Caladium Haul! Lots of Fun Varieties For 2021

Hey, hey, what's up, gardening friends? Jeff here at Tropical Plant Party. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. It's a interesting kind of day, having that overcast where it's making me think it might rain, but maybe not. I don't know. Just to be safe, filming from under the umbrella for right now. I got a whole bunch of caladiums in the mail over the last few weeks, really. I've been storing these inside in a dark, cool closet in my basement, waiting to get these planted. I thought it would be a good idea to go through what I got. Normally, every year when I plant caladiums, I just buy them in a big assorted bag from Sam's Club. It's like 15 bucks for a big bag, usually it's 25 to 30 bulbs inside each one. The problem with that is that I always get asked which kinds I have. I always have to say, I don't know. It's just an assortment, just a bunch of, you know, hyper-produced tissue culture type caladiums. I thought this year it might be fun to, well, I did do that. I did plant a lot of those, but it would be maybe a good idea to try out some from different places that actually have their names on them. There are lots of fun varieties out there. It's not the most pretty video because it's just a lot of brown, dry stuff here, but I have pictures of everything I'll put up on the screen from the websites these come from. Here we just go through what's here, and then a few things that I'm still waiting on. If you've been following my channel for any amount of time, you may know that I am a caladium nut. I love caladiums. One of my favorite things to plant, they're so easy and simple to grow. Whoa, got a bird fight going on up here. Easily distracted. Simple, easy to grow, very rewarding plants. I don't have any crazy exotic varieties or anything like that. I tend to just go for whatever I think is the most pretty. Well, we can get on to actually getting something nice up here on the screen. For starters, caladium aran. The bulbs, nice and big. There's only three of them in here, but look at them. Nice, big, and hefty, which isn't a surprise. Aran's your classic green caladium with a white center to them. They tend to be one that gets a little bit larger, which is one of the reasons that I like it. The lighting on that does say part shade to full shade. As far as the lighting's concerned for all of these, I tend to always take lighting with caladiums with a grain of salt. If they say shade, then I usually start them in shade, just to be safe. Why start all the caladiums in the dark? They don't need light until they start growing. I've just found over the years that a lot of caladiums can take a lot more light than we give them credit for. So unless it actually says shade, and I do some reading on it and find out that it's one that'll burn up and crisp up and do terribly in the shade, I like to make sure that they all get a pretty decent amount of morning sun. But no afternoon sun unless they actually say that they are good for full sun. Next up, burning heart. Nice, big clumps, just like with the aran. Burning heart is a beautiful red caladium. They have some speckling and freckling in them. The site says 16 to 20 inches high, and again, part sun, part shade. The burning heart, to me, looks like it has a little bit of a sheen to the foliage, so I'm looking forward to seeing whether or not that's true or if it's just what I've been seeing in pictures. I'm pretty sure I've grown burning heart before, but if it wasn't labeled as it, I can't say for sure. But I'm almost positive that I have, and it's one that I really like growing. Desert sunset. This one has rice holes in it. I'm not sure if this came with rice holes in it or if it's because at one point I had these all mixed together and all the ones from Proven Winners came in a box full of rice holes. I can't say for sure. Bulbs are nice and firm. That's really the case for everything so far. The bulbs all look good. They're all firm. Desert sunset is gonna be a little bit smaller than the burning heart, and it doesn't have the freckling and speckling on it that you saw with that one. It is red, has some white in there, and very heavy veining on the leaves. That's gonna be a fun one to have around. Okay, Pink Beauty. This has three big clumps in it and a couple little ones that fell off there in the bag. That's always fun. Can grow those too. Pink Beauty is one of those classic caladiums. Got that nice pink appearance with some green speckling and freckling. High variation between leaves. You never really know what you're going to get with each one, which is always fun and exciting. 14 to 16 inches, part sun, part shade. What I like about Pink Beauty is it is actually pink. There are a lot of pink caladiums out there that are more red than pink. Whenever I've grown Pink Beauty in the past, it's always had really nice pink foliage on it. Sometimes it might sway a little bit more to the red side, but it's still, it's pretty pink. Okay, this next one. Gonna be debatable whether or not people will consider this a caladium. This is Allocasia helobeauty. There's debate as to whether or not the Allocasia helobeauty is actually Allocasia or if it's caladium. And that's because it does tend to grow more like a caladium than an Allocasia. Even the bulbs look kind of like a mix between the two. I figured I'd go ahead and include the helobeauty in this just because, I mean, why not? Whether or not it's Allocasia or caladium, it's going to have similar features to it and have pretty similar characteristics when it comes to how to grow the plant and some things with the parents. But they do get much larger, 30 to 36 inches, kind of if you're lucky. I've never had one get that big the first year. Maybe 20 to 24 inches in the first year. It's about as big as I've ever gotten them. They have beautiful foliage though. I love the leaves on them. So whether it's an Allocasia or a caladium, doesn't matter to me. The only thing I will say is last year when I planted my helobeauties, they didn't do very much. It was just tons and tons and tons of teeny tiny leaves on them, which usually suggests that they had been de-eyed, which is something that growers will do sometimes to encourage plants to have a lot more foliage on them. So de-eyeing is when you take something sharp. Is this in focus? There we go. And you just kind of pet out the middle of the tuber of that bulb. And then lots and lots of small plants come up from the sides. You're not gonna have nice big leaves that come out the middle, but you have lots and lots and lots of little ones. That's the only thing I can figure that happened there. Can't say for sure, but I can see in the middle here, it's nice and firm, has a point to it. So this one hasn't been de-eyed. So hopefully we'll get bigger foliage out of this one this year. How did I already lose that little paper bag? What did I do with it? It was under the dog. Toby uses anything as a pillow. Next up are gonna be all the collodiums that I ordered from Proven Winners. I partially just wanted to order the collodiums from Proven Winners. One, because I grew the lemon blush last year and absolutely loved that collodium. I thought it was so cute. And I was just curious to see what the packaging and everything would be like if you order bulbs from them. I've never done that before. And the way gardening was this year, last winter I was thinking it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and just order a few because I never know if I'm gonna see them in the nurseries. And I've never actually seen the bulbs in the nurseries before, but I know that some nurseries do carry them. So for starters, I have Dawn to Dusk. These all look pretty much the same. So I don't know if y'all want me to actually go through. I can pop them open so you can have a look at what's inside. They're packaged really well. Nice, big, firm bulbs. I enjoy the rice holes. There's a whole box of rice holes over here. They came in. I'm saving those because those are fantastic for mixing into potting soils. Just realized I opened the wrong one. They're not always that cheap. So I'm glad that I held on to that. Another thing that I really like is that they came with a tag. All these other ones, I'm going to have to make a tag for so I can remember what they are. That way, as the season progresses, I can give updates on how things are doing. But with these, it's right here. So as long as I plant them all together, which I probably will because there's only three inside each one of these, I won't have to worry about writing something out. Not that that's that big of a deal, but anything that takes another step out of things so you can just get right to planting, that's always exciting and fun. It's Dawn to Dusk, a really fun shade caladium, really pretty tricolor foliage with the red, the green, and the white in there. Sorry, foliage, not foliage. Thing I really like about this one is that it has multiple shades of green in it. So there's like a chartreuse-y kind of yellow green, and there should be some darker green speckling in there. So I said tricolor, but really, there's like at least four different colors in there. And because I loved the lemon blush so, so, so much, ordered a big bag of more of those. Nice, big, firm bulbs. I don't know if this is a fungicide that's on there. That wouldn't be unusual. Or if they at some point started to mold and then the mold dried off. Seeing as how it looks like that's around, all of the eyes and spots where they've been cut, I'm gonna guess it's a fungicide. I'm not worried about it because they're nice and firm. Lemon blush though, the reason that I love the lemon blush so much is because, well, I mean, the color. They have a really great color to them with that greenish yellow that fades into a red. The leaf shape is a big reason that I like these though. They have more of a squat, kind of chubby looking leaf to them. They just have cute, short little stumpy leaves. I think they're adorable. Next up, this one is called Mesmerized. Nice, big, healthy tubers in there. This one, the tag says 12 to 16 inches. Again, the website could give them the same size for pretty much every single one. The tag actually says 12 to 16 inches. I thought this has really neat leaves on them. I was really drawn towards anything that had three or four colors in it. That high level of variegation just stands out, especially if they're going to go in the shade. Mesmerized is one that's for sun or shade, so it can put it in a lot of different places. Then Radiance, what is the tag say on height for this one? 14 to 16 inches, website 15 to 20 inches. Radiance does have that classic caladium look to them, which is something I appreciate. Green outlines and then whites, reds, and pinks in the middles, it's just a pretty caladium. All right, and then the last one, this is Rathberry Moon, look at that. So pretty, 18 to 24 inches tall. Let's look at the picture on the computer, though. Rathberry Moon's really pretty, green foliage, lots of pinkish-red speckling on the inside. They have a similar appearance to me of the Mist Muffet, which is a classic caladium that has a light color leaf on it with lots of speckling, but the speckling is much, much, much heavier on the leaves in this one. The website says sun or shade, but right here on the tag, it just says shade, so I was going to go ahead and give Proven Winners some kudos for being able to label their caladiums as to where their preferences are, but I, well, which is it? The website says sun or shade, the tag says shade. That's confusing, it might even be that way for some of the others, and I didn't notice it, so I was just focused on the pictures. That was one of the selling points for me, was that I was able to pick them out by sun or shade, which is becoming more common, I think thanks to Proven Winners, but for the majority of the time I've been gardening, pretty much always, caladiums were usually just sold as shade plants, and then you'll learn over time that usually most of them can take a decent amount of sun, especially ones that have a good amount of red in them usually can take a lot more light than the white ones can. Not always true, but just as a general rule, but now I'm, I don't know which one it is. It says sun or shade, and then the tag says shade. Well, doesn't matter, I'll put it in a spot that gets really bright, morning light, maybe I'll start that in a pot and slowly move it around. Were the other ones like that? I need to go back and look. It's not a big deal, I'm not too worried about it. Okay, next up, these are really fun caladiums. This is Caladium Fiesta, there's a pack of five here, but I think there's more than that in here. Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, if you count all the little bits that have fallen off of it. Fiesta is an awesome caladium. I ordered them from Wayside, so I wanna make sure to be using their picture for this, but I'm sorry it has that big sold out thing across the front. It's a white caladium with a, usually does have a green outline on them. I've grown them before, and I didn't always notice the green outline. Maybe the picture just brings that out. That beautiful red veining in the middle. They tend to be a little bit more stout, but they do have nice, big, fat, chunky leaves on them. I've grown them in pretty intense sun before and never had a struggle with that before. And if this is the same Fiesta from Bates and Sons, Bates and Sons, they're growers, they're commercial growers at this point, don't think they're retail anymore, but they hybridize and grow tons of caladiums. And I'm pretty sure Fiesta is one of theirs, not positive, I'm pretty sure. If it's the same Fiesta, I know that theirs takes full sun. The tag says full sun to full shade. I'll be putting them where they're gonna get a good amount of light, at least five hours of light a day. That was a fun thing to look at. Piece of paper covered in junk. Sorry about that. I also have the Spring Fling caladium right here. The classic caladium, fairly common. They have a pinkish red foliage to them. Really, really high contrast in the veins. This is a really fun, pretty caladium. High variability though. Sometimes when I've grown these, they've been more on the red side. Sometimes they've been more on the pink side. So I don't know if that has to do with where the culture came from, or if it has to do with my growing conditions and putting them in different spots. Their leaves tend to look kind of thin, almost like crepey or tissue papery, but they're pretty sturdy. They hold up really well. I've never had any issues with them tearing during hail or anything like that. There are some caladiums that have really, really like paper-thin foliage on them, you can see right through, where when we have really bad storms during the summertime, particularly if there's hail, that that will cause a lot of damage and just destroy the plant. In the process of pulling these up on the computer to do a screen record so everybody can see with the pictures of everything, I also ordered a few more things. So we'll call them honorable mentions, or things just haven't arrived yet. One of those being the Caladium Florida Beauty. Ordered a few of those. It's the classic caladium. Usually has different shades of green on the leaves with some pinkish red speckles, and sometimes they have white mixed in. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's just green and pink. They're fun to grow. They're one of my favorites. So I'm glad that I ordered some more of those. And then I ordered some of these Flatter Me's, which again, it's that multicolor variegation, but it looks like it's gonna be some neat variegation. You saw that with the, what was it, Mesmerized and maybe one of the others that they have kind of big chunks of red over the white and green. This one looks like it's gonna be more white over the red and green. I also noticed though that they sell Flatter Me from Proven Winners. So I don't know who made it or who came up with it. And then the last one is, let me see, caladium debutante. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful? Those leaves, so stinking pretty. I love when there's a gradient where the colors start to wash and blend together, and that's what's going on here with the debutante. Says it gets 12 to 14 inches high, can take four to six hours of morning sun, so that's pretty good. That's a good amount of light for this plant. I'm really excited for that one. I always enjoy a plant where there's a wash between the colors. With some of the ones that I showed, like the, well, the Mesmerized, that was one, and then I just talked about the Flatter Me. It's heavy patches of color laying on top of each other, and there's different forms of variegation. But with that, where'd you go? That debutante, everything just kind of brushes together like a painting. I can't wait to see what that looks like in person. I just set my laptop down on top of all that junk. Why did I do that? That was not smart. Yeah, there it is. Lots of fun stuff. Can't wait to get these all growing and seeing what they do and what they look like over these next few months. I will have to be on top of making sure they're labeled properly so that I can lift them and store them and not just let them go to waste. But if there are any here that I'm like, eh, I don't really love it, then, well, it was an annual for me and not one that I plan on replanting. But we will see. It's pretty late in the season. I need to get these planted. Typically, I start my caladiums around late April to May. I'll start them inside. I'll just put them on a big flat tray with just a little bit of soil on top of them, give them some water, and within usually a couple weeks, they'll start to sprout. As soon as they start to sprout or start to open up their first leaf, I make sure that they get moved onto or underneath lights, that is. Starting them outside, way easier, way faster. It's nice and warm now. May was a pretty cool month. That's why they're still here and still in their packages. It probably could have gotten implanted maybe last week, but prior to that, we were having ups and downs and ups and downs. And until the nighttime temperatures, we're staying well above 60. I don't like to put the bulbs in the ground because they're more prone to rotting. Cold and wet was the theme of May, and I don't think any of these would have appreciated that. Thanks for hanging out. I look forward to getting all of these planted. Comment down below. What are some of your favorite caladium varieties? There's some fun things you do with your caladiums. Tips, tricks, suggestions, always appreciated. I'll keep everybody updated and posted on how these are doing, what's going on with them out in the garden and the vlogs and in the garden tours. We'll get to enjoy them and watch them grow all season long. This one, you just crawled right underneath the tripod. Good thing I had already taken the camera off of it. Yeah, oh, such a sweetheart, Toby. Okay, time to go. Gotta actually get these planted now. Hope everybody's doing well, having a great day and a great life, and everything's going beautifully for you. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye, bye.