Hoya finlaysonii ‘Olfe’ wasn’t rooted for a long time and the stem began to rot. Ahoy Hoyas! This is a general list of the items I am using to propagate in passive hydro. There are so many fun species and varieties of Wax Plants on the market making it hard to choose. These types of plants usually spread their root system to look for moisture to absorb, which they'll easily be able to find in the clay balls. Exact plant you will receive, and it will be shipped in the container. Whether you know them as Hoya Plants or Wax Plants, this sub is ready for your photos, questions, expertise, and/or stories. Rooting hoyas is actuall quite fast (except in winter). It arrived in beautiful condition. Plants that grow a root system quickly are the most likely to succeed in Leca. Your email address will not be published. I’ve been rooting some hoya cuttings in LECA and was about to transfer it to soil, but I’ve seen hoya thrive in LECA online so now I’m wondering if I should transfer to soil or leave in LECA. There are actually multiple ways that you can root a Hoya cutting, water being one of the most common. Here are the results of my passive hydro propagation experiment. Hoya caudata ‘Sumatra’ was one of the first to begin rooting, but coincidentally has the smallest ball of roots. Its draping vines resemble thick ropes with their crowded, contorted leaves. Yes, absolutely!! Hoya don't need nearly as many nutrients as other plant varieties. It is normal for some cuttings not to make it, for various reasons. From my understanding of different hoya collectors, either media can be great for hoya - so there’s not really a wrong answer. The kit advises that FloraMicro should be mixed first. If you’re going to do more than root in LECA, I highly recommend getting some nutrient mix in there. To prevent this from happening, the pots should be flushed regularly – which just means that a strong stream of water should flow through the pot to dislodge and wash out the mineral buildup. These are cuttings from that long long strand I got from the dry…” The process through which a sponge soaks up the liquid is the same process through which a porous growing medium soaks up the liquid. Buying rooted cuttings and plants can be expensive, which is why many people who have a hoya they really like that looks sick or on death's door just take cuttings and root them, versus buying a whole new plant. As you can tell from the picture on the top right, the leaves started to yellow during rooting and I wasn’t sure the plant would make it. by Colleen Coyle-Levy | Mar 16, 2020 | Houseplant Care, Plant Propagation. To provide the plant with the nutrients it needs, I mix a gallon of water with hydroponics nutrients. Passive Hydroponics with Perlite. I usually root hoya stems in water, in the direction they grow, because it’s easy & the roots form fast. To control this buildup I bought a root inoculant (pictured below) which I add to my nutrient solution to reduce algae growth. This is not something the plants need to survive and thrive. Hoya rope plants benefit from feeding during late spring and summer after they have finished blooming. Hoya vitellinoides Well rooted and growing in leca, the vine and top leaf are new since rooting. After covering the bottom I will place my cutting in the center of the pot and fill in around it with LECA until it reaches the top of the pot. Although there is no more vulnerable a time period for your Hoya than after re-potting, sometimes it just has to be undertaken. It just goes to show how different each plant develops. 8.7k members in the hoyas community. However, while rooting in LECA, the leaves looks thin and have very fine wrinkles. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. If you eventually want to transfer all your plants to leca, then Hoya and snake plants can be a good place to practice before going onto your succulents. Got it. When soil is too wet for too long, it'll start to rot and it'll take the roots of your plant with it. The bamboo stakes grew black mold, as you can see below, because they were staying wet consistently along with the plant they were supporting. https://gardenculturemagazine.com/what-is-passive-hydroponics/, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Hydroton.jpg, General Hydroponics nutrient kit which contains FloraBloom, FloraGrow, and FloraMicro, Buying Houseplants Online: 3 Mistakes You Don't Want to Make with Plant Mail - A Natural Curiosity. This plant is a fast grower for me. Then cover the node with a … I’ve been adding 1 ml of Super Thrive each month. That color can be compared against the label on the bottle itself, which has the PH range color-coded on it. I'm unclear where to go from here. You may notice that white dust or crystal-looking buildup forms on the LECA balls over time. In my setup, I use a porous growing medium called LECA (Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregates) to draw water up to the roots of a plant. The only 2 ways I’ve found to control the buildup is to do very frequent flushes of my net pots or to use distilled water instead of tap water. These items can be added later but it is easier when the net pot isn’t already full of LECA. While a little bit of mineral buildup is not a huge problem, allowing the buildup to continue to accrue may damage or burn the roots. I’m thinking maybe because it doesn’t have nutrients but I’m really not sure. I use superthrive religiously. Hoya memoria, also from a Florida grower, was another that was slow to root, but has rooted none-the-less! Sure enough, the remaining leaf firmed up quickly, telling me that it was rooting. Once the cutting is potted, the net pot can be placed into the cachepot, bowl, or another holding container. Passive hydroponics systems, on the other hand, do not use pumps or other electronic equipment to move the water and nutrients. The PH of the water is continually tested for refills and to create a nutrient solution. Hoya kanyakumariana, slightly rooted. You can see the green algae below growing in the glass jar holding my Hoya heushkeliana variegata. Hi Monica! Hoya ‘Rebecca’ not only established roots pretty quickly, but it also grew a peduncle and flowered within the 2 months of rooting this cutting. There are so many beautiful Hoyas to grow in your home, so be sure not to miss my other blog posts on other Hoyas that I grow: Hoya curtisii. I made an impulse buy that I am hoping will go well! I am far from an expert on when to re-pot your Hoya, and I have lost many a plant after re-potting. It’s purpose is to decre… I did lose 1 cutting to fungal disease, but even that cutting had rooted before it fell ill. Below I will show a few of the cuttings I tried with photos documenting their progress. Hoya ‘Rebecca’ not only established roots pretty quickly, but it also grew a peduncle and flowered within the 2 months of rooting this cutting. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Plant is currently rooting in LECA but I will use Sphagnum moss for shipment. All plants will continue to need monthly nutrients unless transferred to soil. Some houseplant enthusiasts recommend fertilizing with a phosphorus-rich fertilizer before your hoya flowers. Then water can be added one-third of the way up the side of the net pot – which is below where the cutting or roots are placed. Because the dust is clay, it is advised to discard the dirty water outdoors so the clay dust doesn’t build up in your sink’s pipes. To summarize, it was a huge success. I personally don't propagate my cuttings in water, … I have been able to successfully root 11 cuttings to date (100% of the cuttings I tried) via passive hydroponics. The beautiful, tiny leaves are in the shape of a spade and have gorgeous silvery variegation. This is a plant community that focuses on the amazingness of this genus. Will be selling at $26 when rooted. Perlite and LECA work well, but I’m all about streamlining things and making them more efficient, so I like to just keep my Hoyas in the same medium I rooted them in. To remove the dust, thorough rinsing is necessary. On average, you will see new growth within a month or two. Here are… The bottom leaves were still soft a few weeks into rooting, but all a sudden the leaves firmed and roots started popping out everywhere! I simply add a few drops from the small bottle to a sample of the water I plan to use and then see what color the water turns. I had a feeling that what I thought was a node beneath the first leaf was not, so I decided to cut off the first leaf and put that node beneath the LECA. In [passive hydroponics] most basic form, it provides water only beneath the plant roots. Because the water in my home town is very hard, crystallized minerals built up on my LECA super often. Really, many containers could support your net pots, but I will include the links to the ones I used. This month (month 3) I added 2 ml of each nutrient. I’ve noticed that if I don’t soak them for a while, I have to refill the water reservoir more often in the beginning until the LECA are saturated. I am not someone who currently wants to convert all of my plants to passive hydro, but I am going to keep some of the harder to grow specimens in LECA for a while since they are there currently, happy and healthy. It hasn't required any kind of special care and seems to do well as long as it has ample light. They’re still plants that like to completely dry out BUT they’re pretty good at getting wrinkly leaves so you can tell when they’re … These hydroponics systems can be either active or passive. I put it in a colander , take it outside, and blast it with the hose. Hoya memoria, also from a Florida grower, was another that was slow to root, but … I also had no experience prior to these past few months with passive hydro and figured that I may not be able to keep some of the cuttings happy because I was learning as I went. I’m not sure whether this was necessary, but it proved successful for me. It doesn’t recirculate. (though after a few times testing a water type, it may not be necessary to test each time if the results are consistent). bare-root, USPS priority mail. It developed fungus and I got rid of this plant to avoid potentially infecting others. Hoya kerrii is non-toxic to cats and dogs according to the ASPCA. Whilst using soaked leca won’t harm a lot of plants, there are some that would really pretty to start off in dry leca – especially more succulent plants like hoya. At the end of the first month of having the cuttings in passive hydro, I added 1 ml of each nutrient to my gallon of water. Usually takes 3-10 days. I have most of my plants in leca. Dec 12, 2018 - 600 Likes, 25 Comments - Jonathan Lefrançois (@jrlefrancois) on Instagram: “Hoya compacta rooting in LECA. These were inexpensive options for me because I already had them. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. If you decide to give it a try, please share your results with us below! This is the most complicated part of passive hydro for me. We’ll learn about this medium in detail, from Introduction to pros/cons and do’s/don’ts in this post. This is because of the simple fact that roots are less prone to root rot in Leca than they are in the soil. Please note weather and shipping conditions as I cannot be held responsible for any damage during shipping. Also known as LECA clay pebbles, Hydroton is regarded as a standard growing medium for Aquaponics, Hydroponics, and Aeroponics. Click here to skip to that section. My test results are displayed below, showing that my distilled water had a PH of 6, so no adjustments are needed. This cutting also came from the same grower in Hawaii as the one above. LECA is Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate (LECA), an inorganic clay pellet that has been heated and tumbled in a rotary kiln. I used small mason jars and Pyrex containers to hold the net pots. If you’re interested in wax plant propagation, the most dependable technique is propagation via stem cuttings. The name is an abbreviation describing them: Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregates. I am not responsible for any shipping delays or damage Because soil is usually what provides plants with nutrients, the nutrients must be provided by using nutrient-rich water regularly. To use: 1) thoroughly rinse the pellets of all sediment 2) place the pellets in a nursery pot on a tray or in a closed clay pot with a drainage hole roughly an inch up the side Some I traded for, some via Ebay, a few were from my own plants. Hoya … I started off using a smaller dosage than the bottle states I can use in a gallon of water. Here is my rooting Hoya caudata (not the same as Hoya caudata ‘Sumatra’ above). It is basically a vitamin boost for plants to give them an even better chance of rooting and thriving. I can then adjust accordingly using the other two solutions, PH Up and PH Down. Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. Look at it now! After seeing many houseplant enthusiasts have great success using passive hydroponics to both grow and propagate their plants, I decided to give it a try! LECA is fabulous for rooting hoyas and other tropicals. I want to share the method I used and what I’ve learned to date about passive hydroponics so that others can try it as well. Learn how your comment data is processed. I choose perlite over leca or vermiculite, which are more … It took quite a while for the cutting to begin to root. PH can be adjusted for both the water used to refill the reservoir and the nutrient-rich water. The order I do each time is Micro, Grow, and lastly Bloom. Furthermore, for plants that have roots that are impossible to remove the soil from, it is often easier to cut the soil roots off completely and grow new roots in water propagation or LECA … … To make a node available that I could plant in the LECA, I cut off the lower leaf. LECA can also be soaked overnight to remove more dust and to saturate the balls before using it as the potting medium. Both LECA and Water propagation methods can be used to promote root growth and strengthen a weak or struggling root system before planting in semi hydroponics. Wind the cutting around on the top of a pot of soil (half cactus mix and half perlite works well) and peg it down at every leaf node. LECA is the expanded clay balls in the photo above. Super Thrive Plant Vitamin Solution, 1 Pint, Botanicare Hydroguard Bacillus Root Inoculant, General Hydroponics Flora Grow, Bloom, Micro Combo Fertilizer set, General Hydroponics HGC722080 pH Control Kit for A Balanced Nutrient Solution, ** A Natural Curiosity is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. **, Your email address will not be published. However, while rooting in LECA, the leaves looks thin and have very fine wrinkles. Back to top. I went into this experiment with the expectation that not all of the cuttings would root. I don’t soak my leca, but I do wash it thoroughly. This cutting came from a grower in Hawaii. Too much fertilizer can damage the hoya plant’s root system 's node form it., take it outside, and lastly Bloom me that it was rooting enough, the vine appears to 4... Most of my propagations grew algae, green or red, in the same process through which a sponge up! Ebay, a few were from my understanding of different hoya collectors, either media can be using! Systems, on the market making it hard to choose begin to root, but plan!, showing that my distilled water wrong to worry because the water level decreases, more water need. The most complicated part of passive hydro propagation experiment within a month or two hoya Sarawak rooting! 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