How to grow variegated alocasias

hi everyone welcome to jungle girl keeps it real and today I'm going to be talking about one of my all-time favorite plants the variegated Alocasia which I believe is allocation maharajah berry gotta now I live in a wet tropical climate so this is an easy garden plant but in cooler climates it is commonly grown as a house plant or seasonally for the spring and summer now variegation in plants occurs for different reasons but in this case the variegation is known as char Merrick which basically means that there is both green and white tissue occurring on the same plant as you can see how many stems you can see this little guy here is showing some nice variegation but if we look at the rest of the plant we can see that it has reverted back to the stable green these plant don't really like being variegated as the white tissue cannot photosynthesize for this reason variegated plants often need more feeding just to keep them on now that little guy I'm going to have to rescue this is typical example of what can happen if you turn your back on these plans for a few moments the variegated plant has sent out a non variegated plant and you can see that it has much larger and much happier leaves I get asked a lot how to propagate and grow those beauties it's a lot easier than you might think there is a clump I rediscovered after a weeding binge and surprisingly it has maintained its variegation so I'm going to use this to make more plants take a look at these beautiful trunks these are the thick fleshy stem that supports the leaves are making very quite large these are the pieces from which we are going to propagate they're a healthy root shutting down and covering the trunk is a brown and flakey skin [Music] which is heading up a trunk here now if you take a look here you will see that this term has a large amount of white tissue which although very attractive it's not necessarily going to give us the strongest plant due to the photo in photosynthesis issues but this trunk over here on the other hand is about 80% green now not what I'm going for either so I think I will leave both of them in the ground for now and see if I can find something more suitable so this guy on the other hand well here's just about perfect so I'm going to use him to propagate from he has a nice healthy trunk free from disease and you can see some of these beautiful new nodes are just beginning to emerge through that flaky brown skin now before we chop him up I just want to show you the surrounding soil and all these mini plants that have just popped up each of these has actually come from a piece of the stem that has crumbled as it has aged and you can actually pull these out and plant them up if you want to this guy well here's he's not going to make it in the world but when you get his plan to they are all green or white and this further shows you the complexity of turmeric variegation the white leaf is probably still attached to the mother plant but his future is lost these white guys simply won't survive on their own so I'm taking a sharp knife clean cut from the stem of the mother plant you can see it's a nice clean flesh with no signs or rot or decay so this is a really great piece to to use for propagation so here we are ready to chop this root up I'm going to remove the main growing soon few centimetres of the tuberous base and roots still attached you may want to consider gloves for this as the SAP contains calcium oxalate crystals which are called rough eyes which are tiny needle structures that can cause irritation and pain so I'm being very careful to limit my contact with the flesh another closer look at this tuber and you can really see that this has a clean disease free flesh if you were to see any brown or soft mushy spots you will need to chop them out this growing point I'm going to plant out from the garden but you could also pot it up back to our propagating piece and you can see these gnomes are ready to burst out you could cut this root so that each piece has a no but I have found even the pieces without nodes throughout easily so I'm going to give this guy the chop [Music] you want every piece to be about the same size of the 20 cent piece this will ensure that the new plant lip has food from a small chunk of the starchy tuber to really get it growing every piece needs to have a portion of the brown flakey skin but this is where the new plant month will emerge I've noticed this piece is a little brown and squishy so I'm going to dispose of that so there we have it propagating pieces ready to go so I filled this plant tray with a nice PT seed raising this well-drained it's only about 5 centimeters deep but that's all you need I'm going to take these pieces and place them with the fleshy white Cheever beneath the soil and the flaky skin facing up don't worry about there's existing brown roots as our babies are growing to develop new roots once they're all put to bed leave a tray in a warm humid place and keep it on the dry side too much water and out little pieces will rot away fast forward six weeks and let's take a look at how our little pieces are getting on the first thing you notice is that there are new shoots erupting from the soil but if we take a closer look you can see these healthy new roots that have been pushed out this is a healthy fat little chute that has been feeding off the starchy base on a closer examination we also noticed that this sheet has clear signs of the variegation we want to promote let's take a look at another piece wow you can really see those healthy roots time to pot up our babies the most important thing with allocators is drainage so I'm going to make a mix-up with that in mind I have here a really good quality potting mix but it's a bit too dense for these allocations so I'm going to add a few handfuls of perlite roughly 2/3 potting mix to about 1/3 perlite this here is controlled release fertilizer and this will feed our plant for up to 6 months our mix has come together nicely and you can see it is moist but still crumbly I can't emphasize drainage enough with allocations I have here some coarse gravel but I'm going to put in the bottom quarter of my pot I'm using a 15 centimeter pot and I found that the bigger the pot the bigger the allocation will grow so don't hold back they just start to fill your pot with the Minx leave a little space before you reach the top you want to gently lay out the roots of your allocation plant lid onto the fresh soil with enough depth so that the roots are covered but our soup is emerging from the mess you may need to play around with it gently cover the roots with the mix and firm down with the chute just pointing out water in with some sea salt and you're good to go a few months later and this guy is really looking happy keep up the liquid feed and don't overwater thanks everyone for watching today and I hope you have enjoyed this video please subscribe to my channel and let me know if you have any questions you can also find me on Instagram Facebook and remember folks to keep it real [Music]

Channel: Junglegirlkeepsitreal

Views: 83,071

Rating: 4.9000659 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie

Id: upKMF6liMZA

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019