Ep. 93 - Two In-depth Plant Updates

Chill 'n Chat

In this month's Chill and Chat, the Plant Daddies go deep with two updates on plants featured in former episodes -

Stephania erecta, the charismatic caudex plant from Episode 13, and the Fiddle Leaf Fig from Episode 39. Are they alive? Yes! But has everything gone as planned for these plants? Not quite, but there isn't any bad news! Matthew makes the biggest cut he's ever made, and Stephen "sets himself free."

Mentioned in this episode:

• air layering, strategic pruning, and managing the growth of a plant that wants to become an enormous tree

• plants with deciduous dormancy periods

• how we feel about trend plants after the trend has passed and we’re still growing them

We learned some things about growing compact, leafy Stephania erecta plants during their first active-growing season in our care, so after coming out of dormancy, we’ve adjusted some of our care (higher light, more frequent watering) to get a more rewarding experience this time around!

But for those of you who were interested in the Fiddle Leaf Fig updates…

Here is the photo series of the process of chopping off the air layered portion, potting it up, and seeing new growth emerge on the trunk I beheaded. It’s been a long process, but so far, so good!

The Fiddle Leaf Fig ready to be chopped!

First step: Prune off the longer branches. This reduces the amount of foliage and tissue the air layered root system will need to support, and promote branching when it begins to resume foliar growth.

And off comes the second branch!

The Fiddle Leaf Fig, looking quite sad but ready for the next step!

Bonus propagation material!

Scariest chop of my life! But it’s time!

The air layered cutting is now on its own!

Time to pot it up… but first, let’s check out the root ball.

Not bad - it’s well-rooted!

The root ball has such substantial growth that it holds together without any soil falling away after I removed the container it rooted into.

This pot is just large enough to hold the root ball, with space for some fresh substrate, but not too much - it’ll need to be potted into a larger container fairly soon, but for now, it just needs to establish on its own roots.

Freshly potted, and ready for a thorough watering!

She’s big enough that I watered her in the bath tub, and left her to drain for a while before moving her to a warm, bright, humid location to establish and acclimate.

And what about the portion of the Fiddle Leaf Fig that I chopped the top off of? Well, it also went into bright, warm, humid conditions, and I applied keiki paste to several nodes. Before long, it started sprouting new shoots.

So happy to see so much growth!

Unfortunately, even with all the new shoots that sprouted, most of them didn’t go further. The strongest two became dominant, and eventually became the new growth that this Fiddle Leaf Fig is continuing to work on, but at a substantially shorter height than it had branched before, so I’m happy!

Looking forward to seeing how this plant looks in another year, after what I put it through!

Then, if you’re curious about the initial process of air layering the Fiddle Leaf Fig, I took the video below in June 2020 to show what I did.

You’ll notice that the sphagnum ball is significantly smaller than the plastic container that held the root ball when I made the chop in April 2021 - that’s because I wanted a more substantially developed root system before removing it from the parent plant. I just cut a hole with the diameter of the trunk in the bottom of a takeout soup container, and then another hole of the same size in the center of the lid. I cut a slit in both of them so I could carefully position the container over the rooted sphagnum ball, tape the slit, and then fill the container with potting substrate, give it a thorough watering, and secure the lid in place. It continued to root for several more months before I proceeded on to the final steps detailed above.