vines with more mature leaves. This is perfect. This queen right here, I'm just going to put my hand right here, what you'll do, is that you'll identify that vine and then you're going to cut half an inch below the node. You don't want to cut right at the node, that brown little node on the vine, you want to cut half an inch below it. With that, the node is right here. So identify the node that you want to isolate, and then you're going to cut right below the node half an inch. Bam. There you go Briana, yeah. Did it. Was anyone else cutting with us just there? Let us know in the chat. That was scary. But we did it. It was worth it. Now you have this wonderful, beautiful cutting that will eventually grow into a plant. I'll bring it up closer. They are the nodes right there. Those brown little nodes right there, Those are the nodes, and that is going to turn into a root system. So this is what you want to make sure that you're suspending in water. These are a bunch of golden pothos that I've been growing for about two weeks now, and so it went from this little node to this, can we see? This root system. Wow! Two weeks. Wow! They grow very, very quickly. Let me see, I probably had to leave them here for more than two weeks. Probably about three, four weeks. So, I don't want to give false expectation at that point here. This is about a month's worth of patience. As you can see, the roof are looking fabulous, they're wonderful. This queen is actually ready to be rooted in soil. One thing you want to make sure that you're paying attention to when you are placing. So I'll probably use this little mason jar to hold the cutting. Let me actually see if this is going to work for her. Probably too big. What you want to make sure that you do is that, one, the node is completely suspended in water. So if she then the air, she's probably not going to grow those roots, she need to be submerged in water. Then the second thing that you want to be mindful of, is that if you're putting it in a glass or anything like that, and you do not want the stem touching the bottom third surface of the container that you're placing them in. I don't know what the scientific jargon that relate to why, but I've found that when I put my cutting in water, and the third is touching the surface, it turn to mush, and it just decreases the chances of that cutting rooting. So that's just a little thing that you just want to be mindful of, be patient, let the roots grow, and then again dampen the soil before you transfer the cutting into the soil. I typically try to have the root be about 3-4 inches long before. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and so, it's really like a trial and error. I've had situations where the cuttings had grown wonderfully, and then I've had situations where the cutting did not grow at all. So it's not an exact science, but it's more so trial and error.
6. Propagating a Pilea Plant: We all have that struggle plant when it comes to propagation. For me, it is the Pilea. So darling, let's get into what you can do to propagate this queen. This is my Pilea. She's beautiful. Cute little queen, she's growing so wonderfully. Look at her little leave. Wonderful. Love that plant. Pilea, others seem to struggle with propagating Pilea. Pilea can actually be propagated with just their leaves. I've been in situations where folks have accurately just cut midway into the leaf, have placed it in a wet paper towel and a plastic bag and a shady spot and roots began to grow. I've seen that, I've also seen them cutting where they pick a healthy stem, place it in water and roots have begun to grow from that leaf stem. But I cannot seem to get this one right. Propagation is basically when you have the mother plant and you're making another plant. Pilea actually have her still in her nursery pot because she enjoys moisture. So I always make sure. You see this larger plant, but then you see her little, I don't know if you folks can see, her baby. That you have a little baby right there. Actually, I am propagating one. I got so many plants here, but I forget. I mean, how can you keep track with 185, you create a schedule for that. Oh my god, this is hilarious. Oh, great. She's so cute. Oh my gosh. This is a little baby that I've been growing and getting there. She has tiny little baby root that are growing. So I basically have her in a little container with them other cutting and she's deemed to be doing fairly well. Wow, this is the first time I've checked one here in a while. Patience you all, you got to be patient with your green girls. Let them grow their roots, give them the time to do it, don't rush it. They will grow on their own timeline.
7. Q&A: Great, I think now let's open it up to some questions from the chat. How often do you change out the water to make sure that it's staying clean? What I find with particular plants, so with the pothos, I have not had to change the water, I had to add water because she's sucking up the water so quickly. I tend to right now, because we're in Brooklyn, the winter is coming quickly. I'm reducing my watering schedule because most of my green girls are going dormant, which means they're soaking up less water and they are less active, and so I'm watering my plants about every two weeks now. I just fill her up every two week while I'm at it. But I think it's really just looking everyone's micro-climate is very different. My apartment, humidity is very different from yours or Briana. It may be different from the amount of sunlight. There are a lot of environmental factors that impact our plants and how they grow. It will also impact the water quality. For the snake plants, I actually have to change that water because I have them in very bright area, so algae begin to form in the water. So it depends on where you place the plant, it also depends on what your apartment or space or a home is like as well. Berta has a related question, for these should they get sunlight or not? I assume that just depends on what type of plant it is. Is that right? Yes. Again, do research on the optimal environment for the plant. I tend to have most in all of my plant, so I have south-facing window, which is you see like the ideal situation for a plant here because it gets the most sunlight but sunburn is real. Plant can experience sunburn. Even cacti and succulent, yes, they can be burned by the sun, and so I tend to have my plant in very bright, indirect light with a little bit of sun. The sunlight just move through my apartment and so ray of the sunlight hits them, but they're never constantly sitting in direct full sun. The cutting really depends on the plant. I will look at what are the ideal situation when you're growing that particular plant and try to put that cutting in that situation as well. For a plant that is ailing maybe or how do you know when it's time you should save your plant, you should propagate your plant? What are some red flags to look out for? That could mean yellowing leaves. If we see that a lot of the leaves are yellowing that could be a sign. Dry, crispy leaves could be a sign. If the plant is infestated with pest or the soil is infestated. Ask me a funny story, this is a dracaena plant. This plant was actually about five feet tall when I first welcomed her into my plant fam. I bought it off craigslist. Someone was moving and they sold it to me for $40 and I thought was the most amazing plant find. But then I realized that it's [inaudible] was infestated with fungal gnat, like really badly. So I tried my best to repot to clean, but the fungal gnat kept coming back. Eventually, I just nipped the top of her plant, the top of the stem and I rooted it in water and now I have these two grower. I think it's like a way to continue to have your plant grow even through their [inaudible] and stuff like that. There's multiple different time but basically, if you feel like that plant is not going to survive or you cannot manage or treat the plant from an infestation, I would recommend propagating the plant. Is it okay to root multiple cuttings from different plants, like in the same jar. If I had done a snake plant, my [inaudible] can I put them in the same jar? I tend to experiment with my plant. If you really, really, really want that plant to root, I would probably place that particular cutting in its own jar, just so that roots aren't getting tangled and anything that comes from one plant could be transferred to another. With just isolating that cutting just increases the chances of rooting. But I do do it. I do place multiple cuttings. For the snake plant, they're actually a bunch of different cutting in here from different kinds of snake plant. They're all snake plant but there are a variety of different ones in there and so I do do it. But if there's a particular plant, I'm just like, ''Girl, you got to root, like I need you to root,'' then I'm probably just going to isolate that queen, just to increase her chances of successfully rooting and growing into a lush, healthy green girl. Do you ever use rooting hormone? Rooting hormone is, I think like a catalyst that is supposed to help the plants grow those roots. I think it's like providing that nutrients and all of that to get some roots to grow. I have not used it. I've just let the natural process take over and hope that that particular queen propagate. But let's say I needed to propagate my variegated Monstera and my variegated Monstera is really hard to come by. I've had that queen for years. I love her. I probably would use rooting hormone for that queen because I was like, ''Girl, you got to root.'' I can't take any chances, so I may use routing hormone to deal with a particular plant that I needed to root but I have no experience with rooting hormone. The question here, I have two cuttings from a Monstera plant that I've had in water for a few weeks and the leaves have started to turn the yellow. What might be the problem there or is that just like a practice patience and wait it out moment. What do you think? I would investigate. Sometimes there's like an infestation whether it's thrips or some other kind of pest. I would really look at the leaves and make sure that there's no infestation. That's number one. Number two, Monsteras really enjoy humidity and so it could be that maybe the plant is not in the ideal environment for her to grow. So I would make sure that that queen has a lot of bright and direct light. I wouldn't put the cutting in direct sun because you can burn her. So I put her on very bright light and a very humid spot. Yeah, Wyoming, very dry. It's probably the humidity, so you do invest in a humidifier. If you have a bright bathroom, girl, put it in the bright bathroom. She will love that or you can just put an extra humidifier. Sometime some plants are genetically just not fit, and so sometimes it's just the plant, it's not you. Sometime it's just the plant. You may do everything possible, you may be doing everything right, and it's just the plant. That's why I try to encourage folks if you're propagating, I would try to do multiple cutting so that at least you just have more chances of that particular plant rooting. Winter is coming. Is there anything we can do like as these micro-climates of our homes change and it gets colder out. Is there anything we can do to protect the plants for winter? Yeah, there is a time. So for your house plants that are outside and it's about to get cold, bring them inside. They will not survive the cold. I don't do that anymore, but I used to use my fire escape, it's like a makeshift garden. It's probably illegal, but we ain't going to tell anyone. I had to bring all of my plant inside just because of temperature is changing. Another thing that you want to be mindful of is just making sure that your windows are well insulated to avoid cold drab. Our house plants, the majority of them are tropical, enjoy temperatures between 60 and 75 degree. That's Fahrenheit, that's they're perfect area and so you do want to make sure that if you do have your plants close to the window, like I do, you just want to make sure that those windows are insulated so that cold, dry air is not seeping into your space. You may want to invest in a humidifier because it's about to get very dry and our tropical queens enjoy humidity. It helps them function better and so you may want to invest in a humidifier. Sunlight is also an issue because the days are shorter. So if folks want to invest in grow light, I have purple, grow light to create a whole mood. Yes, I am that apartment, look up, purple light, that is me. Grow lights are just like another way, they imitate the sun rays that plants enjoy and use to create energy, engage in photosynthesis, and so you may want to invest in grow lights to supplement that light that they may not be getting if your space becomes a little darker. Then lastly, if you don't want to invest in grow light, another thing is you can make your plant mobile. I actually have a little cart that I put my plants on and I push them and now, I'm working from home so I have all the time in the world with my green girl and so I just push them in the direction of the brightest light. If there isn't space in my apartment that doesn't get a lot of sunlight in the winter, I just make them mobile and I'm moving them around my apartment based on the brightest day. It's just like have fun, be creative. If it doesn't work, then take note of it and don't do it again. I think it's just trying different method based on your situation, based on where you're living, and what your seasons are like for you. Christopher, if you were a plant, what would you be? I'm sure you've been asked this question a trillion times. Times of time, darling. It's a tie. I love the hardiness of snake plant. They are one of the best air purifier, so they're are breathing life into the space. But then I also love a pothos because they're just so resilient and they're fast grower and we all love that new growth. So it would be a pothos or a snake plant. I love it, depending on the mood.
8. Final Thoughts: Darling, thank you so much for dropping by and joining us for this propagation, a little workshop today. I know that there comes a certain level of anxiety that comes with being a plant parent, worrying about infestation, worrying if you're going to kill a plant or anything like that. I encourage folks to really lead this journey with a sense of curiosity and fun. I experiment with the different care techniques with my plant. Sometime I buy two of the same plant and place them at different parts of my apartment just to see how they grow, so experiment with your green girl, have fun with them, learn about them. There is a lot of information out here. You've got lot of information, some is contradicting, some is confusing. A lot of my journey has been taking bits and pieces of information and building my own plant care recipe for a particular plant, which has been so much fun. Don't be hard on yourself if you kill a plant. I've saved so many plants to get a little botanical garden in the sky. I'm better for it. I take notes of the plants that don't work well with me. Yeah, I just move forward and I do better next time. I'm excited and I want to see the green girl that you propagated today, so be sure to drop those photos in the project gallery, darling. This was fun, it was fierce, you came, you propagated, you conquered, darling. If you want to follow me along, go to my little Skillshare profile for all that botanical lecture. Okay, you-all. Bye.
Christopher Griffin, @PlantKween
