- Welcome back, my green-loving community.
Today I'm going to talk to you about
one of my favorite plants right now.
Earmuffs to all the fiddles in the room,
but I am really loving the
variegated rubber tree.
Let me tell you what, the
variegated rubber tree is
a touching pink, a splash of
cream, and a cupful of green.
The foliage is so unique,
it's so beautiful.
It's like a little bit of camouflage, so
if you're looking for something
that can literally pop
from the other greenery
that you have in your home,
I actually suggest the
variegated rubber tree.
It's one of my favorite plants right now,
because most of you, who actually want
large, tropical plants in your homes,
I believe the rubber tree
is probably your best bet.
The beauty of this plant
is that it can grow
up to 25 feet in the right environment.
If you guys have that, I'm sure you
probably actually live in a greenhouse.
Honestly, it's just about care level.
What you give to them, they give back.
They're not really a finicky plant
like the fiddle-leaf fig or
ferns or the majestic palm.
Let's talk about light.
There's different types of light
that it can actually thrive in.
That coasts from bright, direct sunlight,
bright, indirect sunlight,
or just medium light.
Anything lower than that, you don't want
to have a rubber tree in that space.
Now, let's talk about how
you're gonna water this plant.
This particular plant loves to be watered
when the top two inches of
soil are completely dry.
Now, what does that mean?
Completely dry, how do you know that?
Well, what you're gonna
do is you're gonna take
an index finger and you're gonna
stick it right into the dirt.
When you pull your finger out,
if the soil just falls off,
it is time to water it.
If it's sticking to your finger,
if the soil is sticking to your finger
and your finger's kinda muddy,
that means to give it some time.
Now, when you're watering
it, what you wanna do is,
if you have a pot, obviously,
that has a drainage hole,
you're gonna make sure you
water it all the way through
so that the water comes
out of the drainage hole.
If you don't have a
drainage hole in your pot,
well, it's just gonna be a
bit harder for you to tell
exactly when you've given
your plant enough water.
I suggest pots with drainage holes.
We talked about that in the past,
so go check out that video.
Let that water sit in that base tray
for about 15 to 30
minutes, so that the roots
and the soil that didn't get a chance
to actually soak up some of that water
can do so in that
timeframe, but after that,
if there's still water in your base tray,
what you're gonna wanna do
is you wanna take that plant,
lift it off the base tray, and take that
base tray to the sink,
tub, wherever, window,
toss it out, and then
place the plant back.
Let's just say your rubber
tree has grown to 25 feet.
I don't know why you're watching this,
'cause you're obviously
doing a wonderful job
taking care of your rubber tree,
but what I would say is
if it is a larger plant,
what I do for some of my larger plants
once I water them and the
water hits the base tray,
is I take either a towel,
wrap that around the base tray
and soak up all that water,
take that towel to the sink,
or to a bucket, you wring it
out, or you can take a baster,
like a turkey baster, a chicken
baster and (imitates baster)
suck all of that water out.
Third, you're gonna want
to make sure that you are
tending to the plant, and
I've talked about that
a lot in the past, too.
And obviously, if you're
in love with greenery and
you have a lot of plants in your home,
you're probably already doing that,
but for those of you who
don't, and for those of you
who haven't really thought about it,
tending to your plants
means getting in there,
wiping the leaves down, checking for bugs.
You wanna just make sure
that you're spacing time
maybe once every two weeks just in there,
wiping the plants down just to
take off that layer of dust.
It also helps to give more exposure
to the leaf surface
itself, so the more light
that the leaf surface can be exposed to,
the better the plant will do.
Fourth, let's talk about best
times to re-pot your plant,
and a lot of you are like,
"When do I re-pot my plant?"
"How do I know when to re-pot my plant?"
For the rubber tree,
what you're gonna do is,
you're gonna re-pot it when
you see the roots coming out
of that drainage hole of your pot.
If you're carrying it
still in the nursery pot,
or just in the pot that you have,
once you see those roots creeping
out of the drainage hole,
that's when you know it's time to re-pot.
If it's winter, if it's
fall, you're gonna wait.
You wanna wait to re-pot.
The best time to re-pot your plants
are definitely spring and summer.
It's just the best time
because it's growth season,
so your plants are already energized.
They're ready to produce more
and have that energy to do so.
Some plants go dormant during that time,
so in spring and summer,
it is always the best
time to re-pot a plant.
Spring and summer bring me to
tip number five, fertilization.
You wanna fertilize your plants
during the spring and summer.
You wanna fertilize that rubber tree
so that it can produce or can help produce
those new leaves so that
it can look beautiful
throughout spring and summer,
so that once winter comes
again, it can be strong
and ready to hold onto what it produced
throughout those months.
So, yeah, that's what it takes
to make sure your variegated rubber tree
stays looking (clicks tongue).
Hope this helps.
Have fun.