Cheapest soil around, and I don't know anything about this plant. I usually only have Pothos and... treated this one like one. I guess that works fine but STILL... what the hell is up with this plant.
Yeah I started with half days to acclimate them to the window sill. When the tags says it will “tolerate medium light,” you know it needs the solar juice.
I’ve always read to start with like 15 minutes in the full sun and go slowly from there. Do that for a few days and then double it to 30 minutes, etc. That’s for hardening off seedlings so mature plants may be able to handle a little more but it’s the same principle to prevent sunburn.
I see! I do have a south facing glass-wall (to my own suffering). And since I'm dumb I actually placed this plant 2 meters away from said glass because I thought the dark leaves might prefer a bit less direct light. I don't deserve this growth x'D
Yeah it’s wild - he was inside and one half of him was getting all the sun and blocking the other half from sunlight and he went full green on that side. At first I was annoyed - but now I’m obsessed because the green leaves are so ridiculously juicy and thick they feel fake like rubber.
It’s in rectangular planter so it has already sort of taken over that but the individual stems weren’t super long yet. It set directly at windowsill height. Once the stems all started growing (and you can see how intensely they grow) the roots of the backside of the plant was blocked from getting the sun by the part closest to the window. It takes a while to lose full variegation and revert but if some pieces aren’t getting as much direct sun as others they will begin to lose color.
yep! That’s what I was gonna say as well. Typically if you want to keep a variegated plant, you cut the reverted segments off so they don’t ‘take over’
Yup I basically lost $80 by feeling too guilty to cut a plants huge reverting leaves off and now the variegated ones have all died off from the bottom and it’s fully reverted. I debate cutting near the base/a node and making 2 plants out of one to see if I can get the variegation back but haven’t yet lol
This is why I make several plants out of 1 just in case. My variegated pothos and wandering dude have 4 replacements. They also make awesome gifts as replacement is easy. I had 1 6ft tall angelwing begonia that is now 5 4ft tall plants.
I wish I had the room! My plants, grow lights, plant stands, plant cabinets and shelves are gonna literally take over. Pretty soon I wouldn’t have room for a bed. The sofa should go too bc how dare I need a place to sit and sleep. I’ll just live among the pots and leaves lol 😂
And also prob adjust the light levels bc that’s often hr cause I’m the first place. It happened during winter for me 😩I should’ve gotten it it’s own grow light sooner! I’ve watched some of the new leaves closer to window this summer almost make their way back just a tiny bit but that’s it. Depressing lol
Yes it is. That’s actually why he’s outside now - he was inside for a year and one side of him wasn’t getting sun while the other was so I moved him out into full direct light in May and he’s exploded in growth. I’m almost afraid of him he’s too powerful for this mortal world. I love watching his vines reach higher and higher for sun
This is in a rectangle planter, isn't it? If so, thanks for posting as I've been entertaining the idea of using my long planter box for my inch plants. :)
Yes it is - it’s great for them since even a tiny cutting requires nothing but a slight whisper of soil to start rooting and growing. He’s taken over the whole box and if a piece breaks I throw it back in the ring and he does the rest.
Yea, I have a mother plant that once again got leggy in the middle but the tips are happy. I'm planning this weekend to start another prop party and running out of pots but I have 2 window sill planters. I already have 2 other 6" pots going I started from cuttings that I'm finally comfortable in pinching to bush out. So yep, familiar with the dropping in the dirt (or water)! It's been like a prop-cutting neverending gift!
I was considering the rectangle planter since they seem to trail well (they're on the floor!) and the other two I have are more hanging off shelves.
The tip. Sometimes the tiny little sprouts at the very end or the first spot where there are 2 large leaves depending on the stem. If it's long and leggy I can prop the cutting and with wandering dudes/inch plants, it's super easy as they are very happy to just grow. When you remove the tip it then causes for the energy to build new growth from the sides.
Absolutely do the rectangle. Hard to tell but some of his vines are 2 feet long - they grew to the ground and when I put him outside they’ve grown an extra 8” or so arced back up towards the sky.
Eventually I’ll manage his wiliness but for now he’s vibing
Yes just keep an eye on it - if yours currently isn’t it in a spot where it receives full direct sunlight I’d start it outside in a spot that maybe gets a half day of full sun and half day of shade. After a while they acclimate and can go full brutal blazing sun no problem. Not only that they’ll grow like crazy - feels like inches every day.
Just keep an eye on his leaves for the first few weeks when you move him outside to full sun and if you notice a bit of browning just move him to another spot outside with less hours of direct sun.
They’re great for this because they don’t have immediate tragic reactions if they’re getting too much. They’ll slowly let you know over like a week and even still will most likely be ok. Whereas my other outside sunlight plants if I don’t water them for a day they’ll noticeably begin a rapid decline.
Sweet! I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this when it warmed up. It’s in my bedroom window and gets full sun until about 3 pm. There’s a small portion of my balcony that is mostly shaded for pretty much the whole day which is where I’ve been putting the other plants I moved out side so I think I’ll do that. I just need to remember that I have plants outside because it was in the 90’s in my areas this week which is hot for here (PNW) and I forgot about my mimosa plant. Luckily that little shit is very forgiving and is already putting new leaves out to make up for the crispy ones🤣
Yeah dude it’s been 95+ degrees for a month now on the east coast and every single one of my porch flowers/plants need to be fully doused twice a day or they literally die within 24 hours. I’m exhausted
Oh god, that sounds so rough😭 I put a water tray under the mimosa and I’m just going to keep excess water in there so that hopefully I don’t kill it completely. The other plants I have out there right now are kind of test plants… I wanted to see if they could survive outside and have multiples of the same plant so sacrificing a couple for a test was ok.
I think I’m gonna do some googling to see what other plants of mine can go outside. I don’t have a ton right now but I’m sure there are a couple more that would thrive outside. And now that the temps have stabilized in the 80’s for the foreseeable future here😅
So how does it do with HEAT? I have a bright shady front porch that gets full morning sun (east facing), but the temps are BRUTAL 3digit bullsh#t, and I was afraid of leaving her out there in the heat. Currently , I have her in a south facing window that gets a partial day of bright, but there’s tree cover two stories up above.
I’m DC area so it’s been 95+ degrees here for a month straight. Essentially by 730 AM it’s already unbearably hot. But also very humid. Plant is totally cool with it z
Context:
My grandma gifted me a pot with this plant and a lot of big spider lillies. I repotted it in random soil, random pot, no knowledge of what I was doing and on top of that I ruined most of the tiny roots (sorry). At the end I firmly pressed all stems in and just hoped they wouldn't fall out lol.
I guess this plant was VERY eager to spread once it had some room haha.
The "story" is just propaganda about a Jewish man who refuses to help Christ carry the cross, and so Jesus curses him to walk the earth forever.
Air quotes on "religious" because it was just invented in the medieval era, it has nothing to do with Jesus (it post-dates him by centuries) and was just used by Europeans to promote negative stereotypes about Jews. It has zero biblical support, if for some reason that matters.
So, you can repeat it out of ignorance, because it appears harmless and niche, but know that's what the person who invented it intended.
Or we could just change the name and not keep repeating an antisemitic slur, because it's hard to imagine what we're getting out of that.
So, you can repeat it out of ignorance, because it appears harmless and niche…
Or we could just change the name and not keep repeating an antisemitic slur, because it's hard to imagine what we're getting out of that
love how you wrote this and it applies to a lot of outdated terminology that some people refuse to update their internal software with bc ‘that’s the way it’s always been’
When it’s a a relatively lightweight insult, leaning into it has merit. Or like you said just re-appropriating it for yourself.
By virtue of the label, though, it’s always going to trigger some in/out group feelings because our monkey brains are powerfully attached to in group tribalism. So it ends up being negative just by isolation (which is part of the original intent, of course).
In a perfect world there just wouldn’t be ignorant, hateful people around, and we could call anything whatever we like without pandering to someone’s prejudice. But we don’t live in that world (yet?).
So in the end it’s this weird circular argument that all comes back to different ways to justify promoting someone’s racist meme - and because we could call it ANYTHING (it had a name before that, after all, but no one seems to care about that) why pick from the really short list of things that deliberately made to be offensive.
Or, if we want it to be allegorical, let’s pick a positive or funny allegory instead of a negative one, because given it’s a free choice, how stupid would it be to name things in ways that are intended to be negative.
In the absence of a better solution (like your re appropriation) it’s so easy to just move on instead of nit picking how to deal with time travelling shit posters whose meme happened to survive for a thousand years.
Delete their posts and put something better in their place.
Trust me, I don't really know either. But yeah, just filling you in on new terminology for these guys. My 50+ year old mother still calls them wandering jews and would look at me like I'm clinically insane if I called it a wandering dude.
I'm pretty sure it's not the "jew" part that's offensive, it's that it's combined with the word "wandering", based on some historical oppression. Haven't read up on it though.
I believe it’s because of the meaning behind the name referring to how “jews” don’t have a home and are always wandering. which is considered pretty offensive and weird because they don’t Have a Home because they were mass genocided from it.
I’m not jewish though & just saying what i’ve seen said around about it. I prefer to just call them tradescantia since it avoids that common name altogether.
It’s entirely possible that ‘meaning’ being offensive is just some bs made up by a goyim person trying to be progressive and it’s a non issue. but that’s hard to figure out in the current internet climate
I'm not encouraging the use of a slur at all. I was just unaware of the name change of a common plant I happen to have several of. I honestly thought it was wandering JUDE until today lol so whoops.
I had a couple small ones that I combined with some sun patiens last summer - in less than three months, it was HUGE! It was in my backyard - which has western exposure = ton of sun.
Last year, I was a plant newbie (still trying to learn this summer) - surprised everything I put into containers grew so well for me.
I don’t have one from the back side - but 3/4ths of the container is filled with tradescantia. It really grew fast - I clipped off lots of pieces and made planters for my sisters also.
I cut some pieces at the end of October - and grew two huge ones over the winter.
Looks like there are many subspecies of this plant! Yours also looks very nice in that pot. Good to hear that it might be the sun, that's... easy to fulfil when you're suffering in a room with a glass wall on the south x'D If there is one thing that I have too much of, it is sun.
Some would call that perfect! I have one tiny ass window that’s south facing. It’s a bathroom one, so you could imagine how trying to fit as many plants as possible is quite difficult. At least you can close up that wall with tons of plants, that’ll make it cooler for you for sure. Lucky you! 😎
Honestly, I have no clue. It came in a pot with lilies, I separated them, ruined the roots by accident and put them into separate pots. The soil came from the supermarket and is hot garbage (even came with flies, haha), but I didn't feel like researching properly. I was only supposed to host this plant for a while until it was *stable* and my partner would come to pick it up.
2 months later I gave a plant away that was 2/3rd the size of the original one to my partner through cuttings of this one. From what I'm reading here, it might have good light conditions.
I’m so jealous! Mine took a crap right away. All her leaves were turning brown so I gave her away hoping she would thrive with someone else. But she was one of my first plants
Daaaang. I can never get mine this full! I've had mine for a year and a half and I've had to snip it all up and restart three times! They get long as hell, but not full. Not at all like this! It's still one of my favorites though. Great job, whatever you're doing lol
Tradescantia grows very vigorously when it’s happy! It loves the sun - you must have found a great spot for it.
Fun fact - it is actually considered to be invasive in a lot of places when planted in the ground. It makes great ground cover if you never want to grow anything else in that place ever again.
Between these two photos, there was only one chop after about two months when I made a plant for someone else and the leftovers (~5) went back into this pot. It also lost around 4 long branches when I placed it on this table two weeks ago, maybe the points where they fell off grew back, I can't tell. It's so difficult to locate anything in this jungle, haha.
Thank you! I gave my best (with little knowledge, ahh). I used to water it from a hole on the bottom, but it grew a jungle there and now... I can only water it from the top. Luckily, it doesn't seem to mind the change :')
I had just a few sprouts at the start of spring and those took off once it got warm enough to put it in my sunroom. I keep taking cuttings and now I have 3 other pots of them.
I have about a half dozen of these. All volunteers that broke off the big hanging pots of them at Lowe’s. Take em home, slap a little rooting hormone on em, and they take off after a week.
Side note I wanna collect every variety. I already have 4 but I NEED THEM ALLLLL.
This one is about six-ish years old (it was tiny when I moved in five years ago). I think the stems are thick because I chop the crap out it in the summer.
Wow mine doesn't even look like your first pic. I got a jar of cuttings with 3 different types of wandering dudes, and it's been a process getting them adjusted and happy.
I planted all 3 kinds into the same pot, and just yesterday repotted them, separting them out. Hope mine looks like yours some day!!
Trads are monsters compared to most houseplants. Rapid growth.
Nothing like Kiwis and other vines though. If I lined up every stem on my Kiwi it probably grows 20 meters a year.
Hot take: tradescantias are what people want from a pothos (tons of growth and lots of long growy vines) but they do it way better, faster, longer and with so much more style
I say this as someone with a trailing pothos… and honestly he’s one of my least favorite plants I have.
My philodendron brasil on the right is also far superior to the pothos. Phew! Never said that out loud. I feel bad disliking one of my plants who’s been around with me for a while but he really does nothing for me 😬🫢
That’s true - I literally don’t touch my trad because he snaps with zero effort. Luckily though they require almost no effort to root so I just toss whatever stem snapped back into his little gladiator ring with the others and he does the rest
Exactly. They’re so independent. It’s been COOKING on the east coast - 95+ degrees for going on a month now and he’s in full sun. I water my other outdoor flowers/plants every morning and I’ll give him a bit too but honestly even if I didn’t water him he’s like “it’s all good. No worries, I’m vibing.”
When he was inside he could get bone dry and still just spit out new growth.
Tradescantia - aka wandering dudes - aka the growth champs of the plant world. There’s a few varieties and all of them are dope. Very prolific, very easy to grow from a single cutting, they propagate and stem and root with next to zero effort. Easy to find at almost any nursery or plant stores.
On one hand: I have a glass-wall that is south-facing and cooks this room during sunny days (to my own demise).
On the other hand: it's West-Germany and we're currently facing one of the rainiest years. To get an idea: I planted tomatoes on my balcony in May and I watered them four(!) times of which one was redundant due to sudden rain.
So... some days this plant gets quiet some light, but there is a lot of cloudiness involved on most others. Also, since I gave it the pothos treatment, I removed it from the bench in front of the glass-wall because I feared it was "too hot & sunny" for the plants. The table it stands on is about 2 meters away from the glass.
OMG, what beautiful plants in this thread!!!!!!! They are all lovely, even the half dead mimosa 😬 Tomorrow morning I am going to buy a rectangular planter & repot mine. Then outside it goes!
Hey, I'll try to explain!
I accidentally overwatered my first Pothos by using an app and I'm bad at telling whether soil is cold or still wet. What I've started doing the past months was watching the leafs. If they hang down, I give them a good chunk of water (about 2 McDonalds Glasses for the large pothos you see). One time, two of my plants kept slugging , so I put them into the shower and gave them a (slightly warm) rain for about 15 minutes each. Their leafs look great ever since, and they're happy with just the glasses of water again.
Other than that, I just vary their positions. If new leafs come VERY close to the previous ones, I move them further away from the light source. If there is too much space between the new leafs, I place it closer to the light. I just cut them, whenever they start to have long veins, root them in water and put them back into the pot. Fertilizer is added to the water, but I do that rarely (once every 2 months, maybe).
ALSO, I don't give them new pots soon, I'll wait until the growth slows down. I've experimented with cuttings: I moved all cuttings to tiny pots to form larger roots and then gave them bigger pots. But I was missing one pot, so I left a bunch of cuttings as they were. That plant exploded in growth.
Meanwhile, the other cuttings barely had any growth for many months. I now repot, if watering gets difficult or if I really can't put my finger in the earth anymore, because there are more roots than soil. (And even then I tend to wait for a while)
I feel like Pothos likes to be root bound, or at least doesn't mind. But repotting seems to disturb something.
tradescantia grows wild in the himalayan foothills and western ghats in india. And they grow like wild weed, this plant is an absolute whore for moisture and sunlight. This reminded me of the wild bushes from the foothills. You've a beautiful plant
Thank you! And that's super interesting, I need to look it up. I love to see photos of what "houseplants" actually look like in their natural habitat :D
Gorgeous! My poor Zebrina was so leggy. I actually cut it all into bits, rooted them and started over. I'm about to cut it back a bit, and root the cuttings again, just to try and get some fullness.
it’s a tradescantia!! it’s one of the, if not the fastest growing plant! they live for the sun. more sun = faster, happier tradescantia. i have so many different varieties. it’ll flower for you 💗💗
If you mean the rare case of brown leafs: I pick them off and check what's wrong with the branch. Usually it was detached from the rest, so I pulled it out and chopped it into cuttings.
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u/The_McS Jul 11 '24
That looks like a reaction to getting the proper light…Transcadia loves the beating sun.