Planting Giant Alocasias

Hey, how you doing? I meant to zoom out. Zoomed in on your cute nose. Hey, what's up garden friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? If you're doing well, I'm great. I, well, I'm in the middle of something. Figured I'd pick up the camera and talk about it. I know, really exciting way to intro a video, huh? You tell my older sister was here, she always leaves behind all of her trinkets and toys. She's in her 40s. Gotta love that. Never have to grow up. I need to get these alocasias planted up. They're looking pretty bad. It doesn't help that I keep hitting them with my clippers. Yeah, it says what we're doing. Planting up some alocasias. These are alocasia, uh, alocasia, alocasia, don't care how you say it. Borneo giant. Had these in a plant haul about a year ago. Actually, probably almost exactly a year ago. And they were just in little 10 inch pots. They're tiny little babies. And I talked about them, why I love them. They're fantastic alocasias. They grow very, very alocasia. That sounds even weirder than just saying alocasia. They grow very quickly, get huge. I overwintered these in the garage this year in the grow space. I think they did pretty well in there. Surprisingly well. The way that I used to overwinter them and the way I overwintered them this year, drastically different. I just cut the inflorescences off of these because those take a lot of energy from the plant. And that should have been something I talked about when it's time to talk about cutting them back. They overwintered very, very well. Pardon the mess. It's that time of year. I've got all my stuff stationed out. Tripod just keeps falling over. That tripod doesn't work with the new camera. So that's why it's just sitting there. I gave them more light, more water because I had more heat than I used to have in the grow space. So the way I used to overwinter these was to just, well, essentially I put them in a spot that was more on the darker side and the cooler end of the grow space, which is near the draftiness of my garage door, and just let them chill. They would get water from water running underneath them. They'd take some of that up when I'd water everything else. I very rarely intentionally, deliberately give them water. I just wanted them to just hang out. A cool, more on the dry side storage. Not a lot of light either. But I have a newer heater. It's really strong, heats the garage up really well. So I'm like, well, that's not going to work anymore. I can't do that cool storage thing that I used to do with plants. So I pulled them out. So they were under some grow lights. There are some windows and they did okay. They still grew. And, um, well, really actually they grew pretty well all season long, all winter. They just kept going, but their leaves, you can see much more long and stretched out and well, they're done. It's time to start them over. So they held up really well. They're pretty sad looking right now. And that's just because they're outside exposed to the elements. We just had some pretty intense winds and storms the other day. And that's brought those big leaves down and made them droop. I'm cutting them back. It's a lot of fun to cut them back. I'm doing that. I'll leave a, you know, a leaf or two on them, but these really long ones, there's no reason to leave them. I'm just going to take them off. These big, long leaves, they're just going to get tattered. The wind's going to mess them up and it's going to be easier for me to plant them. If I don't have them on here, it's just less to have to maneuver around and to manipulate, trying to get them up the hill where they're about to go. Also, I can go ahead and cut down further. It doesn't have to be all up high like that. That was just because I'm paying more attention to the camera than I am the plants. Yeah, just going to thin them out since there's not so much on here. And that's also going to encourage their roots to push out once I get them into the ground. That part is pretty self-explanatory. I dug a hole. I'm going to put them in the hole. I am going to have to get a lot of the soil off of their roots though. The areas where I keep these is, well, we can go look at it. It's awkward because it faces my neighbor's house. I hate filming over there, but we'll have a glimpse and I'll hide behind some shrubbery or something while we talk about it. Can we see it from here? Can I creep in? That makes it even more creepy, doesn't it? There's a hole right here, back behind everything. There it is. There's the hole. And I dug another one over there, behind that plastic rock that's over there. I dug them down about, I'd say, 15 to 18 inches deep and about 20 to 24 inches wide. There are pipes in the area that these go, so that's as wide as I can make those holes. There's an irrigation line and there's electrical conduit down deeper, but it's all in that same area. Something that I wish I had thought about when having all the lines run was maybe let's not run lines on each side of the steps where I knew I was going to want to plant something. Just didn't think about it. These are plants that do tend to throw a fit when you put them in the ground. Not always, but sometimes they'll get pretty upset with you. And those really long leaves that they had, those would flop over anyways just from all the movement and all the motion. And I'm probably going to have to remove a good amount of soil from around these roots, too, to get them into the ground. So that's just, it's going to upset them. So just take them off. I could go in and try and remove a bunch of this stuff from this pseudostem here. I'm not going to. It's not hurting anything. In the wintertime, I would recommend getting those off there. Oh, nutsedge. Wonderful spotting mix. I can probably get most of that out of there without breaking the nut and having it all over the place. Because pests and things, they can hide down inside of those nooks and crannies outside. I'm not really worried about that nature. Mostly takes care of that. And as these grow and swell, which they will start to do once they get into the ground, that's going to help push a lot of these loose, and then they'll come off more easily. But if you have to tug on them real hard, I just leave them. Planting them up from a big dormant plant isn't that different from planting them up as a bulb or a tuber. It's just, it's a much larger tuber. This big chunk you're seeing here, you can put that underground. I mean, I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it all the way underground anyways. But you can see on here, see these nodes? Those will root out. So it could be buried to about right here. It'll root out. It'll be okay. Wouldn't want to do that in really heavy clay soil. I think that would be best in a loose soil. Make sure it's nice and warm out. That way you don't have to worry about a lot of anaerobic action going on. Things being waterlogged and then rotting away. That point of the plant, they just want to have their conditions met to thrive and be happy. So that warmth, good amount of water, plenty of light. The alocasias, one of the reasons I really like them, is because they can go with a little bit less light. They should still get plenty of it, but they don't need quite as much as some others. Mainly this one right here. These Borneos can take, are those spider mites or is that just dust? We've been having all this dust blow around. I think it's just dust. I'll probably cut that off anyways and give this thing a name wash once they're in the ground. I got distracted. These larger ones, down low in the area where they're going, doesn't get a ton of light. But up higher, there's more sun. So it works out for these larger types. These Borneos, they get huge. So this, in no time, the leaves on this, they're gargantuan. Massive. Highly recommend Borneo Giant. Borneo King is an option. I don't fully know why it exists. They say it's because they found it to be more tolerant of growing in northern conditions, but we have fairly northern-ish. Well, I don't know. Our summers are fairly southern, but our winters are very northern. Right in the middle of the country in St. Louis. So that could confound some things. I don't know. Maybe the Borneo King is better if you're up further north, but it's made by somebody who grew up further south than me. So I don't know. I'm not trash talking anybody. I'm just saying I would just get the Borneo Giant. They're not very hard to overwinter. Very similar to overwintering like an Nset Morelia, Banana, or any of your Colocasias. You could just let them chill for the wintertime. If you want to keep them growing and active, different story. You need a lot of warmth and a lot of light for them, but once you get them up to a big size like this, they don't need much. I'm in a very, very, very heavily aerated soil blend here. Lots and lots of giant chunky perlite in there, and that, uh, I think has made a big difference. What is this? Oh, that was a root. Oh, I thought that was a piece of drip wine. I used to use a drip wine that was this exact same color. Well, sorry plant. All right, I'm going to shake this one out of these, get them in their hole, and we'll talk about them some more. You know, something I completely forgot about was that I planted these low in those containers for a few different reasons. Well, really two. It's two different reasons. One of those reasons was I wanted to be able to water them heavily and quickly and not have soil and water spill over the place. The other was because I knew I wouldn't be able to dig a hole very deep over there, and I didn't want them to root down very deep inside the containers. They can root down deep once they get in the ground. That's fine. We can chop that when it's time to bring them inside for the wintertime. I'm glad I thought about that. This is the only area I could think of where I can, I can take this out to the lawn and get all that soil out of the roots on these. Uh, I, because there's no way. I gotta box in that soil, right? It's just not going to fit if I don't. I don't think it will. No, I don't, there's no way. Yeah, look at that. Nice and shallow. That's perfect. It put out some roots, but it didn't go nuts, which is perfect because I didn't want to have to tear apart too much in here. All right, I'm just going to loosen that up, get some of that soil out. Do the same thing with the other one and pop them in their holes. One thing that I should mention with these big alocasias, and really bananas too, is that if you pull on this part too much or up there too much, you can bruise the heart of the plant, and that can be a problem. You may end up having to cut it back to below where you bruised it. Usually they'll push through it, but not always. So that's something I probably would have felt bad if I hadn't mentioned it because it's real easy when you want to move one of these around to grab them by up here and pull them. I try and do it from down below or from the container if possible. It's just better for the longevity of the plant. It's one of those things where it hopefully would never be an issue, but it could be. Sometimes you get these, oftentimes actually, you get an alocasia into the ground and then it just drops its leaves or the leaves flop. They bend down a lot like this. That's because they're stressed out. They're not taking up water because they've had their roots disturbed and they have to, I don't know what I was about to say, they have to push out new roots to start getting their water going. So they pulled some water from inside the growth that they have and they will bounce back. If they don't bounce back, sometimes that means maybe you cut too much root or potentially maybe pinched or bruised something on the inside. That shouldn't be a common problem, but it could happen. This is also when it'd be a good time to come in here and divide. So say I wanted to take this piece right here, you should use something like a hoary hoary to get in there and remove these offshoots, but I could go ahead and pull this right now. I'm not going to. I want this to stay a nice clump. They can all grow together. I don't have room for more of these giant elephant ears, so they can just stay growing together in that area. I think that spreading them around more would look really neat, but just completely unnecessary space wise. But yeah, like I said, I'm going to keep loosening this up, get a lot of that soil out of that root ball and pick up, I guess, when I'm done. Okay, they're in the ground. Now, one thing I didn't mention or elaborate on, I should say, was about the, well, the reason I was trying to get all that soil up from around the roots. That soil blend was made to be very light and airy and to drain very, very, very quickly because they're in the grow space in aloe cases. They're just much more prone to root rot when they're inside. Even with all that heat and everything, it's just a fail safe. Just have extra drainage. But in the ground, I'm in a squeaky chair. Why am I in the squeaky chair? In the ground, I don't want all that drainage and I don't want things to end up being stuck together. Pardon the shampoo. Ran out of dog shampoo, so Turbo got washed off with the shampoo from the guest room. Okay, this right here, root stimulator. Before I move on to that, do I need to finish what I was saying? Do you get it? You probably understand that perlite and everything, that's not going to mix in with the native soil that's up there. So what's going to end up happening is water's going to wash right through there and it's going to be more of an escape route for the water. Path of least resistance, right? So those roots aren't going to be able to get any moisture. Want things to be more homogenous around the root zone with where you have them planted up. The root stimulator. This is, you don't have to do it, but I find, I'm sorry, I'm trying so hard to not move very much in this stupid chair. I have found that root stimulator, it's a, I don't know, it just makes me feel better when you have to cut back on the roots with the plants. I don't use the starter fertilizers like, hold on. Okay, that's better. I don't use the starter fertilizers like Biotone or any of the Jobes or any of those things on plants where I've had to work the roots an awful lot and they are plants that have a more of a wet root. So that's the right way to explain it. Plants that tend to have a lot of root rot issues. So if I've done a lot of trauma around that root zone and then add in something that's going to attract the good and the bad, it's just, it's like a, like a moth to a fly. No, light fly to a poop. You get it. Not necessarily the best thing. It's just a fail safe. I will add those things into the mix, just top dress around the tops of the alocasias in probably about three to four weeks or after signs of growth. So I'll usually let them push out a leaf maybe two and then I'll go in and I'll mix that around the top. I'm not saying that if you use those products you're going to rot your plants out. It's just a just to be safe kind of thing. So I stick with the synthetic just to give them a boost and help them to re-sprout any damaged roots. I didn't have to tear up the roots on these all that much. There wasn't that much left behind because that soil blend was so lofty that there wasn't much destruction done. There weren't a lot of roots playing around and around over there when I was done. I have just found personally that with the alocasias, caulocasias, gingers, bananas, I'm sure I could name all kinds of plants, but with those plants, ones that stick out my mind the most, a root stimulator, it just seems to help sometimes skip them past that phase where their leaves will curl down and wilt and they'll go blah and throw a total fit. Can help push them through that. Roses. Helps a lot with roses too. Want to be mild and measure. I didn't measure. I just eyeballed it. I don't know what to tell you. Don't be like me. With a lot of my plants, I mean, I love a good fertilizer for my containerized plants, but with everything in the ground, I tend to really prefer a nice healthy soil over synthetic fertilizers. The banana trees, different story. I usually like to pound them with something synthetic occasionally. They're heavy feeders, so they usually don't mind the main things that you don't want salt building up, right? So don't want to overdo it. The alocasias, I don't really do that. They don't seem to need it. As long as the ground is nice and fertile for them, they're pretty happy. So in this area up here, I had been mulching, composting, doing all kinds of things for many years. It takes many, many, many years to build up a good soil, and I just make sure to add to that. I like to save leaves during the fall and get them shredded up, top dressed on top of things that can help. I don't shred them up until the springtime though, because oftentimes they are overwintering. Lots of beneficial critters. I don't want to shred those up. Doesn't seem very nice. Okay, well, this is new. There's a person on the roof. How do I hide from a person on the roof? That's awkward. Cotton burr compost, great stuff. The black cow, whatever, just needs to go way outside the root ball, right? Because if you're digging a hole and you add that compost right in there, not necessarily going to hurt anything, but the roots are going to grow outside of that zone. About a foot deep or so, depending on where you live. Around here, roots do tend to go a few feet down. 18 inches, two feet. Those alocasias though, I'd be shocked if they went more than about 18 inches down below. So that's the zone I get the most concerned about, and I don't want things to be too different from the native soil either. So that's why I don't add much in. I just blend it in with the native soil. How am I going to do this? This is so awkward. Okay, so just like that. See that? I like to water them in, give them a real good drink, and then I'll hit it with the root stimulator. No sense in doing it just yet because a lot of that's going to wash away. I need to settle the soil first and really, I'd probably better luck settling the soil without the gentle spray on here. Should probably pop that off, get more pressure without it. Come on, unlock, unlock. Doing things with the one hand because I still haven't gotten a freaking adapter that fits the tripod for the new camera. Yeah, like that. That helps settle the soil a lot better. Oh, you enjoy the shadow. Great filming, right? Okay, that should be the last of it. These look pretty decent. I'm being very quiet because again, there's somebody standing like 20 feet behind me. They're gonna grow. They're gonna get nice and big. Back to my hiding spot. Not really because there's somebody on the roof over there too. Okay, starter fertilizer. Again, you don't have to. A really good healthy soil, you should have all the microbes and everything you need down below there to get things up and moving and growing nice and happily. It's only because I like to have that fail safe. Something just get them moving a little bit faster. These are going to get huge this year. I mean, massive. So last year, they were at least, not at least, they're probably about twice the height of that fence back there, which is about five and a half feet. So they were pushing 10 feet tall, probably. Most of that being gigantic leaves that were probably five feet, maybe bigger. I want to say bigger than that, but they probably weren't in length from tip to bottom of tip. That's not a great way to describe that at all. But this year they're starting off so much bigger because these were planted up from a 10 inch pot last year. So this year I'm expecting monstrous proportions. If the pseudo stems on here, we'll call it a trunk. If those would double in size, that's going to look really cool. That's going to be quite nice because it'll look like, you know, the giant elephant ear on top of the trunk, on top of the stick, like a palm tree elephant ear. Allocasias don't necessarily want to be as moist as colocasia. Colocasias, again, do not care. I'm sure you've noticed by now that I flip flop both of them back and forth all the time. But with the initial planting, you know, they don't necessarily want to be moist at all times. And you have to take that with a grain of salt. It's really warm outside. They don't care about being moist all the time. Doesn't matter if you haven't been moving water by a pond, they'll be okay as long as that water is nice and oxygen rich. Colocasia, always going to be better for you in that regard. With these guys, you're not going to let them dry out for too terribly long. That's why I wanted to get these planted today because we have rain in the forecast for, I don't know, like the next 10 days. There's a few days without it. There's a chance of rain every day with some overcast. That's the perfect time to get these in the plant and just reduce and minimize the chance of transplant shock. I almost said that so smoothly, but then I had a small burp. Yeah, well, I think you get it. A lot of what I was talking about also applies to bananas and gingers and Colocasia. You could also, with overwintering them, you can just dig them up, cut everything off of them, clean the dirt off of the tuber, trim the roots back, and just put them in like a paper sack and stick them in the basement. That's generally fine. Probably the easier way to do it. But I wanted to keep them growing because I partially just wanted to see how they would do in the grow space with this heater that I hadn't had when I used to overwinter them in the past. I'm very distracted by the ladder noises up there. I hope it's not too distracting for you guys. Guys, gals, non-binary pals, you know what I mean. Y'all. And I'm happy with the results. Thought I'd bring y'all along with me. Plenty of stuff to talk about when it comes to the allocation. Everything I talked about could be applied to pretty much everything with just planting shrubbery and stuff out from a container into the ground. I haven't had to pull out the roots very much other than maybe just loosening the root memory some. I have no issues with using those biotone starters and just starter or organic starter fertilizers. No issue with it at all. But it's just specifically the alocasia, they're more prone to root rot. So that's why I'm just like, let's hit them with the synthetic first and then can add to that later because they're going to need it. They are heavy feeders. And yeah, it's about three weeks to a month. I'll probably go in there and top dress with an organic. It probably won't even be three weeks to a month. I have a bunch of other things going to be planting up in that area. So I don't know, two weeks. I may as well have just done it now, really. But just to be safe. You know, you know what I did. Just use the liquid. Why not? Reduce variables. That's always a smart thing if you're worried about there being conditions less favorable to the plant or if the plant has had to go through some sort of stress to get it in the ground. I just like to reduce those variables. Not that those organic fertilizers are bad. They're not. But they can attract things. So I have an issue with voles up there sometimes. They'll come around. They smell that stuff. And I don't, it's just a theory of mine that it may draw them in because it's extra stinky. I don't know. And also, like I said, it just, it attracts the good and the bad, right? But you need the bad to get the good. And sometimes you need the bad to get, like, it's a whole, it's a whole cycle. Nitrogen cycle and everything going on under there. It's a beautiful thing. But there's a time and a place when you have what are going to be some roots that are going to end up rotting off all the way and some other things decaying down there. Let me just play it safe and just stick with the liquid. That's enough of that. I talked enough about those things. I don't know why I feel the need to defend myself when I say I'm going to go ahead and skip the organic on this one and add that later. There's nothing wrong with that. I have no issues with synthetics versus organics. I do prefer just to have a really nice healthy soil to add to your soil every year and build a really nice healthy plant that way. But, you know, sometimes you got to do what you got to do and you got to add some stuff in, right? Especially with potted plants. And oftentimes with synthetics you can have too much of a good thing. I didn't do that. I have not fertilized that thing at all since I bought it. This particular nursery that I buy these from, I've noticed every year for the last three years they bloom and bloom and bloom and then they just yellow and drop their leaves. I think it's the blooming hormone that they're being given before they're being shipped out. It's causing them to over bloom. They're using too much of it and then they stress themselves out and they drop everything. They have to give them a prune back and then they sprout back and they end up being very nice healthy looking plants. This thing will look great in no time. This has nothing to do with anything we've been talking about except for that you can't have too much of a good thing, of a synthetic thing. Synthetics, they can be too much sometimes. Not always a great thing. Oftentimes not a great thing. Okay, that's all. Looking forward to watching these grow. I'll be showing them but, you know, you saw how I am in this video. I don't like to film up there. It's just incredibly awkward but I always try and sneak a peek in for everybody during garden tours and, yeah, if you have any tips, tricks, suggestions, I always appreciate it. What types are you growing? Like I said, the Borneo Giant, probably my favorite just as far as size goes. My overall favorite as far as more of the landscaped size alocasia would be probably the lutea. I love the lutea with the chartreuse foliage and the yellow veins on them. Yeah, they're fantastic. I have one over there I need to divide. I should probably get on that. Comment down below. Say hi. I love talking to everybody. And, of course, as always and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye-bye.