Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Plants give life, both aesthetically and literally, to any room they’re placed in. The environment inside a float center, however, can be the absolute worst place for certain plants, even ones that would normally be considered fine for your local area.
Graham and Ashkahn pull in Jordan to talk about different plants that thrive in a humid float center environment and some tips on how to take care of them.
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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Okay, welcome everybody. This is Ashkahn.
Graham: Hello, hello. This is Graham over here, and we got a special third guest on for today. Normally behind the scenes, but this is-
Jordan: Jordan.
Ashkahn: Jordan.
Graham: That’s right.
Ashkahn: Yeah! Jordan’s, he’s here in the room with us for every single recording of every single episode. And so, we thought we’d throw him in front of the mic this time because we have a question that we think he’s especially well-versed in.
Graham: Yup. So, this is from one of our audience members, and it’s, “What is it like having the name Jordan?” I’m just kidding. It’s, “Which members of the plant kingdom can survive the float center environment?” and then in parentheses, “(healthily)”.
Jordan: That’s a good question. A great question.
Ashkahn: Before you even answer, just some little backing for Jordan’s expertise, here.
Graham: He’s 1/4 plant.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s very weird, but useful for this. Jordan used to basically run all the whole plant care at our shop. So we, back in the day, kind of put him in charge of figuring out what would do well in there, and how to take care of them, and kind of monitor everything. And he used to work at a plant store.
Graham: Nursery?
Ashkahn: Plantarium? Plantarium, I think is what they’re called, I believe.
Jordan: I was the houseplant specialist at a nursery for a few years.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so he’s got all the skill sets required to give us some good insight on this.
Graham: So what do you got for us?
Jordan: Well, so generally, we’re going to be talking about tropical and sub-tropical plants. You can’t put a pine tree in there, in pretty much any conditions.
Graham: And, that’s just cause of the massive amounts of humidity that the tanks are in.
Jordan: And, the non-fluctuating temperature, generally in tropical plants have tiny bandwidth of temperature fluctuation. Something like the island of Mauritius has 25 degrees total fluctuation, generally.
Graham: As opposed to the island of Minnesota.
Jordan: Actually, I have looked that up.
Graham: Transfer is a lot of different.
Jordan: I like averaged out. I look for their most extreme. It doesn’t go much beyond that, but when you look at somewhere like Portland, you can range about a hundred degrees.
Graham: Right.
Jordan: That’s an incredibly large spectrum compared to 25. So, generally in a float tank center, you’re running extremely high humidity in a very consistent temperature. And, tropical plants love that.
So, the usual suspects and the easiest to take care of, the most hands off, kind of just do their things with some basic watering, are going to be something like the Spider Plant.
Graham: Spider Plant, classic.
Jordan: Yep, yep. And, those are really fun because they puff out, so all the arms that stretch out will do air roots, essentially looking for new soil. And, you can just cut those off willy nilly and replant them, and they will regrow.
Ashkahn: Yeah, you might get a lot of spiders in your float. So, just be careful of that. That’s my advice.
Jordan: Second on the list is the Pothos, and this one’s probably the easiest and most like the environment, the greatest. And, they’re very viney depending upon which subvariety you get.
Ashkahn: Yeah, those are running vine plants, right?
Jordan: Depending upon which variety you get.
Ashkahn: Okay.
Jordan: A lot of them yes, I have seen them do that. Yeah, yeah, generally they do. And, a lot of people like to pin them up because they will just keep running around. And, if you have a big enough pot, there’s a shop in town that has it go around multiple times, and they have this gian 50-gallon pot in the center of their establishment, and it’s pretty cool.
Graham: Yes.
Jordan: Third on the list, being the Snake Plant, also in a sensitive area.
Ashkahn: You might get a lot of snakes if you get that one. Be careful.
Jordan: That’s not why they’re called Spider and Snake Plants. I would like to add they’re-
Ashkahn: It’s because they’re invented by-
Graham: Mr. Spider and Mr. Snake.
Jordan: These are also the hit list of the plants that NASA took up into space to test for air purification.
Ashkahn: Really?
Jordan: Yeah. These are like the top, the Snake Plant, or the Spider Plant is at the top of the list.
The Snake Plants in there take hundreds of different toxins from out of the air and purify it, things like Formaldehyde, coming off of plastics. And, stuff like that.
Graham: Yeah, fun fact outside of this question. But, there’s this phenomenon where if you get enough of those Top 25 NASA plants into a room, I forget what the critical density is, I think it’s around 30 for a usual size room.
Then, you actually close your window, in order to get fresh air, rather than open it, which is really cool. They actually just start creating their own environment.
Jordan: I think it’s even more realistic, like six mature snake plants.
Graham: That’s interesting, yeah.
Jordan: Per a reasonably small room.
Graham: It’s been so long since I looked into that, but I was like fun factoids, yeah, that are probably totally wrong, and this specific.
Jordan: Last on my list, for the most easy to take care of, is also the Peace Lily.
Ashkahn: They’re also an air filter on the NASA list too, I believe.
Jordan: Yeah, yeah. They all kind of double over, in a sense.
Graham: Yeah.
Jordan: The jungle must be a really pleasant place to breathe in.
Ashkahn: Surrounded by all of these things is usually what I hear about the jungle, calm, pleasant, safe.
Jordan: I have a couple of honorable mentions that I would also put in the category of easy to take care of, especially in this environment. Outside of this environment, they’re more of a novelty type of plant that come with a bunch of extra things to do. But, this is their environment.
So, that would be the orchid.
Ashkahn: Nice.
Jordan: Really fun, kind of just does its thing when its at 90% humidity. It’s constantly collecting that water on its own
Ashkahn: And, getting up to water it.
Jordan: If you notice it’s not getting enough, what you can do is just toss a single ice cube on there, once a day, once every few days, and they generally respond well to that.
The Staghorn Fern is a super cool one.
Ashkahn: You might get a lot of staghorns, so just be careful. Be careful there.
Jordan: And, this one’s kind of strange because it’s usually mounted on the wall like an animal because it has these horn-like leaves.
Ashkahn: We have any of those at Float On?
Jordan: No, it’s a fungal.
Ashkahn: I was gonna say, “I don’t remember that one.”
Jordan: It often looks like an art piece, but it’s totally living. And, again, ideal environment. It just pulls moisture out of the air. You could, if you really wanted, you could spritz it with a water bottle.
But, at the end of the float tank environment, it’s just loving it probably.
So, I wanted to talk about also the hardest things you might be working with in the floating environment, specifically.
Ashkahn: For in terms of plant care?
Jordan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Ashkahn: Are just like the worst plants to have inside of a float center, like-
Jordan: Pine tree?
Ashkahn: Pine tree-
Jordan: Cedar? Well, you’re indoors, so you don’t have a lot-
Unless you have huge windows. If you have large windows, wow. You’ve got all the factors under control essentially. But, not everybody gets large windows.
So, you’re working with dim light or LED light, and that type of light, the diffusion goes down pretty quickly. You know, an inch way, you’re losing six inches. You’re at half by a foot, you know a quarter less than the original potency of the light.
So, again the list I started with ar very low light plants as well, and deal with it generally. And, it’s incredible what they can take in the matter of little amounts of light.
Ashkahn: I guess when you’re covered by a canopy of jungle foliage, you literally have it.
Jordan: You’ve got to adapt. Yeah, tiny, single photons of morsels of meals. Over watering is another big factor because again you’ve got this incredible amount of humidity. You generally want to water really well, and less frequently.
I think the biggest mistake is you can do tiny waterings really frequently, and it doesn’t saturate. It doesn’t get deep. So, it’s constantly searching for that watering.
So, you might need to do one watering a week, and you just get it really wet, and make sure that it doesn’t stagnate. You always want good drainage. Always have a hole in the bottom of your pot, essentially. That’s a fundamental thing.
Things to watch out for would be mold. Again, 90 percent humidity or whatever.
Graham: Actually going, going back for just one second. I realize I had a question on the last one.
Jordan: Yeah, sure.
Graham: Especially since they are absorbing humidity from the air and stuff like that. You might not be on a normal watering schedule with your plants. How do you tell if you’re over watering typically? Or, what signs would you look for to be like, “Oh. I’m probably giving this plant way too much water. I should tone it back.”
Jordan: That, so I was gonna guess answer that in my last warnings.
Graham: Thanks.
Jordan: It’s kind of like two major manifestations of overwatering, are going to be mold and fungal gnats.
Graham: Oh, okay.
Jordan: Also, your leaves will wilt. When it’s underwatering, they wilt from the outside in. So, you’ll get crispiness at the tips, and it works back. But, if you’re overwatering, they get wilty; they crumple.
Instead of getting- there will be no brownness generally. They will just go to a dark color and kind of fold over.
And then, fungal gnats are an obvious sign of over watering. They come when there’s stagnation, when there’s bacterial growth essentially from water sitting.
They’re not devastating to the plant itself, they’re just annoying, and kind of tough to get rid of.
Graham: Yeah, fungal gnats flying around your float center doesn’t sounds like the most relaxing environment in terms of float.
Jordan: Yeah, and they’re pretty easy to call around. They show up on the scene pretty quickly after overwatering.
Graham: Those are just like little guys, just little like ants?
Jordan: They’re tiny. They look like maybe quarter-sized flies.
Graham: Alright, cool.
Jordan: Aside from that, it’s a really fun environment. You know? A lot of people wish for that type of environment. You collect plants, like in their home. They’re trying to recreate exactly what it is.
Ashkahn: I had a plan when we were first opening Float On.
Graham: Plan-t?
Ashkahn: It was just to have our entire lobby floor just be grass, you know, bring in a bunch of sod, lay down a whole grass area, and then people could just lie in the grass and hang out.
Jordan: I think Float Centers could really take advantage of vertical tropical planting.
Graham: When you said yeah.
Jordan: I mean, you could do a wall.
Graham: Yeah, yeah, taking that idea and turning it into a sane one. I think you could just put things vertically on a wall. It could work really well.
Ashkahn: Do picnics in your lobby. That’s awesome. It’s a good idea.
Graham: And if you do that out there, definitely take pictures and send it in. We’ll talk about the pictures and describe it to everyone who’s listening.
Jordan: You know before the float industry came around, large bags of Epsom salt, you could buy it from a agriculture store because it’s used in spreading it in fields to replace salts in the soil.
Ashkahn: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. It’s slip resistant, a good color. I think it’s a good flooring option.
Jordan: Probably even just in your float rooms too.
Ashkahn: In the float tanks. In the bottom of float tanks.
Graham: Alright. Yeah, any final thoughts or advice for the people Jordan specifically? Not Ashkahn.
Jordan: No. I think it’s fertile ground. I think that you’re-
Graham: Oo, good one, love it.
Jordan: I think it really just makes it easier than the average situation. Take advantage of it to the full extent, and it definitely adds to the space if you’re not going for the like iPod sterile environment look.
Graham: Cool. Well, thanks so much for hopping on and kind of guest hosting with us, and taking the bulk of the responsibility away from me and Ashkahn, which is awesome.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s a lot of stress up here behind the microphone, you know?
Ashkahn: Alright. If you guys have other questions for us or for Jordan, our resident plantologist. I believe he has a certification in that or something. You can go over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast
Graham: Slash
Ashkahn: Oh, okay, go for it.
Graham: Okay, so you have, that’s it. That’s the one, and we will answer your questions every day for the rest of our lives.
Ashkahn: The rest of our lives. Okay. Phew.
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Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
