How to convert lemon lime maranta to LECA

hi guys katie jo here with the soil bar and today i am going to be converting this huge lemon lime maranta aka prayer plant into lecca like a this semi-hydroponic system and there are a couple different ways we can do it and we're going to be trying all the different ways and also you'll get to see what the root system looks like here for these plants as and how we unpot it from soil so let's get started i'm very gently hitting the sides of the pot here with my hand and then i'm just slipping it out that came out nicely so now at the top i'm just going to start kind of getting my thumbs in there and pulling this soil off i'm just very gently shaking it back and forth getting a look at the root system because since i didn't grow this plant myself i will i'm curious about its growing conditions so once we've got a piece apart what i'm going to do is just get as much dirt removed as possible on my own just with my hands but i'm not going to force it um i'll just kind of rub it between my hands maybe back and forth roll almost rolling it so these have very small root systems these maranta so um getting the dirt off is not easy so what i do is i have some water here and i'm just kind of gonna put it in a water bath here to get more of that off that's already working a lot better and then once i've got as much dirt off as possible i'm just going to set them in that empty pot now to rest until i am ready to move them into the mecca and if some of your root system just completely completely falls off that's okay i would just at that point sterilize some scissors and do a fresh cut um so that they will then propagate just like you would a normal cutting that's you can propagate and like a it's just if you just have them sitting in a water bath there with some lecha beads that's one of the versions we're going to do here in repotting so we're going to use a net pot for a semi-hydroponic system that's traditionally used we're going to also put them just directly in lecca and water in a water bath with a glass in a glass cylinder and then change out the water on a weekly basis for another version and then lastly i'm going to repot one of them back up in the soil mix that it has been in and so we'll have the three different methods and we will see how each of them fare in each of the methods so let's start getting these ones that have been sitting here in the water solution it's not solution it's just straight water out some of these still have a lot of dirt on them we might have to do another round of get some clean water here and do another another water rinse we can't get enough to be on the safe side because doing all this work and then to have them just be too you'd also just don't want the look of muddy water um because of you've got dirty roots when you're potting stuff in lekka and glass this one i'm going to leave because i'm that's the one i'm going to be repotting in soil so there are all of our leaves and now i'm gonna dump out this um dirty water here but by dump it out i mean i'm actually going to water some of the plants back here with it i don't like to waste water you're going to hear this one run straight through because that's a really well draining soil so because i don't have in my little plant studio here access to um a real good like close by water supply what it has turned me into is i have i just i'm always thinking about water conservation and um using less water and it's less energy and waste and um yeah so what i just did there is even though that was dirty kind of muddy water i just poured it into my watering can it doesn't matter that it's dirty and muddy the plants are the plants don't mind i'm just getting some fresh water here okay so i'll just do a couple um for the video and then i'll so that you guys can see how this is going to work so first system is your regular semi-hydroponics which is a net pot like this and then you have your another pot without holes in it and what this does is it allows the water to drain away from the actual root system so that they're not sitting in it so what you do is you pour your lecka into your net pot like this and then you're going to take your plant and place it in there in the pot and then it's gonna pour the remaining like around it until it's full [Music] there you go then i just place that directly inside the pot here and then i will just water this and then you want to take out your net pot occasionally you can just pull it out of here take a look at the water how it's doing in there and replace your water as well it'll just be free draining like that next version we're going to do is just to put this directly into glass container with lecca and then fill it with water so i've got a glass container here i'm going to put my plant in it's kind of hard to see there this is my favorite way to do it some people say it's not good because then always it's in water you don't want your roots just sitting in water at all times and that is true but you can let this dry out um in between waterings and then just you know keep an eye on the water rinse it out hold your hand over the top of the pot and then dump it out the water and replace it with new water and then sometimes what i will also do and see how pretty that looks because miranda have a tendency to kind of flop over and they can get kind of loose in here because this is lightweight lika a very lightweight i put some river rocks right on top here and that just kind of anchors and stabilizes everything down and then lastly i'll take this one that has soil on it and i'll pop that up in a regular pot and then we'll have the three systems we'll have lecca just and directly in glass the one in the net pot and the one planted in soil and i'll be posting another video uh updating on how each of these are doing so please subscribe to the channel we are a new youtube channel the soil bar and like this video if you would like to see more thank you so much bye guys

Channel: The Soil Bar

Views: 2,093

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: How to convert to leca, Lemon lime maranta, The soil bar, Converting maranta to leca, How to repot house plants, Hydroton

Id: 8C8dptEUd4U

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020