Oho there plant lovers and YouTubers
it's Justin coming to you from the Big
Blue Nation once again and today I was
going to talk to you about AA Cario
hetero uh I guess it kind of sounds like
Aura but it's the Northfolk Island P I
don't know if any of you have ever heard
of this but I guess around the winter
time and Christmas time these beasts are
everywhere they're all over the big box
stores uh home improvement stores and
grocery stores despite common name the
plant is actually not a pond um as you
can see my giant one over here I
decorated it up for the holidays um it
does have really lightweight kind of
easygoing branches that will tend to Sag
if you use heavier ornaments so you want
to kind of get the lighter plastic ones
um and if you do kind of any folding of
origami there's a nice Gap in between
the branches that will uh display your
origami or ornaments really well and uh
it can also tolerate paper chains and
popcorn strands anything kind of
lightweight like that um now the smaller
one I've had this guy for about 2 or 3
years uh you'll notice that some of the
Browning on the branches uh that's
really normal for a guy like this uh
these are a tropical plant they're
native to uh Norfolk Island which is an
Australian Island uh right there off the
coast it's kind of by new calonia
somewhere in the South Pacific
Australian ocean down around that area
uh and that Island really is known for
its ponds I.E the Norfolk and it's
Jagged Cliff so it's a really beautiful
kind of smaller Island and they were
discovered I believe it was around
1772 by yes it was uh 1772 to 1775 by
Captain James Cook I believe that was
his second Expedition that he kind of
went over there by that island and uh
after he discovered this plant it went
into circulation not too long after so
uh this is kind of a newer newer kind of
house plant it didn't hit the Americas
till around the 2000s maybe the 1990s
somewhere along there but like I said
it's been a really popular plant ever
since then um with light these guys can
adapt to a really a lot of different
kind of situations uh they like a really
nice direct kind of bright light so they
would thrive in a Southern facing window
uh but they can also get by with a lot
of indirect light as well I've had
friends say that they give anywhere from
about 2 to 3 hours of indirect light of
day so like I was saying it would really
thrive in a Southern facing window uh
but it will actually live just fine in a
Eastern or Western facing window as well
uh in the summertime these plants really
should be outside they are from the
tropical areas so they can handle a
little bit of uh direct sunlight they
like a lot of humidity and unfortunately
whenever we get these plants and we see
them in the stores they're kind of in
their dormant phase of their annual
growing cycle so once you get these guys
they will not need any fertilizer
they'll need hardly any water at all uh
you will need to give them some but uh
not as much as you would during its an
it's actual growing cycle in the summer
or the spring or the early fall about
that time in its uh most active phase of
growing I would give this plant probably
one to two cups of water for this guy
and probably about 2 to three cups of
water at least once a week for this guy
just enough that youd see excess water
draining off the bottom if your plant
does have a saucer you'll make sure you
want to kind of get rid of any kind of
water that is standing there because
these plants they don't do well with
standing water they don't like to have
their feet saturated for a long time
time so uh anything that keeps them
soaking wet it will actually give them
root Rod so I will give your plant
enough water to actually drain out the
bottom of the pot and then after that
about 20 minutes I would go ahead and
drain any kind of excess out uh after
about 20 minutes the plant's really
going to take all that it can really
hold but during the winter time you
don't need to water them as much if
you're going to water your plant at
least once a week during the summer and
fall and spring then about the winter
time when it's dormant I would probably
water it once a month maybe twice a
month at a full range I say this because
they are dormant so they're not doing
any more growing they just need a little
bit of water just to get them through
and to keep them alive uh now in the
winter time we also keep our houses
really dry with fireplaces uh radiators
and just you know the heat so these
plants will dry out and they'll actually
get uh really kind of hard crispy dry
needles and they'll actually start
dropping and if you step on one of these
Barefoot or with a sock you'll know it
so uh either use a humidifier with these
trees or I kind of missed them in the
summertime I'd probably do it about once
a day uh maybe once every 2 to 3 days in
the summertime and it will need a little
bit of misting uh during the winter time
as well or the needles will get kind of
crunchy and brown and fall off and as I
was saying now they will randomly start
to dry up and lose kind of a smaller
bottom needles uh but that is normal so
if you do see a little bit of brown
that's nothing to be concerned about but
once you do start to get to see a lot of
brown around the bottoms and the kind of
newer needles uh you do want to have a
little bit of concern and maybe kind of
give it more water or a little bit more
misting and as I was saying these plants
do well in a south facing window
temperatures never ever let this plant
experience weather below
45° um it's actually says online that
they could probably do around 40 I
wouldn't tempt that uh these are from
the tropical areas now they do
experience some cold but just not for a
long extended period of time so anytime
um it does get cold you want to bring
this plant in
transplanting um this guy's got a slow
growing kind of root system uh I believe
the roots are a little bit thicker
they're not nothing crazy but they do
kind of get a little bit thick um they
do kind of grow slow so won't really
need to transplant this guy that often
I'd say once every 2 to 3 years and I
really only would do that once you maybe
see some of the roots kind of poke
through the bottom of the pot or come
through the top of the soil then you'll
know it's about time to go ahead and
Transplant it and remember keeping a
tree uh or any kind of pot or plant in a
pot will keep it on the slower kind of
smaller size and that will kind of
reduce the height that this plant can
get to I believe the tallest plant one
of these that I've ever seen indoors was
at a doctor's office and it was close to
about 20 ft um so if it's given the
right conditions and nutrition uh these
plants can get rather tall indoors but
I've never seen one over about 20 ft
outdoors and its natural habitat they
can get to be about 200 ft so they can
take off outside but inside uh they are
restricted with your pots so um and if
you kind of got a smaller space for
these plants an apartment or something
like that and uh you're wanting to keep
it in the same pot without it getting
too much bigger instead of transplanting
it what you can do is actually remove
the plant and take off as much of the
soil or substrate that you can and start
to trim the roots back uh you can cut
about 40 to 50% of the root structure
off you can cut up to about 3/4 of a
root ball without actually doing a whole
lot of harm to the plant but uh if
you're just trying to kind of keep it on
the smaller side
and kind of free up some space in the
pot uh just trim it back with a clean
pair of uh pruning shears or sanitize
scissors and always make sure you
sanitize them because if you've cut on
anything else you could get germs and
transfer that from plant to plant so
anytime you're going to cut on one plant
before you do it to another sanitize
your uh cutting shears as well but once
you trim that back to a height that you
kind of want to see you'll kind of get
to know uh once a year
about how much growing it'll do you can
kind of make a midal note and trim it
back to about just as kind of close to
the root ball as you can and that will
actually kind of give your uh plant a
little bit more room in the pot and then
you can just stick it back in its same
old pot put some new substrate down in
there and your plant will be fine pests
there's spidermites spidermites are a
beast with this guy uh they will run
rampant on there and with these small
kind of condensed Le packed branches
they'll really have a fi day running
their uh webs up and down there so um
with spiderm fortunately spiderm are one
of the easier pest that you can take
care of you just simply take these guys
and you sit them down in your bathtub
and just kind of spray it off with the
hose if it's during the winter time if
it's during the summertime just take it
out back and use your garden hose and
spray it off all that kind of water will
just knock it off and um I'd let it dry
and then go back and kind of look it
over and if you still see some spites or
anything then you can kind of get your
insecticides or fungicides in on that
but uh in nature the plants have natural
occurring rain that knock all their
pests off and kind of keep them a little
bit healthier but uh since they're on
the inside with us they really do depend
on us to kind of help them out with that
so I would just uh spray it off and give
it a day or two and if you see kind of
more webs developing then I would go
ahead and spray it down with a nice
insecticidal soap and use that kind of
conservatively you don't want to use a
whole bunch uh because that can kind of
hurt the plant I mean it is made for the
plant so it would be just fine but too
much of any kind of chemical can be kind
of a bad thing aphids aphids are another
kind of problem that this plant does
kind of struggle with and if you kind of
see down on the top of my soil I've got
a bunch of white pellets on there and
that's called nat nick uh what that is
is just super heated glass that gets to
to almost kind of like a sand
consistency uh you put that over top of
the soil about a/ in to an inch deep and
the Pebbles will actually puncture the
exoskeleton of any kind of pests and
will actually kill the pests so anything
that's kind of laid eggs down in your
soil whenever you bring it in from the
summertime and you're not sure if
anything's down in your soil you can put
Nat nck over top of your soil and then
anything that comes up after it hatches
out of your soil will just die and it'll
keep anything else from burrowing down
in there laying any more eggs down there
as well and anything that kind of gets
down and crawls around on it uh it'll
die as well uh the only bad thing about
the natn is that it is really
lightweight so when you go to water it
if you're not careful it'll move it
around and you'll have to reapply it um
also it does kind of have a lot of dust
to it whenever you apply it so when you
do apply you really do need to actually
wear kind of a mask or just take a
washcloth and put over your face and
turn the fan on when you apply it that
way it will kind of circulate some of
that dust and keep it from you breathing
it in uh but that stuff really is really
good that's really helped me if I've
ever had any problems with the aphids
scale I haven't seen the problem with
scale um so if you've ever had one of
these plants and you've known that it
does have a problem with scale actually
let me know that because I've got these
two big boys here um I just got this one
a couple months ago right before the
Christmas rush uh and I really thank God
that I got it the time I did because it
is huge and all of its leaves and
needles are nicely intacted it doesn't
seem to have any kind of gaping sides
it's not leaning it's straight up it
looks really good I do like these plants
a lot if I had to pick a top five plant
the Norfolk Island pine really would be
kind of up there on my list for me I
don't know uh the largest ones you've
seen but uh some people can do some
really good things with these
nice long and uh graceful kind of
looking branches uh like I said they do
get really big so they will need a
little bit of space and uh they really
do kind of uh demand the attention of
any kind of room that it's in so well I
hope you guys do have one of these and
if you do get one just remember after
the holiday season you don't have to
throw it out these plants can last a
long time I believe I've seen some where
they say about 100 years 120 years so uh
just as long as you're giving it a lot
of TLC and uh you do your research on it
uh these plants can be one of your
oldest living plants and one of your
biggest plants too well guys I guess
that's really all I have to say about
the araria hetro but that's the
Northfolk Island pine let me know uh
leave me a comment let me know if you've
had any kind of success or failures with
these plants and go ahead and hit that
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right YouTubers You all take it easy and
don't forget always PL prudently happy
holidays guys