3 New Leafjoy Houseplants + Starting Geranium & Lisianthus Seeds! ✨
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00:00 picked up at the garden center yesterday and then we've got some seeds to start already. Let's just
00:05 take a quick look. We've got, I have no idea how to pronounce the name of this one, schismatic
00:10 glottis wallachii. That is my best attempt but oh my goodness beautiful. In fact I showed this one
00:19 when I did that houseplant tour down at the garden center not that long ago and it really caught my
00:24 eye that day and I just got around to picking one up. I'm thankful there was one left. They're so
00:29 pretty. We've got a white wizard philodendron. Isn't that beautiful? Look at the white variegation
00:37 there and then we've got a fern. Let's see if I can get the tag. This is the living lace divana
00:45 fern. These are actually all part of the Proving Winters leaf joy collection. Our house is just
00:50 screaming for some green things right now and you guys know my main passion in gardening is outside
00:58 houseplants. I start to appreciate more in the winter months and they get kind of neglected
01:02 during the spring summer early fall months. So about this time of year is when I notice like oh
01:08 my goodness I didn't have time to notice before but like these plants need to be refreshed or I
01:12 need something here or there. So I actually took these three plants inside last night and I found
01:17 exactly where they're going to go and I even found more spots where I thought oh I need to be looking
01:21 for some other things to put in here because it really is pretty and it brings life to a space.
01:26 And then the seeds we're going to start today are three varieties of lisianthus and some maverick
01:31 white geraniums. And that's what we're going to start with out here today. We'll get the seedlings
01:35 started, we'll move those into the studio and then we'll get our houseplants done and moved inside.
01:38 So maverick white geraniums. I think it was this last winter we started a ton of geraniums in the
01:44 Hartley and that was so much fun. I think I had some 120 or 130 geraniums to use out in our
01:51 landscape. It was so great and they're easy, so so easy to start from seed and they're easy as
01:57 houseplants. So they're a type of seed I would say you could start at any point in the year as long
02:01 as you have a sunny windowsill that you can put them on. I mean they don't want it to be super
02:04 cold, you can't plant them outside in the winter of course, but you can have them as houseplants
02:09 and they just bloom their heads off. So I get all of my geranium seeds from a swallowtail garden.
02:14 I've got a stack of them. I'm going to start a whole bunch more that later on this winter too
02:18 but I wanted to start some white geraniums in the hope that maybe we'll have some blooms
02:23 early spring to work with in for interior spaces. I think that would be very fresh and very
02:29 very pretty. And then our lisianthus. So I typically start those seeds in January and I will probably
02:34 be starting more at that point but I wanted to try this year starting some a lot earlier than
02:39 I normally do because they grow so slow and even though the packet says 12 to 13 weeks I feel like
02:46 they need to be bigger by the time I put mine out every single year. I mean when I put mine out
02:51 they're like the size of the end of my thumb. Like they're so little and they usually take off and
02:55 they grow beautifully and maybe that's what I will go back to but I thought I would start a few trays
03:01 of them early just to see if I liked how they grew or if I was way ahead doing it this way.
03:08 I'm also considering working up some soil in our high tunnel out on the new property and possibly
03:13 putting some things in there for earlier blooms. So we've got two white varieties. There's a Voyage
03:18 2 White, a Mariachi, Mariachi, Pure White and then an Arena 3 Apricot. We have done a more extensive
03:26 like information video about lisianthus. Maybe we can link that down below but there are four
03:30 different groups of lisianthus. Group 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each group grows better in a specific climate
03:37 based on heat and light like the amount of hours of light. What I have here the Mariachi Whites and
03:44 the Voyage 2 Whites are group 2 which is an early season bloomer and then we've got the Arena 3
03:51 Apricot which are a group 3 which are kind of considered a main season bloomer. So the best
03:57 thing about like knowing which group your lisianthus are in is if you plant some in every group then
04:02 you're going to have staggered blooms even if you plant the seeds on the very same day. So we should
04:07 have some staggered blooms from these which should be really fun. As far as the rest of this greenhouse
04:12 goes it's a complete disaster in here right now. It's just become kind of a dumping ground. I still
04:19 have a bunch of dahlia tubers to work through on both sides. Paul and Bethany finished digging last
04:24 week. They finished up the project and we need to come through and clip main stems off like this and
04:31 remove any damaged tubers and that way we can get them all all packed up. But they sat here over this
04:37 weekend just to dry because you know we hose them down and remove a bunch of soil and it's
04:42 inevitable especially in like bigger thick clumps there's always some moisture tucked up in there
04:46 that you can't see. So it's good to let them dry a bit but we need to get after that and when we
04:51 finish that I'm going to go through this greenhouse and just clean. I got to clean and organize in
04:56 here oh my goodness. I mean we've got artichokes to plant. I've got a couple of Boscobel David
05:01 Austin roses that Sabrina in California sent out. Thank you Sabrina for those. And then we've got
05:06 a green stock I want to clean out. We still have some tomatoes going. There's strawberries kind
05:11 of starting to I mean they're blooming and producing still. Herbs and then there's a whole
05:16 bunch of beautiful things on this table. Anyway let's get started with our seeds. I think we'll
05:21 do our geraniums first.
05:32 So
05:42 got everything ready to roll. We've got our seed starting mix which is this right here
05:59 in our tub. I've got it lightly moistened so you want it to where when you squeeze it really hard
06:05 it holds a form but you squeeze it hard there's no moisture that's just soil falling off there's
06:10 no moisture coming out of it. So that is perfect. We've got our clean trays right here. I clean the
06:14 trays domes and the trays that they will be sitting in. Each one of these trays holds 24
06:21 seeds. Our geranium packet only has 10 seeds in it so one of these trays I'm only going to be
06:27 utilizing 10 cells. Under normal circumstances I would try to be as efficient as possible and
06:31 use up every single cell even if I was planting something different in the same tray but since
06:37 we're so early I think we're going to have these graduated out of their seed trays by the time
06:42 I need them again for more seed starting. We're going to go ahead and fill up the other three
06:46 completely with the lisianthus. Now for both of these you really don't want to cover the seeds
06:51 like geraniums you can barely just barely cover them with soil. With the lisianthus you don't
06:56 really want to cover them with any soil they need light in order to germinate so in that case we use
07:01 a layer of vermiculite a very fine layer over the top of the soil surface that will help keep well
07:07 it'll allow enough light to the seed so it can germinate but it'll help keep moisture levels in
07:11 check and will help with algae growth which I have dealt with with lisianthus before as well as
07:15 fungus nets which I will show you once we get into the studio what I use for those. But in every case
07:20 once I started using vermiculite on the top of my seed trays I use it on everything now. It's
07:26 just been a little bit of a game changer for me it helps with so many different things so
07:30 anyway I do have vermiculite out here in fact I had to unload it from this tub into a burlap sack
07:36 we use it to store dahlias in so this is what it looks like right here. Okay for our geraniums I'm
07:43 going to try to just do every other cell here I don't know how good I'm going to be at that let's
07:48 see two four six eight ten eleven yep do one more cell
08:16 so
08:30 geraniums are all done we ended up with 11 seeds so I just barely covered them just enough to kind
08:44 of like almost pinch soil around the seed to make sure that it would stay put and then our fine layer
08:49 of vermiculite. I need to grab some plant ID tags though before I get too far in especially for those
08:55 lisianthus. Oh yes I have some out here four perfect. I always think I'll remember which
09:02 tray is which and I don't every time I don't. Okay we've got our tags made for the lisianthus
09:19 this is what the seeds look like they're really little but you can see they're pelleted they'll
09:22 either be white or yellow. We're going to fill up the entire trays to plant now keep in mind if you
09:27 have pelleted seeds like this the shelf life is not as good. They recommend that all pelletized
09:32 seeds be used within that a year of purchasing that seed which I think I'm still within that
09:37 year window but these were meant for last growing season I just didn't use them and I haven't ordered
09:42 my fresh ones yet so that means I'm going to be putting more seeds per cell than maybe I normally
09:46 would with the geraniums you'll notice I only put one seed per cell because I almost always get 100
09:51 germination rate out of the geraniums it's incredible. Usually get pretty good out of the
09:56 lisianthus but because these are pelleted I will use more. Also this will go a lot faster
10:01 filling an entire tray with soil is a lot quicker than filling every other cell.
10:18 so
10:25 so
10:54 so for this first tray if you get in here you can see I use four or five seeds per cell
10:58 which is still probably too many but after I got into it I realized I didn't really want to save
11:03 any more of these seeds I may as well just use them up and I'll order fresh ones to start later
11:08 on and that way we have more likelihood that we'll end up with 24 or more plants we can always
11:13 separate them. So now we take our vermiculite and just do a nice layer right over the top of those
11:20 seeds just a very fine layer and voila tray one of lisianthus done.
11:37 so
11:47 I am updating my seed inventory right now before I forget. I need to be better about doing that. I
12:00 have a spreadsheet where I keep all of my seed inventory that way when I go to order seeds it's
12:06 really easy for me to tell if I already have some or if I need more of this or that. Typically like
12:11 if I run out of something I will highlight it in yellow so that I know when I go through. I can
12:16 quickly see like when I was down at the garden center yesterday I got some seeds for my vegetable
12:21 garden for this next season and for this winter I'm going to grow some stuff in here and I was
12:25 able to bring up my spreadsheet on my phone and I could tell exactly what I needed it was so nice.
12:29 So I just wiped all my lisianthus out and let's go up to geraniums here let's see
12:36 maverick white. I have showed you guys this seed inventory spreadsheet before and we will show you
12:42 again when I probably this winter when we sit down and go through and organize and probably add some
12:47 more stuff in. So anyway let's head these in head these into the studio let's take these into the
12:52 studio.
13:02 So
13:09 So
13:35 Okay now that they're in the studio I'm going to take my sprayer and just settle all the seeds in.
13:42 The fact that we pre-moisten the soil makes this step a lot easier. The whole point of doing that
13:54 is that you've got a nice consistent moisture level throughout the whole cell all the soil
13:59 and it helps the seeds not float around. You know how sometimes when the soil is dry it tends to
14:04 like puff puff up and it creates water channels and the seeds can float around. One
14:11 and we likely will not have to water these for well a little while
14:20 few days at least with this initial water in.
14:29 So
14:37 All right all done and watered in and underneath the grow light. So typically we don't have to
14:44 have lights on unless the seed that you're planting requires light in order to germinate. So
14:49 it's something to read the back of the packet make sure of that because you do want to make sure to
14:53 pop your lights on. These run for 16 hours a day. They are on a timer so they will turn off at night
14:59 and that way the seeds will get what they need. Now the geraniums here do benefit from some bottom
15:05 heat. I don't think that that's necessary for lisianthus but I put just a single heat mat
15:11 underneath this one just until they germinate. Also the humidity domes I only put on here until
15:16 the seedlings germinate. So I wait till the full tray has germinated and then off comes the dome.
15:21 This will trap in moisture which is good for this point. We want to make sure to keep everything on
15:26 the damp side until things germinate but once they have especially with lisianthus you want to make
15:31 sure to allow the top layer of soil to dry out a bit between watering. Now this is what I use to
15:36 water in here. It's super super handy because it's just a pump like you do this. Let's see what needs
15:43 to be misted. Here's a fern and then it just waters with just a click of the button and I just watered
15:50 them in lightly today like I said just to kind of settle them all into their spots. And this you guys
15:54 is what I use for fungus gnat control. This is a strain of the Bacillus thuringiensis or BT.
16:00 It's what we use for um budworm control outside on our supertunias and super bells. On geraniums as
16:06 well. Budworms like to to eat geraniums. I did not know that until this year. And I've tried all kinds
16:11 of different things. The mosquito bits is a total pain. I've done sand on the top of the soil surface.
16:16 I've done multiple other insecticides and this is the only one that has really taken care of the
16:20 problem. You apply it via like a soil drench. So you it's like a little powder a little brown powder
16:26 that you mix in with your water and water it in. So since I wanted just to mist these today and get
16:31 them kind of settled into their space I'm going to start treating this soil like right away the next
16:35 time they need water. I'll just mix it up in a little watering can and just be very careful when
16:39 I water it in. That way we start any or stop rather any problem from even occurring. I will also put
16:47 out yellow sticky traps. Do I see a little fly already? Oh no that's a big fly. Okay good. Fungus
16:54 gnats are the thing of nightmares sometimes. Oh if you have a really heavy infestation you want to
16:59 make three applications of the natural one week apart from one another and then you can back off
17:04 and start using it at the light infestation rate. Which there's a chart on there it tells you how to
17:09 mix it if you have a light infestation or if you have a heavy infestation and then it gives you the
17:13 whole schedule on how you're supposed to be handling it. Now I did google it because if you
17:18 look up the price of like the tub I have here it's insane. It's an expensive. I pulled the trigger on
17:24 this big one because I figured and I hope that I'm gardening for lots of years so I can use this for
17:28 a long time. I did see it in half pound increments and then I think you can get it in little packets.
17:33 I have seen it available like that before. It didn't come up on my initial search just now
17:38 but I did see the half pound which is like 40 dollars. It stretches really far too that's why
17:42 I figured like I'm only putting a tiny bit in a watering can every time I'm using it so I will
17:47 be able to use this for a long time. And they should be perfect in here. I do like to do a lot
17:51 of my seeds starting now out in our greenhouse now that we are keeping it heated but I have to
17:56 on some things that need more heat like these want a consistent about 70 to 75 degrees in order to
18:02 germinate. It's just more consistent in here. In the greenhouse it dips down like it'll dip 10-15
18:08 degrees before it comes back up and it does get cooler in there when we're in and out in and out
18:12 all day long you know we get little drafts of air. I think it's just nice and very still in this
18:17 location which is something that you want to fix once they start to grow. You want to put a fan in
18:21 here. We won't want it to be still. We'll want an oscillating fan to keep those seedlings happy but
18:26 hopefully we'll be able to update you on that once they start to grow. Now the Elysianthus will take
18:31 upwards of two weeks to germinate. The geraniums sometimes I see germination in like two days
18:37 just depends and that is it you guys for seed starting today. So exciting that we actually
18:43 have some of those things going. I'm going to set an alarm for four o'clock every day
18:50 to go check my seedlings that time of year. I need to set an alarm for my houseplants too.
18:57 Okay let's run out and get those houseplants done and taken inside.
19:02 Got some leftover soil here.
19:09 Switching over to the regular potting soil at this point and I'm only going to repot two of
19:26 these. The other one I have one of those little pots that you can slide it down in.
19:31 Cash pot is that what they're called? Let's do our little guy first.
19:34 Now I don't know a huge amount about each one of these plants except for
19:47 they all like bright indirect light so they don't need to be in a super sunny location. This one the
19:54 white wizard philodendron I believe it would like to be planted on a pole or a trellis. They
20:01 are a little bit happier that way which I will probably add not today but at some point.
20:06 So you can see that root system right there it looks really healthy not super pot bound.
20:15 It is such a pretty plant though. It says that leaf joy this is a collector's edition variety.
20:27 I do have a pink princess philodendron right so it's called it's in the Hartley. Little Prince
20:32 sent it out and it's gorgeous. And you guys when we went and planted these I put soil in the pot
20:38 and made a little well. When we picked these out not planted these when we picked these out
20:42 yesterday it was a Sunday down at the garden center and we met my parents down there for lunch
20:46 and my mom turned on the Christmas music and turned on all the trees and we were able just to
20:52 like stroll around and really look at things. It was so fun. Okay this one is planted. Now I'm not
20:59 going to add any soil top dress for a week or two because I just want to gauge water level. I want
21:05 to see how quickly it dries out and it's a lot easier to tell if there's nothing on top of the
21:09 soil surface. So I've got my saucer here it's nice and dirty but I'm also very dirty. Hard to keep
21:17 things clean when your hands look like that. And I love this pot. It looks like all kind of has that
21:23 patina hard water stain slash white. I don't know it's age it's really pretty. Okay that one is done
21:31 looks awesome. Now our bigger one. Hopefully I have enough soil. I don't know if I will.
21:40 This bag of soil has been in here open for a little while so it's really dry. I'm just kind
21:45 of moistening it up a bit. So I'm going to slide this one out of the pot. You can see the roots
21:51 underneath already. Oh there we go. Oh my whoa I'm gonna need break that up a bit.
22:04 Okay I've got my well already created so we're just going to pop this down in.
22:08 Looks pretty doesn't it? And then our fern is the one that's going to be going down in.
22:14 So I'm going to go ahead and just kind of go around and just kind of go around and
22:18 make sure that I've got my well in the right spot. So I'm going to go ahead and just kind of
22:23 go around and make sure that I've got my well in the right spot.
22:34 Okay I've got my well already created so we're just going to pop this down in. Looks pretty doesn't it?
22:40 And then our fern is the one that's going to be going down in
22:45 another pot inside. So let's get these all taken in.
22:52 Okay the plants ended up. The fern right here and that's the one that I slid down into a decorative pot.
22:57 It's Toy Central in here. I just think that looks so fresh right there. The next one on this side.
23:06 The white variegation makes it pop. Now the color we have in here on the walls it's called
23:12 a thunder gray. It's from Sherwin Williams and it's a kind of a dark green gray. I love it. It's so pretty.
23:19 But it is nice to have some plants that have some brighter pops of color because of the darkness of
23:24 the walls. They stunt they it makes them stand out. And then the last one ended up in this corner.
23:30 Oh it just fills it up so beautifully. I love it so much. You can see we've put our Christmas tree
23:36 up over here and I just needed a little something to fill in this space. Usually I have a little
23:42 floor lamp right in the corner except for it's over by this chair now for the next month or two.
23:48 But again the variegation just makes that plant pop. And as a side note our dried flower mantle
23:53 has held up beautifully. Lots of nice color. Love the pumpkins and squash and that will stay up there
24:02 until right after Thanksgiving and then we'll move some Christmas stuff in. And you guys that is going
24:07 to be it for today's projects. I popped back outside because Samantha Grace wanted to play
24:11 with that beach ball so bad and I asked her to please wait until I was done showing you guys
24:15 the plants because it gets quite loud. So that's what she's doing inside right now and it is a
24:20 beautiful day out today. I mean just oh it's overcast but it just is warm. It's supposed to be
24:25 55 and in the 50s for the next five to six maybe seven days. So I am just so thankful and always
24:32 fun to get seeds started. I mean it just makes you start feeling like oh my garden for next year is
24:38 already on the way. And that is a kind of a necessary feeling for me during the winter months.
24:43 I need to feel like okay it's not going to be winter forever. We will get to spring. It will get
24:48 here and it's just fun to have those projects going on. And then of course new houseplants so
24:53 oh so fresh and so nice and we actually have time to focus on them now which is great.
24:58 So anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it
25:03 was helpful and we will see you in the next video. Bye.