How to Grow Prayer Plants

Prayer plants are beautiful plants from South America that typically live in dense, tropical conditions. Grow prayer plants by providing humidity and no direct sunlight with help from a sustainable gardener in this free video on growing prayer plants.

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Video Transcript

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen, and next we are going to talk about how to grow the prayer plant, a Maranta. It's a beautiful, beautiful plant from South America. So now in order to figure out how to grow it you need to know it's natural conditions. Now the prayer plant lives in dense tropical conditions. It likes lots of humidity, no direct sun, it is under the canopy of lots of other trees. So when you are growing it if you live in a warm tropical location you can grow it outside. If you live in any area that is really dry, and not humid or really cold winters then I would grow it inside of as a houseplant. But it's still really easy to grow as long as you treat it like a carnivorous plant or any other plant that needs a lot of moisture. And yet it doesn't want to sit in water, because sometimes it can rot out. But a terrarium is an easy answer. So you can grow the prayer plant right into a container with gravel or moisture, and that way it gets lots of humidity. Or you can actually take it out of the container it is in, and put it right into a terrarium type situation. And you don't want it to stay too wet either, you don't want it to get waterline above the roots or into the foliage. Because if it gets too much water then you are going to kill it too above the leaf line. So you want to keep it really moist, and you can put it right into a terrarium or right into a dish that is right on to gravel. And it is really easy to grow, and it will make you nice big leaves with little spots all over it. So sometimes it is called rabbit tracks too, because it looks like it has little rabbit feet all over it. So once it gets growing, it gets large beautiful leaves, and they call it prayer plant because it the leaves close up at night, and then they open during the day. So you can treat it as a house plant or put it outside if you live somewhere where it is really, really warm, and leave it outside year round. Or just treat it as a house plant if you live somewhere that is cold. The prayer plant is a very interesting, and fun plant for your garden.