What's up, Garden Friends! Jeff here at Tropical Plant Party. How's everybody doing? I hope you're good. I am great. Time for another Fern Friday. Oh, and I have a special co-host tonight. His name is Cicada. He's really annoying. I'm gonna be here with us often on throughout this video. My apologies. Just part of summer. And I know I need to change that light bulb. The bulb, the little scruzer. Shripped. I need to drill those out. And funny story. I actually already filmed half this video, but I was referring to the plant. By mistake, just slip of the tongue, calling it an asparagus Fern, which is a relative to the Foxtail Fern. The scientific name for the Foxtail Fern is the asparagus central florist, Myers-by. So that's why I was fumbling there. Not a true Fern, not at all. But that's the common name. It's what it goes by, so I figured. That's what I'm going to refer to it as in this video. The Foxtail Fern. So the Foxtail Fern. Like I said, asparagus, dense the floor of myrcy. They average around two feet tall, three feet wide, pretty drought tolerant plant. They can take a very good, good, good amount of sun. They spread very, very, very quickly, basically invasive if they're growing some place where they're hearty. And these are also toxic, which is one of the things that sets them apart from a lot of other ferns, right? One of the great things about ferns is houseplants is the toxicity, and I'm so sorry I'm so cicada. Maybe it's bothering me more than it's going to bother when it's coming through the microphone. I don't know. I enjoy them. It's like the sound of summer, right? It's a very summery sound. When I'm not out here filming a YouTube video, it doesn't bother me one bit. I'm going to try and accept the noise and let it pass through me. It's going to be okay. Just from looking at the fronds here, the stems really, you can see where they get their name, Foxtail Fern. They have these long, poofy little stems that come up covered in teeny tiny little bit of leaves. It's really cool, very unique looking. And sometimes they'll start to spiral a little bit and that looks really neat as well. Makes a really good, I mean, a foreground plant, not necessarily a ground cover, but it will be a ground cover because they spread. Very, very vigorously. They do bloom, which is interesting. Set them apart from a true fern. It's mid-summer. I think they're very small white flowers. They put up berries, all of this poisonous, so keep away from it. Don't eat it. The Foxtail Ferns add kind of like an architectural element to the garden. Wherever you put them, it tends to draw the eye in. They stand out very well because they sort of have the clean lines. And like I said, they'll start to spiral and they just look neat. Very fun, unique plants. They do not like the cold. So hardy zones, nine and up. So they can take like a very brief, brief, brief cold in the winter months, as long as things are more on their dry side, they will potentially die back to the ground if things get too intense. Maybe we'll come back with some winter protections. I have seen these on like the warmer parts of Zone 8. One of the growers, I used to bring plants up from those down in 8B, and a lot of their palms would come up with Foxtail Ferns coming out from the bottoms of the, or both the tops of the soil. They're vigorous. They will grow wherever, wherever they can. They will pop up. They'll do well in part shade to full sun. Where you have your plants situated is kind of key. So if you live some place where it's getting into the triple digits Fahrenheit, obviously, and there may be near pavement or something like that, then that probably wouldn't be a good idea to put it in full sun, right? I tend to like my Foxtail Ferns where they get about six hours of morning sun and then filtered light throughout the rest of the day. It just keeps them a little bit more on the green side. When they get lots and lots and lots of sun, their fronds get to be a little bit more of a pale green, which is still pretty. I just, I kind of, I like the darker green a little bit more. That's just a matter of preference. They can take that full sun, which is especially true if you get them potted up into a nice, well-drained, organically rich potting mix. For your garden soil, they can take some drought by having a soil that holds onto it. A little bit of moisture is helpful, but not stopping wet. Really though, these are sturdy, sturdy plants when grown out doors. I haven't really watered this very much at all. My sprinklers get it, but not very well. It's like kind of a place where the sprinklers wouldn't hit it too heavily. Like I said, they're very tough. It is easiest to propagate these by division. They have pretty aggressive little runners, tubers down the root mass of these plants, take a clean knife, divide them up. This one's not ready to be divided up, so I can't really demonstrate that. It's still just kind of one big, sturdy plant. In the ground or in a larger pot, it would start to spread, and then I, like I said, would go in, just lift it out and cut it into probably three pieces, is when I would start dividing it, when I think I could get them to three chunks. You can divide them in half. That's not going to hurt them. They can take a lot. When you have these and you divide them up, they take back over very quickly. They fill back out very quickly. It's not a plant that necessarily likes to be root-bound, but they tolerate it for a pretty long time. If it gets to a point with the plant where watering it, and it doesn't seem to be getting hydrated, or you see roots coming out the top of the pot, or at the bottom of the pot, probably time to go ahead and repot that plant and bump it up, at least one to two inches in size around the diameter of the pot. In the ground, divide them when they're taken over. When they start to grow outside the lines where you don't want them, just go in with a shovel, pull them up, spread them out, move them, whatever, they can take it. In the summer months, I do water my foxtail ferns. I try and, or not water, ferdly. Of course, water them. I fertilize them roughly every other week with a 50% diluted all-purpose fertilizer. I don't use anything special with them. They're just, they don't really need it. From my experience, anyways, every climate's a little bit different. Soils are different, and what, not mine's still in its nursery cannas. Have it kind of sitting someplace where you can't see that nursery pot. That just makes it easier for me to lift the plant and bring inside during the winter time. So, indoor care with the foxtail fern. Not as simple at all. The indoors, they're going to want more humidity. I mean, they like humidity outside, it's just provided to them more naturally outdoors. It's best to give them a daily misting. They have them someplace nice and humid and very, very, very, very bright. At least five hours of direct light a day, you can go less than that. They can handle it. But if you want them to continue a little bit of growth during the winter months, they're going to need light. This isn't like some of my other house plants. I'm talking about my experience here. Some of my other house plants where they kind of just sort of sit still and chill during the winter time. No, it's like these sort of want to grow. They don't want to grow like crazy, but enough to the point where I have to see on top of watering them. There are other plants like the jerkenias and things where I don't give them quite as much light. And I just sort of let them relax. I still water them and everything, but no fertilizing. I don't fertilize my foxtail ferns during the winter time either, because it can encourage them to grow a lot faster than they probably should be. If you fertilize a plant during the winter months and they're not getting the proper light and heat to have them in that form of active growth, it's the fertilizers telling them that they should be in. You can up with like really awkward long extended spindly growth. It's just not really a good look. The main thing with them though in the house is providing that humidity, because if they don't have the humidity, they will drop these little teeny tiny little bit leaflets everywhere. Very, very, very messy. When I have grown my foxtail ferns inside the year round, I only water them probably like once a week. I water them whenever about the top two inches of the surface soil started to dry out. It just seemed to be the lucky spot for me in my house. It's not like the maiden hair fern or just a lot of other ferns in general where they're going to throw an absolute fit and just basically die on you if you miss a watering, but there can be some browning tips and whatnot from not enough moisture, from not enough humidity, yellowing. Sometimes it starts off as yellowing and then turns into browning. Or if there's too much water, then those little leaflets will start to turn yellow in general, usually from the base of the plant and up, and those will fall all over the place. And this is why I do not grow foxtail ferns in my house ever. I keep them in my garage and my little growth base during the winter time, but with the toxicity and everything in my pets, it's just not really worth the risk to me. And I really don't have many windows in my house anymore. I have the trees have grown, the windows don't put out quite enough light to keep these looking right. Oh, and if you do have a nice sunny location in your house where you can keep these, don't forget to rotate those pots. Say, probably every two weeks rotate them so that you have nice, even growth and everything isn't just going in one direction. Also very easy to prune. If they have any dead or dying foliage in here, any dead front, you can go in and just cut those right out. It's not going to hurt the plant when they get old enough like this. A lot of times they'll just pull right out really easily. The thing that's in here that's browning or anything like that, it's not going to do the plant any good, so me as we'll just get rid of it. To my knowledge, there aren't any pests that are really specifically horrible with the foxtail ferns or on the foxtail ferns. But one thing I will say is that if you grow your plants like I do, and you keep them outside during these summer months and bring them inside during the fall and winter, you really have to just blast the foliage out with your hose, do that a few times, maybe get in there with some name because there are so many. Nooks and crannies inside of this foliage for everything to hide. So, you know, if you do end up with some type of little bug problem with it, it's going to be a pain to get rid of because they, like I said, they have so many little hiding places in there. So I'll just be like blasting with water and absolutely soaking it with name before I bring it inside. Happy Fern Friday, everybody. I know not really a fern, hope that doesn't bug people, but like I said, that's the common name, so it's figured this was a point I want to talk about and one else what I'd do it. If I did it some other time, people would be like, well, why is this isn't Fern Friday? Right? It's fine. Don't worry about it. Comment down below any input you have for the fern is always greatly appreciated and a conversation going with each other. It's fun watching everybody talk. And I love hearing from everybody, so just say hi. I have all my social media linked down below. That's a good place to get a hold of me. I use Instagram way more than anything else. That's a pretty good place to get a hold of me if you have any questions or just want to see updates on the plants in the garden. Just not by, say hello. And don't forget to like the video, give it a thumbs up, make some big difference for the video and for the channel I wrote you appreciate, so thank you for that. And subscribe as well and hit that notification box up on multiple times a week and that way you'll know when new videos come out. I just love all the little tips. All those cute little tips, they're so cute. Okay, of course, as always, and most important, everybody. Keep on growing. Bye-bye.