Welcome to the Simple garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody to the Simple Garden Life Podcast.
I'm your host, Jim Competti along with my wife Mary. And Mary
we're inside talking gardening today. It's getting near the Christmas season and everybody loves
them, and most people can say it right. It's the point Settia plant.
Yes, it's a very popular plant, indoor plant this time of year,
and there's always a debate on how to say it. In fact,
we actually looked it up to make sure that we're saying it correctly, and
it's point setia. Yeah we have. There's ohio accents sometimes cool, but
it is. It is, so no matter how you say it really doesn't
matter. The important thing we're talking about today is how to care for them,
and most importantly is how to get them to stay blooming and blooming.
We'll talk about that in a second. As long as they possibly can look,
they're not an inexpensive plan anymore, and they can come in a thousand
different prizes. It's really cool how many different points eddie as there are now
you got variegated white, even salmon red, yeah, the traditional red and
all kinds of versions. But you know, you spend all that money and
to watch your plant die well before Christmas Day or even not maybe a week
or two before that. You want to get as much as you can and
you really should be able to, right, And there are a popular gift
this time of year. A lot of people get them around Thanksgiving in early
December, and you want them to last at least to Christmas, if not
longer. Yeah, and you know it's a plant that you can keep as
a house plant the entire year around and get it to you know, push
such colors out again next year. But let's face it, most people end
up purchasing these for one year. They and they want to have a display.
And there are some secrets, as we're going to talk about today when
it comes to a several factors. So obviously light and heat and temperature,
we're going to get into those. But most importantly, and this is where
the biggest probably the mistakes are made, it comes to how are you supposed
to water your points eddios? Right, and that's true for all house plays,
but point setti is actually require a special technique that most people don't follow.
No, that's right, and you know what we know this water is
important for every single living plant, even though a cactus in the middle of
the desert needs some amount of water to survive. Obviously, when we do
things with tomato plants in the garden or flowers, they need their points Edtios
are no different except it's how they bloom, which is why water and how
you give them the water is more important than any other plant we talk about.
And it's probably like you said, you said it best. It's one
of the things that is most misunderstood about it and what we're going to talk
about today. So one of the most important things about a points eddia is
to understand, at least when it comes to watering and why it's so important
it is to understand, and I use this word again, bloom how it
gets its color. It's not really a bloom. There are actually blooms on
a points eddia, but they're not the red that you see or the other
colors. Now, the red that actually leaves the bloom is actually in the
center of those which is a tiny little yellow. Yeah, it's in the
center and they're tiny. Yeah, the flower is extremely tiny, and it's
not impressive. And it's not why people buy points eddie as they buy them
for those big colorful leaves, which are actually bracts. B are acts,
and it's just a fancy word for a leaf. And so when conditions are
right, you know, when you have a Christmas cactus, conditions have to
be right. It has to have so much cool weather, so much darkness,
and then it forces it to bloom. For a points Eddia, it's
the same exact thing. Has to have so much darkness, have so much
temperature change, and then these bracts form. And when these bracts explode,
they're actually a shell of these giant, you know, colorful flowers. And
when I say red, it's because, let's face it, most people but
you do have the white ones and everything else. They are all bracts.
And because they are leaves, and leaves are made up mostly of moisture.
It's why water becomes so more important to a points Eddia than it does for
any other plant. And when too much or too little water it provides to
the plant, the leaves are the first to feel the damage. Yeah,
And the funny thing is more times than not. For people at home,
it's too much water that causes the problem and not underwatering, although they both
have their issues. Let's talk about it right now. So underwatering, let's
think of vegetable plants hanging baskets in the middle of summer. You come home,
sure, yeah, it's a hot day. You forgot to water that
morning or even the night before. And you look at them and it's exactly
right, they're all But what's wilty it's the leaves. The leaves all shrivel
down and you put some water on it and they come right back. The
ballooms look kind of poor, but it's the leaves that really show the first
effect of water. Same thing in the vegetable garden. A tomato plant it
gets too dry soil, or a cucumber plant, what happens. It's those
leaves they shrivel up. So think of a points eddie. It has these
leaves and one doesn't have water, or if it gets too much water,
as Mary said, it's the first thing to show up. So we talked
about being dry. So what happens if it's too wet. Well, points
eddi is are tropical plant. Okay, so They're used to moisture, but
not so much in their soil. They're used to high humidity and nice temperatures,
they're not used to being soggy. So in a container, when that
plant gets too moist all kinds of problem happened there. Yeah, the roots
get soggy. Exactly. What's the first thing we tell people when they question,
say, hey, my tomato plants are turning yellow. The leaves are
turning yellow. My cucumbers are turning yellow. What our first knowledge is,
Probably it's gonna be too much water. Yeah, too much water. So
what happens when a points eddie it gets too much water, same thing.
Those leaves start to yellow. They may even start to fall off or look
really poor. And if it doesn't get enough water, same thing, however,
with the points eddie plant, Remember this is that blooming period. I'm
gonna use blooming talking about the leaves here bracks. It's just too confusing to
keep saying the word bracts. But every time it goes through stress, whether
it went too long without water or it's sitting in water too long, it's
going to shorten those blooms tremendously. And I think we've all had to points
any plants at our house where they look beautiful. Then the next day or
two you see crumble little leaves laying around that you have to pick up and
clean because the leaves are crumbling and falling off. Yeah, and there's some
natural process. You know, if you're into January and that's starting to happen,
it's called it's the end of the blue season. But if you just
bought your plane a week ago and it just came out, or it's just
starting to come out, and you're starting to lose leaves and you know it's
only December of the fifth or fifteenth or something like that, it's usually one
of three things. Water is the biggest key, and like I said,
we'll talk about it later, there's some conditions in your house, light and
heat that can also matter. So we've talked about how important water it is.
Watering is, and it is and it's one of the questions that kind
of set this podcast up for us. We got last week and Mary,
I'll let you read that. It's the question of the week and I love
this one. This is one of my favorites and it's a great question.
It is. This comes from Christy from Upstate New York Christy asked, I've
heard it's best to water point setting is from underneath, or even dip them
in water in a bucket? Is this true? I love this question.
It is. It is incredible to water points eddies from underneath. You can
dip them in, the soil gets wet, you pull them back out,
you let all the water drain off, and you put it back in its
pot. Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredibly inconvenient. No one needs it.
If you have ten points, no one's going to do this. Is
that the absolute best? Christie? It is. But we've got a better
way to keep your plant perfect without having to go through that hassle. Who
wants to dip their plants in a bathtub every day or take them out to
a bucket strain them out. So I wanted to cover that question because it's
it's kind of funny. It is really one of the best ways, because
you're watering from blow and you're bringing it in what you don't want to water.
And we'll cover this a little bit more in a second. Is you
know a lot of housepens your water from the bottom of a saucer and let
it soak out, not a good idea for Points Eddie is what they're talking
about here when they say water from underneath, the dipping it down in the
water, the getting the plant wet, they're pulling it back up, letting
it drain off so that it's moist to be good. And we'll get into
this after the break. You really want your your soil moisture level to be
somewhere between fifty and seventy percent at all times. Anything higher than that it's
saturated and it can rot the roots and cause early problems. Anything lower than
fifty percent, it's gotten too dry, and then you're gonna have issues.
So let's take a break. We're gonna come back and tell you the two
ways to water your plant that are very simple and very easy. They're gonna
let you get the most blooms for your buck this year with your Points Eddia
plant. And we are back and talking about watering Points Eddias and how to
extend that color time all through the holidays and even into the first part of
January. And of course watering is our key here. So there are two
ways that you should be watering, and yes, you should be doing both
if you want those maximum bloom color time. To stay around. The first
way is traditionally' that's at the base of the plant, you know, with
the old watering can or however, you do it right at the soil level.
But the second, and this is the one that very few people do
to their points Eddias andy at it makes a huge difference. Is you should
be missing them every few days. So we're gonna go over both, and
I think Mary is probably obvious to start with the first one, which is
watering at the base level. Absolutely. The key with watering your points ati
at the base is to water it enough to get the soil moist but not
overly salgy. Like Jim mentioned earlier, points Seitia plants are tropical plants,
so that means they like the moisture and the humidity, but they don't want
to sit in salty soil. No. No, And you said it best
when you said you have to let them dry out. So somewhere between fifty
to seventy five percent, when it gets down to fifty or forty five,
you want to put the really at fifty you want to put some water on
to get it back up, but not to the point where you're soaking it
through. No, you want to water the plant right at the base,
right at the stem where the soil is. You want to water it so
that water trickles all the bottom and stops. Yes, and I mean trickle
and stop. Yeah, And if it comes out to the bottom, it's
okay. Think back when we talked about soaking these down, how people do
it? You know the official best way to water the key was to get
rid of that and shed that excess water. Well, if you have a
saucer or something at the bottom it's collecting water, that's okay. You may
have water. To just get rid of that water and make sure no more
is coming out. That means that it's saturated through, but it's not,
you know, overly wet. If you leave that water in there, you
risk something. You risk that coming right back up to the root level or
even worse sitting there and it's going to start to swell those roots and not
let them take up any nutrients whatsoever. Absolutely, so, after you water,
let the water drain out, remove the sauce or tray below, dump
it out, put it back, and if there's more sauce or water that
comes down, you need to dump it out. Absolutely, it's perfect.
That's that's exactly perfect. So how often should you water points out of a
Plant's great question, million dollar question. There's there's a couple of factors that
you know that matter. I mean, if it's in an extremely warm room,
if it's near any kind of a draft, where's gonna dry out of
the quicker, If there's if your home in the winter time and a lot
of homes do this have trouble holding humidity, you know it's going to be
watered more often typically rule of thumb here, you're going to want to water
it in probably every couple of days. That's that's usually when they get to
that seventy five percent high down to the fifty percent level. But there's a
way to cheat that is far better than anything. We talk about this all
the time. I don't think it's cheating. I think it's being smart.
Well, you know how you want to call it. But I'm just saying
that. You know, there are all kinds of people that can stick their
finger down in the soil where they can look at the soil and they can
see what's going on. But if you really want to be accurate, get
yourself an inexpensive soil meter. It's it's a digital display. A lot of
them will put a link on the site here for that, but a lot
of them actually have multiple things. You know. Not only will they tell
you the instant soil moisture content of the soil as you probe down in it,
they'll also tell you the temperature of the soil. They'll tell you the
pH of the soil. You can use these everywhere for hanging baskets, for
interior plants, for everywhere. They are magical, and I want to say,
anywhere from fifteen to twenty five dollars. You can pick yourself up a
really good one. Some of them are really fancy, but that's how you
can tell. You put it in there. And if that's reading somewhere down
at the root level, don't just stick it half in chin. Stick it
about halfway down in the pot where the roots are going to be. If
it's registering between fifty and seventy five, if it gets down towards fifty,
you're going to water. If it's at sixty eight to seventy five to even
you know, let's say it gets to eighty, that's okay. Just let
it come back down and you'll know the water you're gonna get really good using
one of these after a while looking at your soil. But they really are
a fail safe way to be able to tell the moisture. And people ask
me, how do I know when the water my plant? There are so
many varying conditions that matter that this is really the only, when I say
cheating method, it's the only way to know for sure when you should be
water right. And we've used the finger test before where you stick your finger
down in and actually, you know, you pull it back up and it's
got a little bit of dirt moisture on it. You know your your plants
are okay if it's dry. But you know, this is the only sure
way to know wind of water and you can use it for multiple plants,
oh rot the year, and you know to tell if your pH and the
soil outside. Like I said, if you get the multimeters, they're really
good. So okay, So that's watering traditionally. Now let's talk about the
secret to watering and how you keep those leaves looking perfect. We've talked about
the tropical origins of this plant and how it likes humidity. Think of a
jungle, you know you're walking through and it's moist and it's wet and there's
a lot of moisture in the air, so you want to mimic that for
your plant. Now, think of homes in the winter time, which typically
dry. If you have a wood stove, the'or even dryer. If
you have furnace that's blowing their it's dry. If you have any static in
your house, you know your home is dry, exactly exactly. So what
do you do to combat that and extend those lives? And this is the
one thing that will extend that color longer than anything is to miss your plants
every two days. And it's so easy. It's just a water bottle and
some water. And I guess mar before we do that, I mean,
let's talk about the water that you're putting in it. Right. You got
to be careful what type of water that you use because a lot of water
is treated and that can actually harm your plants. Oh yeah, you have
chlorine, You can have salts from a water softener. So look, use
distilled water, use you know, purified water, use rain water. You
can use your tap water as long as you have an area of that tap
that doesn't go through your water softener. If you have one of those,
just trying not to use city water, municipal water. There's so many chemicals
in those they will also do damage to the leaves and shorten their life.
So put the water in there. You missed it. It can't be any
easier. You're just going to go around and give it a sprits And I
think the key here is lightly miss Yeah. Yeah, you just want those
leaves to glisten. That's exactly what you want. And you want to do
that. I mean, can you do it every day? Sure, sure,
but every two days is going to give you that extension to get that
full six weeks. And people ask us all the time, like how many
weeks should they stay in color? A properly cared for plant can easily handle
four to six weeks and still look pretty decent. So as long as are
hydrated from the soil and from missing, you could get a full six weeks
out of these plants. That's right. So that's how you want to water.
That's why it's so important. Now let's just take a little bit of
time before we wrap up today and talk about those other factors we talked about
that furnace and that wood stove. You see the beautiful Christmas scenes of the
points Eddie is on fireplaces there. That's great when you like the fire,
get them away, yeah, that he could really hurt them and drive not
quickly. Yeah, and it's gonna burn, you know it can it can.
That over heating of the leaves can really take its toll. So great
for looks people away. Also keep them away from furnace drafts, you know,
the vents cool drafts. If you if you put your points Eddie is
in an area right by the front door and people walk in and there's a
ton of cold air coming from the outside once or twice, isn't gonna harm
it if it happens all day, Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna take its
toll. Right, they can't handle those extreme temperatures very well. No.
And then last but not least, this almost sounds strange, but you know
we talk about the period of darkness to force a points Eddie to come into
its blooming, but it actually needs light once it gets to but the right
kind of light in direct light. Yeah, you don't want to get them.
Put them in the sunlight directly into a window that's getting the southern sun.
But put them in a well written, well lit room, excuse me,
and it should be getting six to eight hours of that every day of
light. So again, if you have these points Eddie is on a display
in a darker room, that's fine, but get them out somewhere, you
know, four to five six hours a day that they can get some light
in a room where they can get that ability to keep that color a little
bit longer. Yeah, that's one of the most important things that you can
do is to let them have a little bit of light, and it has
to be indirect, that's right, and then keep them you know, temperature
matters as well. If they're in a room that's around seventy two degrees,
that's gonna be like perfect, But don't set thermostat up. If your thermostat
set to sixty seven, keep it at sixty seven. And what we're talking
about here is avoid basements or cold rooms that get down to fifty five or
sixty at night, and avoid rooms that might be tropical you know that get
to ninety if you're really hot and you have a fireplace in there, it's
gonna again not going to kill the plant, but it's going to really drop
those leaves much sooner than you need to, right, and a lot of
points Eddie plants come with a foil wrapper that looks so pretty this time of
year. There's an important tip that we need to give you about those wrappers.
Yeah, that's probably the last thing that we really need to cover,
and it's so important. So you know, they look beautiful, but that
all that silver aluminum tile types, yeah, holds water at the bottom of
the plant. So you really need to take those off. You really really
do. Accept If you want the look of it, just take a nice
sharp pair of scissors and cut the bottom out so that water can drain out
of your plant. If it doesn't, it's going to cause problems. Those
things make plants, They might make them look beautiful, but they really cost
them on their life, especially with Points Eddi, is because the water will
sit in the bottom of that foil and the soil will absorb that moisture again
and again, causing them to be overly watered. That's right, So I
think we've covered everything today. Go on to Simple Garden Life type in the
search bar up top if you need to. There are always on the episodes,
of course, but you can also type in points Eddie. We have
a couple of articles on there, how to keep blooms going, how to
you know, water them? Have them on all of our sites, but
we just thought it's a great time. We get a lot of questions on
it this year to cover the topic, and certainly happy too, and certainly
happy that we're getting into the festive season now right and in fact we have
some articles on Christmas cactus and Thanksgiving cactus plants too. That's right, we
really do. So thanks for joining us today, Mary, I think it's
time. It's time and remember, whatever you do, find the fun and
gardening and grow something beautiful, happy guarding, and so long everyone. We
hope you've enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the Simple Garden podcast on iTunes,
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Thanks everyone,