Probably the easiest plant to care for once you figure it out.
I water it every month or two. Fertilize it every 2 or 3 years. Redirect the arial roots into the pot when I water.
It gets 3 hours of direct sunlight in the morning.
Every 5 or 6 years I haul it outside in the summer. Then leach the pot with the garden hose to remove the salt buildup. I also hack the plant back to a more manageable size.
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I have a young calathea ornata
YT says mist it every day and whatever you do, DON’T MIST IT as mould will form, and says it prefers hours of indirect sunlight and also low light conditions such as beneath a canopy -_-
My grandma has a fern on her porch that she’s had since 1951.
Meanwhile every plant we buy and bring home is dead within a week.
look at me, you’re the little guy now.
give him a moss pole to climb against! in nature they climb trees, so they aren’t that good in standing up by themselves
They just need something to lean against. It’s leaning against the window. Since I never rotate it, it does just fine.
oh, I see, cool I didn’t know that!
First time I hear of salt buildup in houseplants :o
Water + evaporation + water collection tray = salt buildup. Depending on the water source it can take decades or a few months. It’s one of the top reasons not to use softened water on houseplants. The addition of sodium can mess them up quickly.
It’s pretty easy to remove however. I haul the plant outside and run around 50 gallons through the pot in a day or so. You can do the same thing in a bathtub for smaller plants. After leaching the pot always fertilize the plant.
What is it? It looks cool.
a monstera.
unbelievable size given the pot, and that limited watering.
Monsteras are very drought tolerant and do better with intermittent watering. Soak the pot then let them let them dry out. They need another dunking when the sheen of the leaves get a little dull.
They also break any rule about pot size you have ever heard. That’s a 10 gallon pot btw. For the first 10 years of its life, I kept it in a 2.5 gallon one. I had to water (2-3 weeks) and fertilize (2x per year) more frequently but it grew to the same massive size.
I’ve found that erring on the side of underwatering is a decent strategy for most houseplants. People ask me what my trick to caring for my houseplants is, and a huge part of this is that I made up a big bucket of well-draining soil to use for my plants. This means that I need to water them more frequently, but they’re far less likely to succumb to root rot
