After a well deserved hibernation period, for my plants and myself, with very limited plant care and more reading than writing, a quirky idea sprouted: to move my alocasias to leca. 

This lightweight expanded clay aggregate were recommended many times by online plant friend for alocasias, or the two leaves plant gang, as I like to call them. 

I acquired a big bag of this wonder man made pebbles a while ago and was planning to use them in spring, but the repotting devil kept pushing me to act sooner rather than later. 

I managed to get myself distracted with the festivities of the end of the year and once all the fuss and decorations were packed for next year’s celebrations, I couldn’t wait anymore. 

Firstly, I took all alocasias and cleaned the roots best I could and left them in water to develop ‘water roots’, as per internet knowledge. In this process, a few sad calatheas got the same treatment, more as an experiment, since they were about to perish anyway. 

I raided the nearby charity shops for glass containers and I acquired hydroponic fertilizer as well. I mixed it with waster as instructed by bottle, boiled the leca balls and moved ONE alocasia Wentii to this new environment.

My alocasia Polly rotted in water and I only saved half the root, but I doubt anything green will come out of it. My alocasia Cuprea Red Secret pushed a beautiful flower and below the green part rotted completely, I only have a small corm and hope to have a full plant again in about a year or two. The juvenile alocasias: Black Velvet, Silver Dragon and Frydek reverted to corm states. 

To my surprise, this alocasia massacre was followed by signs of health from the experimental calatheas. Rufibarba, Warscewiczii and Zebrina enjoyed my water treatment and all had signs of new growth before I changed them to leca.

With this unexpected success, I raided the charity shops again for glass containers and moved all rescue anthuriums in leca as well. But didn’t stop here, I jumped to my favourite plants: Monsteras. I moved my baby Burle Marx Flame, that didn’t grow at all since I acquired it, and chopped the leggy Monstera Adansonii, fashioned it in a good size bouquet and placed it in leca, only with aerial roots. 

My last victims of leca enthusiasm are all the hoya clippings that were rooting in moss. I moved all of them in a rather fancy serving crystal bawl. 

I am yet to notice the benefits of hydroponics, but I am confident the easiness of monitoring humidity levels and the control over fertilizing are going to help my plants, except the ones that rotted, of course. 

I promise to keep my readers updated with my strictly controlled plant environment.