hello I'm Mike and welcome to Camden
garden center I'm going to give you some
help with some gardening advice hi I'm
Mike from Camden garden center in London
and I'm going to show you how to care
for a mother-in-law's tongue plant
that's a common name its botanical name
is Sansevieria and what you need is the
plants itself some water some fertilizer
and here what I'm going to use or
controlled-release
plant food tablets as you see on the
package down here these feed for six
months now in Britain and in the more
northerly latitudes of the world you
don't feed house plants in the winter
months because they're resting so this
only feeds for six months in effect it
feeds for the entire year and as much as
you apply these in April and when
they've been used up in September or
October when they become exhausted the
plant doesn't need to be fed anyway if
you look on the back of the container it
it tells you how many tablets use
depending on the diameter of the pots
now this pot is about 15 centimetres in
diameter so I'm going to use just one of
these pellets when you look at the
pellets the fertilizer is contained
within each of these little balls and
these balls are coated with a resin and
this allows a fertilizer to be released
from the tablets in a controlled fashion
they're very easy to use just make a
hole in the compost about an inch deep
push the peloton and then cover it up
with soil again every time this plants
watered from now on water will flow over
those tablets and the nutrients will be
released and flood the entire root ball
with fertilizer and that will keep your
plant happy and healthy
when you're watering plants it's
important to do it correctly I'm going
to pour water on this No and I want to
make sure that I wet the entire roof all
of the plant so I let one let a lot of
water pass through and then give it some
more and you want to put on sufficient
water for that water to wet the entire
root ball of the plant don't just put a
little bit of water in because if you
only put a little bit of watering that
will saturate the top layer of the
compost and yet leave the rest of it dry
and a lot of amateur gardeners that's a
mistake they may they give a little bit
of water regularly the way to do it is
to give a lot of water but not to water
them that frequently no this is a
succulent and like it's close allies the
cacti they don't need to be watered very
frequently at all now I'm going to lift
this up and I can feel that potties is
fairly heavy because it's got so much
watering but it's still not thoroughly
saturated
and you'll see the excess water is
draining out of the drainage holes at
the bottom of the plant wait until all
that water's drained away and then you
can replace this pump back on its plant
sorcerer indoors
mother-in-law's tongue plants like quite
brightly lit conditions not direct
sunlight but brightly lit conditions
they are grown for the attractive leaves
although this particular specimen is
starting to show flowers the flowers
haven't opened yet the little white
flowers but here they are in bud and the
plants actually exuding excess SAP and
you'll see these tiny little glistening
droplets and that's the sugars from the
plant exuding out of the tissues
mother-in-law's tongue plants are very
easy plants to grow and they're very
tolerant they'll tolerate cool
conditions hot conditions bright
conditions shady conditions so they're a
very easy plant to grow if you've never
grown houseplants before and that's how
to care for a mother-in-law's tongue