 Hi everybody! I hope that you're doing well. Today we're going to be talking about my favorite gift for plant people this year. So this can be a gift for your friends or for yourself. Okay, coming up. Okay, so just so you know, all of the things that I will be including in this video will be down in the description below so you can easily find them. So let's start with our first gift. And this one I really like because we can really get creative with it. This is a potting mix kit. So for your potting mix mixture you can include coconut coir. Right now I have this big block but of course I would recommend that you use a smaller block. And I will put the link down in the description below so you can find a smaller block than this one. You can also include some worm castings. This is great for our potting mix because it will provide the nutrition that our plant needs. I would also recommend that you add some pearlite. So pearlite actually makes our potting mix very fluffy. And it will add some drainage to our mix which is great for our plant so we can prevent over watering. If you prefer instead of pearlite you can add pumice. And if your friend has lots of succulents I would recommend that you add some sand to your mix. Now you can personalize this gift even further by adding a personalized recipe for the potting mix. So for example I made one myself here. So as you can see it says Yan's potting mix recipe. So this will be a gift for Yan. And you can open it and then you can put our recipe here. So for example I have here seven parts of coconut coir, two parts of pearlite, two parts of worm castings. And then for succulents I also added a recipe just in case they want to do our recipe for the succulents. And the great thing is that these ingredients can be used for succulent potting mix or for tropical plant potting mix. You just have a different ratio to them. So yeah I'm actually going to put my recipe down below just in case you want to use it for your friend. Gift number two and this is especially helpful for the winter months is a humidifier. You know as soon as we start heating up our homes the air in our homes becomes really dry. So I found that this is really good for our plants. Especially if we have tropical plants such as the cadacea, the strelitzia nicolai or even a monstera. So this is the one that I have in my house. I really like it. So let me show you how it works. So here it shows you the level of humidity that you're at. So right now we're at 57%. I put it to be at 60 so it's still working until it gets to 60. Then over here you can control the mix. So it has three levels. You also have the sleep button here which is really great because it actually turns off the light. So then you can have it like this just in case you're sleeping or anything. Or you can also put a timer so you can actually set it up by time so you can put it for an hour or whatever you would like. It's a great humidity fire. Stay on the topic of humidity which is a very important topic especially in the winter. This gift is very useful. This is a humid stat and what it does is that it helps us measure the temperature and the humidity level. So if you're looking for something more affordable but great for our plants and ourselves this is a great gift. Talking about things that are very useful in the winter you can also go for a grow light. So this one specifically I really like for various reasons. First this one is an LED full spectrum grow light. So even though the light looks white it actually provides the full spectrum. So red and blue which are very important for our plants. On top of that this is actually made out of ceramic. So it's a very good quality grow light. This is actually the stancy grow light and I'm gonna be using it for my succulents. So yeah this one I recommend. If your friend has for example a plant cabinet or shelves like this one's right here you can also go for small LED lights. We have some for our shelves here and they're actually working really well for our plants. So that can be a little bit more affordable option and it does provide some of the light that our plants need. Of course if you know me you know that I love books and this can make great gifts for a plant lover because it has so much information especially if we're just beginning but also for people who have been doing it for a long time. So let me show you some of the books that I'm loving this year. Number one as you may know is this one Root Nurture Grow and I love this book because it's a very good guide if we're actually starting with propagation with our plants. It actually has many types of propagation methods which is important because different plants actually respond better to some propagation methods than to others. On top of that it includes a propagation table which is really great because it actually shows you many plants and what propagation methods are best for them. So if you or your friend are starting to experiment with propagation this book is really good. Another book that I would strongly recommend whether you're a plant beginner or you have some time with plants is this one right here. This one is called Gardening Under Light and I'm actually reading it right now and I really like it. This is because this is a very complete guide on grow lights. Not only it talks about how plants actually perceive light which is very different to how we perceive it but also how they use it and what kind of lights we would like to use for various plants as well as how to use them and how long. So it's a very complete guide and I would strongly recommend it for any plant beginner especially in winter. Number three is the first book that I ever got here in Berlin for my plant care and this is How Not To Kill Your House Plant. This is a very simple book but it's very good for plant beginners. It's really easy to use. It actually has more than 100 house plants and many tips to each plant such as lighting, water, temperature, humidity. So it's a very good general introduction to the house plant life with specific examples for each plant. So if you or your friends are starting with plants this is a very good introduction. And last but not least if you're looking for some inspiration on how to place your plants around your house and really make you feel like a jungle this book is for you. This is called Wild Interiors and it's actually by Hilton Carter so you may know him from Instagram or YouTube. He's amazing with plants and what I really like about this book is that he goes around the world with all their plant lovers to talk about their plants and how they distribute them in their house. Not only that but how important they are to their life. So it's a very inspiring book so I would really recommend it. Now if you're more into DIY the next idea is gonna be great for you. These are root shoots. I actually learned how to make these from the Root Nurture Grow book so they're really great for propagations. So the way that we use these is when we're propagating our plants in water. We don't want the leaves of our plants to touch the water because this can create fungi. So that's when these come in. When we place our cutting in a jar we put it through the holes on these ones and they will protect the leaves from touching the water. I use this one for my string of pearls propagation and this one for my potholes or other plants like that one. They're really pretty and I think it's a great gift because you put your heart into these and every time your friend propagates their plants they will think of you. Now if your friend is into hydroponics or leka in general you can go for something like this. I was actually contacted by this company it's called Brokey Tony and I love what they do. They sell leka in different sizes but what stands out from them is that they actually color the leka and the cool thing about it is that they actually do it sustainably and it will not harm our plants. Plus it's gonna look super pretty so leka can be used at the bottom of our potting mix to provide some drainage. It also helps with humidity levels in the potting mix or you can put it actually on top of your plants for decoration and if you put this on top of your plants this can actually help you prevent fungus gnats. This is because this is not organic material so they won't like to put their eggs on top of these. They have many different colors so for now I have the purple one, the pink one and the white one. They also have green, sand, red, yellow. So you can also get creative with this and make a set with different colors for your friends. If the person that you're giving your gift to is into postcards as well you can gift them this set of botanical postcards. Guys I can tell you I'm loving this set because every time that I'm writing a postcard or a card for a friend I use one of these. I even use these to celebrate with you guys when we got to 10,000 subscribers remember? I sent 10 of these to 10 of you guys and it was so nice to connect with you through postcards and botanical images. They're really beautiful and I think it can be a great gift for someone that is into plants. Now if you like the idea of houseplant care and self-care you can also create a houseplant cleaning kit. So if you know me you know that cleaning my plants really helps me come down and really also take care of myself especially with a solution that I'm using these days. So for your houseplant cleaning set you will need a spray bottle or mester of course and this is where we're going to put our solution Dr. Bronner's castle soap and I really like using the lavender one because the aroma is really nice and calming as well as it prevents pests and you can either include a set of essential oils so your friend can actually use it for different purposes but make sure that it includes the peppermint essential oil. This is because a few drops of peppermint essential oil in our solution will help us prevent pests and it will also add a very nice aroma combined to the lavender aroma. So you can either buy the set of essential oils or get a small bottle of peppermint essential oil to add to the solution and for the last touch you can add a microfiber cloth. This is excellent to clean our plant leaves and or some bamboo q tips just in case your friend has plants with smaller leaves and of course just to personalize it you can also add a note with the recipe for the solution and don't worry I will add my own recipe down in the description below so you can use it and of course you can never go wrong with a plant especially if this is a plant that comes from your collection. So for example I have some babies here on my spider plant and I'm going to propagate them then we can use these little plants to give us gifts. I think it's a very lovely gift because it comes from our heart and our care stays with the plant. I hope that this video was useful if you have any other ideas please make sure to comment below I'm sure that the community will appreciate it and as always I will see you in the next video.