Xanthosoma Lime Zinger Elephant Ear Care

Oh, hey. What you doing? I He's for some reason is convinced we're about to do something. What? Why? I bring out the camera and you think it's all about you. You're kind of right. Hey, what's up, garden friends? Jeff. Here's how you doing. Hope you're doing well. I'm great. Was that too fast? Feeling a little speedy today. I have been out here doing some rearranging, transitioning from tropical to fall or summer to fall, tropical plants to fall plants. There we go. things are so a hodgepodge of everything in between until I move all the tropicals inside. The task that I need to do next is to come in here and prune this whole entire plant back. This beautiful zanthasoma and I'm going to repot it and everything so I can take it inside for the winter. That's not what this video is about, but just giving you some background of how we got here. This is a beautiful plant and we've had some history, so I thought we'll talk about it. These are awesome plants. You may be growing them or might be interested in growing them or growing some variant of this plant. As I mentioned, this is a zanthsoma. This one's called lime zinger. Look at that leaf. It's not even that big. It's so pretty. I thought, well, you know what? Every year when I have an alocacia or a colocacia that does really well, it generally gets a spotlight. Why not the same for this beauty? Especially when it took so long to get here. So, a little bit of backstory with this one. I got this from I don't remember maybe Herz a few years ago. It was shipped out during the winter time during a very very very cold spell and they all arrived over four looking basically dead and uh they did a lot of dying back um basically just reduced to some very small roots and then the next year they got to be I don't know maybe a foot to a foot and a half tall which is great and then overwintered them again and here we are finally with some nice big mature plants that are worthy of talking about. Yeah, took a long time to get here and I'm seeing some stuff on this that's going to need to be addressed too. This is a good time to just go ahead and talk about some of those things. So, these are similar to your colocas, your alo cases. I believe they're most closely related to a colladium. If you're curious about any of that, then that's how that pans out. The lime zinger specifically is known for its really nice light well lime green chartreusy foliage. Something I have noticed with this one to really get that foliage where I live anyways, some afternoon shade seems to help. I know that if these don't get enough light, you're going to have more of a deep green leaf. So, if you want that nice color, the lighting does matter. So, if it's a deeper green, you probably need to give them some more light. And if they're starting to, we'll say that this is scorch. It is a little bit of scorch. That's too much sun. Up until recently, this one had a big robelini palm over it. It was casting some nice afternoon shade over it. Those went off to the greenhouse. And now here they are out in the sun. You can see that photo oxidation going on in there, that whiteness. Too much sun. It is the time of year though where the sun's not as strong, so I'm not all that worried about it. And I'm going to cut this thing back to repot it and take it inside. So that doesn't really matter. It's going to be fine. Lime zingers generally go anywhere from about 2 and 1/2 to four, a little bit taller than that, feet tall. Depending on lighting, they can vary. So sometimes may stretch up higher, maybe stay lower with more sunlight. They are water hogs. Pause for an airplane. Yeah, the more water the better with these guys. As long as that soil drains really well, they can take it. The warmer it is, the more water they're going to want. In areas where these can be grown as a perennial, which is like zone 8 and up, I'm sure you could get away with this in warmer parts of zone 7 with a good layer of mulch and proper sighting. I would be uh concerned about invasive potential or I don't know about invasive aggressive potentials. These can be invasive in certain areas. So that is something to keep in mind. If you're growing as a house plant like I am, it's not something you have to worry about. But if you plant these near waterways, anything like that, you really need to stay on top because they can spread and just go absolutely everywhere. I see these all over the place down further south into Florida in the waterways and I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be there. As far as just being an easy to grow, we'll just say elephant ear. I'd say they're like top tier for me. The escalentees the which is a collocacia, they're pretty simple cuz they have a bulb, so really easy to overwinter. I don't even bother trying to keep them alive during the winter. With these, you have like a a corn sort of thing underneath there that you can overwinter, but it's just not really the same. I like to take these and just put them someplace. Well, there's options, but what I've been doing is putting it onto a shelf in an area well on my grow shelves where things aren't necessarily as warm. So, generally my lower shelves, and I just kind of just sort of scoot them along through the winter time. There's grow lights above them. I let them dry out maybe halfway, if not more, between waterings, depending on humidity and just other variables. The main goal that I have during the winter time is to make sure that they're not going to rot out from having too much water, which is something you have to worry about when you don't have the really warm conditions and the really bright light to stimulate growth. kind of like just growing them indoors, right? So, they'll want to be more on the dry side if they're not getting those really warm temperatures. When I say warm, I'm talking about like well over 75 degrees Fahrenheit. They're heavy feeders. This guy got a whole bunch of compost when I planted it up, some slow release, and it has had liquid fertilizer. Not as often as it should have because I was really bad about my liquid fertilizing this year, but I'd say that all worked out just fine. Everything grew really well in spite of that. largely because I top dressed with compost and had some soil release in there. But an all-purpose water-soluble fertilizer about once a month during the growing season does give them an extra boost. Look at that leaf. It's that deep sinus right here. That big heavy lobe. That's what makes these such a cool plant. A really nice exotic look into zone 8, right? And you don't always find that like that. I'm pretty sure in cooler areas you could still grow them. Just got to be more mindful about where you situate them. They are toxic. You know, you want to keep them away from curious mouse. You don't want your cats and things chewing on them when you have them in the house. And as far as pests are concerned, well, we got an easy segue there cuz I'm seeing signs of spidermitites on this one. It has been very dry here. We're in a drought right now. Uh have been for a few months. And that lack of humidity and then the shorter day lengths, plants are becoming more susceptible and the bugs start chewing on them. So, I can see in here what looks like spidermitites or the start of spidermitites anyway in there. And it is it's possible that is just dust. It's Wait, hold on. Hold on. Let's get in there. Oh, no, no, no. Those are spidermitites. I'll get a nice and close so you can Oh, that was too close. Let me back it up. Yeah, that's spidermite. That's spidermite damage. Maybe a little bit of edema in there, but that's mostly spidermitites. So options, uh, spray them down, horicultural soap, oil, something like that. I'm going to be cutting this thing back, so I'm not really concerned about it, but it's not something I want spreading to my other plants. So that's something I'm going to get on top of today is cutting all the foliage off of this. I'm going to lift it from its container and instead of just potting it into another pot where I just basically add some more soil into its pot that'll be going in for the winter time. I'm going to try and get as much of the soil out, rinse it free, and probably do a spray down with some neem something like that around the roots and then pot it back up. Haven't had a lot of meie bugs on them, but I do tend to have meie bugs in my grow space during the winter time. And I do remember having to pick a few off of the stems last year, but it wasn't too dramatic. But I would imagine with that more thin leaf that they have, they probably love them. They're going to chew on them. They're going to they're going to suck the juices right out of there. Spider mightites and mele bugs main things you have to worry about. Also, you're going to have white fly. I don't usually see scale as an issue with these. The nice thing about the zanthos, colocacius, alocacas, bananas, gingers, anything that grows quickly is that when pets do become a problem, you can just cut everything off, wash off the more easy to clean parts, which are just going to be the inner stems. So, when I cut this back, I'm going to be cutting it back to well, way down here, like, you know, just going to leave like maybe a 4 in stub above the surface of the soil. It's a lot easier to clean that than it is the foliage. The foliage is somewhat hydrophobic, so water does beat up and come right off of it, and that makes it really difficult to spray for pests. And that's usually why I end up with spidermitites on my zanths and just all my elephant ears. uh with the exception of my alocacas sprays stick better to those. And sometimes I'll add a sticker. That can help a lot too. But really, this one is still not that big. I would expect this one next year to completely fill out that container. You can see all the growth that it has down on the inside. So, I think there were just two, maybe three main stems in there when I potted this up in the springtime, and they just multiply like insanity. though, if I were to give this a few more months, I bet it would fill out the rest of that container completely, which I don't need it to do. But they're easy to divide because of that. So, you buy one within several months, you can probably cut them up very easily, and have a whole bunch. Just get in there with a clean knife, divide them apart, repot them. Pretty basic propagation by division stuff, right? Flowers are pretty insignificant. It's about what you would expect on anything the in the uh yeah, the erase family, meaning, you know, aids. So you got your aloacia flowers, spathophyms, aeroids, you know, it's just it's a it's a big tuby thing with a thing on the inside. Looks neat, but it's not really the reason you grow them. I mean, it could be that that's on you. Maybe that is why you're going to grow it. Uh the flowers do tend to be held down on the inside. So when I have this one had a flower on it not too long ago. Did it die off? Yeah, that's not there anymore. Never mind. Anybody else? People get curious. They like to see the air aid flowers. I've got all these collocacia over here and they have a very similar flower on them, but they do most of their flowering midsummer. I doubt there's anything in here. And oh well, yeah, here's a leftover spath from a bloom in here. And this is more dramatic than what you see on the xanthosoma. So there you go. Really neither here nor there, but I feel like since I talked about it, I should show something, right? But yeah, essentially if you have them in the house and it's not really warm and they're not getting a ton of light, don't let them sit in water because they'll probably just rot on you. Even though these are water loving plants, winter time, if you're just relying on light from your house, you're going to have shorter day lengths depending on where you are, right? In relation to the equator and everything, but the shorter the duration of light, also the less water. That's something to keep in mind as well. I would never expect this to be this nice big full lush plant inside of my house unless I had an atrium or a sun room or just I mean my house was oriented in a way to where it would get a good amount of light and warmth. My house is usually more on the cool side between 68 and 72 Fahrenheit. So that's just not really going to do it for these. It's not going to make them explode with growth. But they'll hang out and you can kind of trudge them through until it gets warm enough to move them back outside. But uh again, it's not something I'm expecting to get a lot of growth out of them. And that's why take it easy on the watering and just really no fertilizing. There's not a point. They're not taking it up. There's no reason to do it. But if you notice active growth, if the plant's acting like it wants to grow, then water and fertilize. I don't like to do the whole entire well, you don't fertilize between this time and this time. If the plant's growing and seems happy, go ahead and water it and fertilize it. I just love the color on these and the shape of the leaves. They have that more elongated leaf again, that deep sinus. And because at least where I am, I'm 6B 7A. The afternoon sun can be pretty intense for these guys. And having them in a spot with some more, I guess we'll call it shade. There was shade when the robelini was here. It pulls your eye back having that lighter color. And I like that. It makes you want to look back into an area that's otherwise more shady, which is nice. It's like a highlighter for the garden. A good accent. Oh, and I need to dial back. So, I'm going to rewind when I was talking about the toxicity. That's going to be referring to the foliage. I have no idea what the edible nature is with the roots of zanthysoma. I know with Calocacia taro edible, right? Uh but not necessarily the foliage. There's different compounds in there. It's not necessary good for you. And what you can eat, what your animals can eat, those are different things, too. I don't know. That's not something I've even thought about looking into until just now, actually. I don't know. Maybe comment down below. You maybe you'll know if this is going to be similar to your escalantes, your taro. This is not taro. Okay. So that's collocacia. This is zanthsoma. But taro is a broad term used kind of like elephant ear. It is supposed to mean collocia, but I see people use it for alocacia sometimes and zanthsoma. So I don't know. I don't know. I just just to be safe maybe don't eat it. Stick with something that you know is okay, right? Pretty resilient little plants, right? That's another great thing about them. the fact that this was sent to me and it basically just died down to being some roots and a lot of those roots died back too. So starting I may as well just started it from seed really and then to get this in a year and a half after it had been through everything it had been through I'd say it's pretty good. It says a lot about the plant that they're doing well out here during the summer when they get the shade and then in the grow space they're doing fine too but again I'm not trying to keep them looking like this in my grow area during the winter time. I'm just trying to keep them alive but more into a dormant capacity. So, another option, which I should have talked about when I was talking about keeping them inside when keeping them in the house during the winter time, uh, if you don't have, you know, shelves with lights or you don't want to put a grow on the plant, you should be able to, at least once they're nice and mature like this, not when they're small, but when you have a nice hefty sized clump and a big root ball under there, you should be able to cut the whole thing back and put it someplace that's not as brightly lit. And just you just give the pot a little bit of water, maybe like once a month, something like that. You just don't want the roots to dry out too terribly much. Similar to how we would store, say, cana bulbs, ryomes during the winter time. Well, you can't see them. Wouldn't matter if you could cuz they're full grown plants right now. But you just want to put those someplace cool, dark, and dry. Like maybe under the sink in a paper bag or in your basement, maybe a root cellar. I don't know. That'd be too cold for these. But if you just have an area of your house, I have a bathroom upstairs that's not all that warm. I could just cut this back, take that up there, and pay attention to the stubs of stem that are left above the soil. And if they start to look like they're shriveling up and getting funny looking, then I'd go ahead and give that a drink. And then try and pay attention to how long that took so I can stay ahead of that by a few days. Just do that throughout the winter time. So they'll maybe have like anywhere from, I'd say, one to five leaves at a time. But it's not, you know, it's nothing like this. That really is the easier way to do things. Since I have the grow space set up, I just put them out there and pretty much do the same thing that I was just describing, but it's warmer and they seem to be fine with that, too. Yeah, just a beautiful plant. One that I really love, one I've really liked for a long time. And I thought, well, hey, this one has come a long way. We should talk about it before I come in here and chop the entire thing back and just make it look like it's been thrown through a shredder, right? Yeah. Comment down below. Tips, trick, suggestions. Always appreciate. Don't forget to read the comments if you have some questions that maybe I didn't cover or maybe somebody else can provide clarification of something I didn't explain very well. I don't know. It's a community. You know, we all learn together. You growing these in your ponds. Great pond plants. Plant them marginally. They just they're so nice. But again, watch out for water waste, but you can anybody can plant these in a pond as long as it's warm enough outside. Maybe the top of your fish tank. It'd have to be a really big fish tank. So, yeah, I'm going to get in here. I got to cut all this stuff back, dispose of the spidermite leaves, and get to work. I got a lot of plant stuff to handle before it gets too cold out here. All right. Hey, hope everybody's doing well, having a great day, great life, and everything's going absolutely beautifully for you. Look at that leaf. That's so pretty. As always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye bye. [Music]