Giving my balcony garden planter a quick refresh! After a sunflower in this pot didn't end up making it, I'm replacing it with three beautiful, tropical Heliconia offshoots. 🌿✨
I brought my trough planter over to a friend’s garden to do the repotting. First, we emptied out the old, spent potting mix right into her garden beds—a simple way to recycle soil and add organic matter to the ground! ♻️🌱
Then came the fun part: digging up the new offshoots. Heliconias spread underground through thick stems called rhizomes, traveling horizontally in unpredictable directions. You never quite know where the root system is heading until you start digging! Some of those root connections were pretty tough to slice through with the shovel, but we successfully harvested three healthy shoots.
We potted them up in fresh, rich potting mix, gently watered in the Heliconias to help them settle, and loaded the planter up to take home to the balcony. ☀️
Heliconia Planting Tips:
Rhizome Division: Make sure each new shoot keeps a good piece of the rhizome connector and root system.
Slice Cleanly: Use a sturdy, sharp spade to cut through the thick underground stems between plants.
Refresh Soil: Always start with fresh, quality potting mix when planting new tropicals in containers.
Settle the Roots: Give them a good watering in right after planting to settle the fresh soil around the base.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave a comment below if you love growing tropical plants! 🌺👇
#Heliconia #Gardening #PlantTransplanting #BalconyGarden #ContainerGardening #TropicalPlants #GardenTips #Plants
I brought my trough planter over to a friend’s garden to do the repotting. First, we emptied out the old, spent potting mix right into her garden beds—a simple way to recycle soil and add organic matter to the ground! ♻️🌱
Then came the fun part: digging up the new offshoots. Heliconias spread underground through thick stems called rhizomes, traveling horizontally in unpredictable directions. You never quite know where the root system is heading until you start digging! Some of those root connections were pretty tough to slice through with the shovel, but we successfully harvested three healthy shoots.
We potted them up in fresh, rich potting mix, gently watered in the Heliconias to help them settle, and loaded the planter up to take home to the balcony. ☀️
Heliconia Planting Tips:
Rhizome Division: Make sure each new shoot keeps a good piece of the rhizome connector and root system.
Slice Cleanly: Use a sturdy, sharp spade to cut through the thick underground stems between plants.
Refresh Soil: Always start with fresh, quality potting mix when planting new tropicals in containers.
Settle the Roots: Give them a good watering in right after planting to settle the fresh soil around the base.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave a comment below if you love growing tropical plants! 🌺👇
#Heliconia #Gardening #PlantTransplanting #BalconyGarden #ContainerGardening #TropicalPlants #GardenTips #Plants
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00hi guys today we're going to be doing some garden propagation so my friends
00:06have got some haliconias in their garden and they put up offshoots all the time
00:10so we're gonna head over dig some up and give this pot a tropical upgrade
00:16replacing a sunflower that didn't quite make it
00:35okay so we're just gonna pop this in the car now and it will be the sunflowers
00:42unfortunate last trip
01:00okay so we're here now at my friend's garden so I'm gonna be putting this pot down it is pretty
01:05heavy and what we're gonna be doing first is we're gonna be emptying all the old
01:12potting mix that was in this pot so we've got a nice little spot here in the
01:17garden so old potting mix can easily just go into the garden bed obviously
01:21because it'll just merge in with the existing soil and it's puffed because I've
01:28been carrying this this will be the poor sunflowers final resting place so I feel
01:33a little bit bad for it but that's the beauty obviously of gardening it will
01:38just add you know obviously green matter to the garden here so we're gonna just
01:43look you can see I just want to show you this sunflower when I did plant it in it
01:50really had no hope basically it I mean it did try to put out a few roots but it
01:55basically it was on the balcony and it was windy and it did not like the
02:00position at all so it didn't really ever take unfortunately in this pot so what
02:04I'll do is I'll just pop it here I mean I do always feel a little bit sad when I'm
02:10sort of getting resting a plant but we'll pop it in the back there and like I said
02:16the beauty of obviously gardening is that it will just biodegrade okay and then we're
02:20going to just tip this out here and I've got a little shovel here
02:25it must be emptying all the soil out into here
02:32so sometimes obviously the potting mix can get a little bit compacted so you want to use a knife
02:42a good shovel to get it out and then I'm just going to sort of spread it through the garden
02:47here
02:49and this will actually add volume to the garden bed anyway all right well we've got a nice empty
02:56planter here now I think best practice for transplanting plants I think especially if
03:03you're transplanting really expensive exotic plants I think best practice is you are meant to wash out the
03:08planter I have sort of heard that and give it a really good disinfect I think even but I think
03:14we're going to go and see the heliconias in a minute but I think they're pretty hardy and I'm
03:19pretty sure that they'll be okay so we're going to carry this plant over here so having sort of
03:25benches and things like that as well can help with doing sort of heavy lifting so so you can see
03:32that this is now actually going to be perfect so we're going to be putting new potting mix into this
03:37but first we need some plants to put in here so let's go and check out the heliconias
03:45okay so here we have I mean my friend has got the most beautiful tropical garden here
03:50but here we've got a quite a row of heliconias and these were here when my friend moved in so
03:57she's already paid back a lot of them because they're because heliconias basically have got sort
04:04of a rhizome root system or something a little bit like the ginger plant so underground they put out
04:09these sort of long things and they'll basically take over your whole garden if you let them so my
04:15friend's pulled out quite a few already she's popped a few on the weekend pulling out some she's popped a
04:22few here so these are already pulled out but um but she just popped them in the ground there so
04:26if we use
04:27those we could use those but that's an example of how if you just even pull one up and put
04:33one in the soil
04:33like that was I think done about a week ago they are fine like these are really hardy and in
04:39fact as
04:39long as you've got a green shoot on whatever you pull up so we're gonna have a go at digging
04:45up a
04:46couple now but you'll see hopefully if we if we get down deep enough they have sort of this bulb
04:52system
04:53and you can even then cut up the bulbs I do think the rule is with transplanting these that as
04:59long as
04:59there's a bit of a green shoot there they should be fine so yeah basically so this is so this
05:05is what
05:05we're going to be doing they're sort of called like you can see the flowers in inverted commas they're not
05:11really true flowers I think it's called a bract or something like it's sort of a leaf system ends up
05:16making
05:17this coloured you know what looks like a sort of looks like a bird of paradise but I don't think
05:22it's a true bird of
05:23paradise but um but anyway they these are fantastic they're hardy they're really good in pretty much a lot of
05:31situations their leaves are nice and hardy and they're good screening plants too because you can see
05:35if they're against the fence so we're going to have a go there's a few shoots at the front here
05:39as you can
05:39see like you know how they do they really do continue they put up up shoots all the time so
05:44we've got a few
05:45there so we've got one little one there we've got another one there and we've got one sort of hidden
05:48back there as
05:50well so we might have a go at digging these up and see how we go okay so we are
05:56now going to try and
05:57dig some of these up so I might start I'll start on the you know I'll go this way I'm
06:03a sort of
06:04organised person I'll go from left to right so the idea with these is if they do have quite a
06:10big root
06:10system underneath so they can be a little bit like the Titanic you know what's underneath can be a lot
06:17bigger than what's I mean what's on top sorry can be a lot smaller what's underneath can be a lot
06:23bigger than what's on top so a bit like an iceberg so I might even get up and step on
06:29this shovel so
06:30I've got there we go I think if you go in nice and deep so what I'm doing is I'm
06:35just kind of doing a
06:37little bit of a square around the um the offshoot so we're doing a bit of that square here with
06:49the
06:49big shovel and sort of go from about there because I don't know what side that rhizome underneath is
06:58traveling through so what I guess we're doing now is we're breaking that up from whatever side it's coming
07:04from so there we go we've got a little bit of a square around it now we'll take this shovel
07:11up and
07:13now now that I've sort of you know I guess cut cut into it ideally hopefully I don't know how
07:19deep this
07:19goes but hopefully I've cut into it what I'm now do oh actually I think this is going to be
07:25good
07:27whoops maybe you don't want to necessarily snap it off oh yes beautiful oh lovely well we'll see how
07:39far it's snapped off oh perfect so what I did so okay so the rhizome was going from that side
07:47so
07:47I've broken it off there and look there it is basically so this is one of them and you can
07:53see
07:53this beautiful shoot that we've got and we you can see that I've broken off the rhizome so it was
07:58obviously going that way so that's why you want to do a little bit of a square around it because
08:02you
08:03don't know what direction it's coming from but isn't that beautiful that actually makes me really
08:08happy like that is just gorgeous you know this demonstrates why gardening is so fun basically I
08:17absolutely love it and then you can get this perfect little shoot here so this is going to be for
08:23the
08:23planter so what I'm going to do though because I'm I'm going to do the other two as well so
08:28what I'm
08:28going to do is I'm going to pop it gently down here on the sort on the soil here that's
08:32going to wait
08:33for us I'm going to pop that there so that's one of them so we're going to do the same
08:37for the other
08:38two and um and then see how they're going to look in our pot once we plant them so that
08:46was good to see
08:48that rhizome so yeah I think I heard a snap I think maybe I got it let's have a look
08:55so
09:03what oh yeah yep we've got some movement
09:12so it's coming from here but this one is going to be a little bit trickier this one's a little
09:19bit
09:19deeper so I'm going to go all the way down there because ideally I don't really want to just snap
09:34it off
09:34although if it does snap off oh look there's a worm that is the sign of a healthy garden when
09:41you've got worms
09:43so this is a nice healthy spot for them ideally you don't really want to snap it off but if
09:49it just
09:49goes on and on and you just do snap it off then it can't really be helped okay so this
09:58is I think this
09:59is going directly down oops yep so here yeah so this so this one I have I don't think it's
10:11going
10:12sideways I think it's going down so what we're going to do is we're going to go down even a
10:17little bit
10:18deeper oh I might have broken it now yep so this one has gone down so oh here it comes
10:41got it ah well see gardening over anything else is very good exercise okay so here it is so this
10:52one went directly down so you can see here actually this is probably a good spot unfortunately I might
10:58have damaged it a little bit here in the digging out but it's got that little bit of a root
11:02here so I
11:03think this will be fine like I really do think it'll be fine and it's got that green shoot on
11:08it and they
11:08are very hardy so what I'll probably do is probably in the planter I'll plant it about there where the
11:14natural soil level was so I look at that it went directly down so you really can't predict which way
11:20they go alright so we've got our second one and see how quickly they do develop the seed the root
11:27system so this
11:28one's that's just only a little bit bigger than this but already that was a lot tougher to get out
11:32okay
11:33so let's go for our last little one over here that we've earmarked so again I'll do the same with
11:39the
11:39shovel and we'll see how this one's going whoops we're going to do the same so I'll do that little
11:49square around
11:51it with this big shovel we don't know what side this is going to be coming from this is a
12:03little bit
12:03trickier because I've got this branch here but we'll put the shovel down the soil here is a little bit
12:12harder too I think because we're a bit closer to a tree so we're also dealing with some tree roots
12:17now I
12:18think so this little one if it gets too tricky we might have to snap it because I don't want
12:24to
12:24really do much damage to this beautiful citrus that we've got just above it I actually think this one's
12:30not going to be too bad yeah I think ha I spoke too soon don't ever speak too soon when
12:41it comes to these
12:42plants I think oh oh no here it is oh yeah I was getting actually mixed up with I think
12:51I had a citrus
12:52root underneath the shovel okay perfect so this one is possibly look the soils come off but this one
13:01could actually be the best one like you can see that we've got a little bit of that I think
13:06I guess
13:07that's called the rhizome that's gonna you know just spread and go everywhere but this one we've got
13:12clear little roots coming off that so how exciting so this is our third one so we've got the collection
13:20here so we've got our one two three you can see these here and these and and look if you
13:29do have these
13:30in your garden and you're not ready to transplant them or you know you want to give them to a
13:34friend
13:35or something you could actually just pop these back into fresh soil just even to hold on to them
13:41and I believe you might even be able to put them in a vase of water for a while too
13:45and they and they
13:46would be fine before you transplant but we're going to be transplanting them today so let's bring them
13:52over to our planter and we'll start popping them in their brand new home okay so we're all set up
14:00here so
14:01we've got a new bag of potting mix we've got our planter so now we're going to pop this beautiful
14:08potting mix into the pot and we've got our beautiful offshoot sitting there on the sink
14:13okay now we'll just scoop in the soil now this is beautiful premium potting mix so it's got some um
14:20little um you know the plant foods things the little bubble thingamid jigs I'm not sure what they're called but
14:29they're good for the plants anyway so we're going to make this as nice a home as possible for our
14:37beautifully transplanted heliconias and this is a really good budget hack as well because obviously
14:46the cost of living seems to be just skyrocketing and I am I'm a huge fan of going to bunnings
14:53like I
14:53love going to bunnings and getting plants but if if you get good at plant propagation you can actually
15:01save a lot of money because there are maybe I'm not sure if this is correct but maybe over half
15:10of all
15:11different plants can be propagated I know it's a huge amount anyway like you know it's a massive
15:16amount you get seedlings you get um seeds offshoots whatever and yeah you can um put them in water you
15:23can grow roots on little um saplings and and yeah it's a it's a good budget hack basically if you've
15:30got a friend like I do with a beautiful tropical garden and they let you go over and harvest some
15:36of
15:36their offshoots then you're on to a pretty good thing so once I get to about halfway through a bag
15:57especially if I've got a big plant like this I then usually go to the old sweet trick only because
16:05it
16:05can be a little bit tedious just scooping it in but I do it at the beginning of a bag
16:10though
16:10because it's the bags are really heavy
16:19ah beautiful so we've got all this beautiful soil now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to
16:23give
16:24that a little bit of a moisten here and then it will be ready because when you have brand new
16:31potting mix
16:32out of a bag it actually feels quite moist anyway initially it's not till later when it's on a sunny
16:39windswept balcony that it becomes rather inhospitable so what we are now going to do is get our beautiful
16:49little offshoots
16:58so here they are so what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be I'm just digging a
17:03little bit of a
17:05hole here three and like so and so you can see that they've got that little those little plant food
17:18little bits in here okay so I think we might pop I'm not sure about aesthetics but I'm thinking I'll
17:27put the
17:27tallest one in the middle and the two shorter ones on the side so what I want to do this
17:33one the tallest
17:35one though I do think I damaged this one a little bit so I've cut through that a little bit
17:40with the
17:40spade unfortunately so I'm not sure if it's going to be able to use this bit but you never know
17:45it might
17:46they are pretty hardy and look it's got a little root there and it's even got a root up a
17:51little bit higher
17:51there so I'm going to put them in at where they were in soil level which means that this one
17:58actually
17:58has to go in quite deep
18:02and then we'll sort of fold that in like that
18:06still a little bit deeper
18:12yeah probably about there
18:16oh no it's still a bit deeper
18:17it might be a little bit higher than it was in the soil but I do think it'll probably work
18:23itself out
18:28okay we'll tuck tuck that one in there
18:37oh isn't that beautiful that is just so lovely and we're going to do the same for this
18:51I think the planting process is fairly important yeah that's that's better I'm a bit happier with that
18:58there we go
19:00and that'll be nice actually because I can always add a little bit more potting mix to this planter
19:05when I bring it home because obviously we've now got a transport at home as well
19:10so once home I can top up the level a little bit and I'll probably bring it up to maybe
19:14there
19:14but for now we've tucked this one in nicely
19:18and that is just gorgeous
19:20now we're going to do the same for these other two
19:22these ones don't go as deep
19:24and this one is the one with the beautiful little spiral or circle of roots
19:29so this one's I think this one's going to do well
19:33I'll give it a high chance
19:36I'll pop this one down here
19:47oh that is just gorgeous
19:49I might bring it in a little bit more
19:54do you know gardening ticks so many boxes
19:57like it's I mean you know what doesn't it tick really
20:00it gives you exercise
20:02it gets you outside
20:04it gets you off devices and off computers
20:08it gives you fresh air
20:10I mean that's part of being outside
20:12but it's also really satisfying
20:14like it's good for your soul as well I think
20:16like just to be dealing with green things
20:19get your hands a little bit dirty
20:20I mean yes I know I'm wearing gloves but you know what I mean
20:23and nature as well
20:25and then also
20:26and then you can be creative as well
20:28because you can kind of you know
20:30especially if you're
20:30if you've got any sort of garden that you want to have
20:33a look at the aesthetics of a garden
20:35like what goes together
20:36and the arrangement of your plants
20:38and all of that sort of stuff
20:39so it can be very creative
20:41a physical exercise
20:42did I say that one already?
20:44I might have
20:44and also just
20:47just satisfying
20:48like I love
20:49there is almost nothing so satisfying
20:51as planting something
20:53and then just watching it grow
20:55like it you know
20:57you can actually nurture it
20:58and water it
21:00and feed it
21:01and yeah
21:02and see it thrive
21:03and yes even if you've got an inhospitable environment
21:06like I do with the balcony garden
21:08you can still find plants that will thrive
21:11and for me
21:12a lot of it's been succulents actually
21:14succulents are doing very well on the balcony
21:17despite the wind
21:18but look at this
21:20this is so lovely
21:23so voila
21:24this is our beautiful new
21:26this is our upgrade
21:28our tropical upgrade
21:30and we've got those tiny little leaves here
21:32that are going to be just beautiful
21:34this one's the smallest one
21:36so this one hasn't got much on it
21:38but this one
21:39I think it's got the most promising root system
21:41so we're going to give them a tiny little bit more water now
21:45and then we're just going to let that sit for a little bit
21:48and then once it gets home
21:51I'll top them up
21:52I'll put a little bit more potting mix
21:53just top up the level a little bit
21:55but I think that just looks beautiful
22:00I'm going to pop a little bit of water on
22:03and then we're going to just let them sit
22:07and customise to their new home
22:32okay so we're ready to take our beautiful fledgling heliconias back to their new home
22:46okay so our beautiful heliconia fledglings are in their beautiful new spot
22:51so they will cop a little bit of a challenge here
22:55because we do get that wind coming off the Narang River
22:57and they will get a lot of sun here as well
23:01but look I think they're pretty hardy plants
23:03so I've got my fingers crossed that they'll do okay
23:06so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to add a little bit more potting mix just to
23:11the top
23:12just to raise the level just a little bit
23:14because it does sink for a little bit when you put fresh potting mix in
23:19but I think this will be plenty
23:22just to raise that level up a little bit
23:25particularly with that one
23:28and then finishing touch just a little bit of water so that they feel right at home here
23:41and then our planter is looking nice and green
23:57well I think they are just beautiful
23:59and I do think that they've got a pretty good chance of doing okay here
24:04and they're just going to obviously they're big plants so they'll get big
24:08but you know you can just keep pruning them back
24:10and the pot will contain them somewhat
24:12and they're not going to overtake the whole balcony garden
24:16because they are contained
24:17and Piper's checking out our new plants
24:19hopefully he doesn't eat them
24:21but anyway there you go
24:22so that was a really fun project
24:24so we've got beautiful new fresh green plants in our planter
24:28the sunflower is in its final resting place
24:31but it's just going to make beautiful new compost for my friend's garden
24:34and we've got some new greenery for our balcony garden
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