Variegated Alocasia Frydek - I FINALLY Cracked The Code 🌱 How To Grow Frydek Variegata Successfully

But there is a reason that I've had this plant for over a year now and I'm only making a care video on it now because I have taken a while to get to know this plant. There was a lot of information that I read about this plant online when I first got it that I don't believe to be particularly accurate. I feel like now I am finally in a good place to be able to tell you how to keep this plant happy. But first, if you're new here, hi, my name's Claire and this is Yoli. I make videos all about house plant care, sharing tips and tricks I've learnt over the years to help keep your plants happy and healthy. And yeah, today I'm going to take you through everything I have learnt, what I've got right, what I've got wrong, how to keep this plant alive, growing and doing beautiful things for you. So, yes, I hope you enjoy it and I hope you find it useful. Let's get into it. So, I got my Variegated Alocasia Frydeck, as I say, just over a year ago now from Dean's Garden Centre in York. And it's a plant that I had my eye on for a while. I thought it was just beautiful. I didn't think it was particularly attainable at this time because, I mean, even to this day, they are very expensive plants to buy. But I managed to get this one on sale and I still think I paid at least £120 for it. And it was small when I got it. And I think because I was very familiar with the standard Alocasia Frydeck, the Alocasia Mitchelliziana, I think I thought that this plant would kind of be a bit of a breeze. I think I thought I knew the plant quite well. And, oh boy, was I wrong. I got this plant home and I think it had one or two very little leaves when I first got it. And it stayed that way for, I think, about four or five months. At some points it had no leaves, at some points it just had one. It did that classic Alocasia cycling thing of it would give me one new leaf and then the old one would die back. And the plant just wasn't growing. I didn't notice it sizing up. It wasn't dying, but I didn't feel like I was bringing out its potential at all. I initially had it in one of my cabinets and so it was getting really good light, really good heat, really good humidity. On paper, it felt like I was getting everything right, but as I say, the plant just was not happy. And then when I moved here to this flat, which was about nine months ago now, I put it into my big IKEA cabinet that I've got in my living room. And again, I kind of thought, well, this in theory should be what the plant would really like. Maybe it'll start doing something for me now. And it actually got to the point where the plant completely reverted. It was about that big. It only had one leaf and the leaf that it gave me was completely green. And luckily, I'm pretty sure that the variegation in this plant is stable because I had a panic thinking, oh, my God, I can't have spent a hundred and something pounds on a plant that is now completely green. And luckily, the next leaf it gave me was variegated. But yeah, I still wasn't getting on particularly well with it. And so I decided to bite the bullet and just kind of really, really change things up. I'd already experimented with different soil mixes and slightly lower light and stuff like that. And so I took this plant out of my cabinet and I put it actually just where I'm sitting now by this window. And this window is south facing. And immediately I started to notice the plant was slightly happier. And I thought, well, that's strange, because obviously it isn't getting it isn't getting nearly as much humidity as it was when it was in my cabinet. It's getting more natural light, but the light is kind of more unpredictable. But it just seemed much perkier. The one thing that I did notice when I put it here by the window is that a lot of it stems started. They're not doing it now, so I can't show you, but it started kind of like bending down a little bit, like its leaves were kind of ducking away from the light. And that when that starts happening with allocation, typically that is a sign that it's getting a little bit too much light. And essentially your plant doesn't need that much. So I've moved it now just back about a meter. Just here is currently where it lives. And that seems like a much better position lighting wise for this plant. But the thing that really, really helped me turn a corner with this one is the substrate that I was growing it in. So as I say, when I brought it home, it was originally just kind of in, I think, kind of like a coyer soil mix. Like it was it wasn't particularly high nutrient. It didn't look the best quality in the world. It kind of looked like the stuff that you get plug plants in. And I did repot it into a chunky kind of allocation mix. I had lots of bark and perlite in there. And as I say, the plant just wasn't particularly happy. So this is the time that I started experimenting a little bit more with semi hydroponics. And I previously not had the best experiences with things like LECA, Lechuza Pond, like anything kind of semi hydro. If you're not familiar with semi hydro, it literally is. I mean, it's in the name semi, semi water growing. So you don't use any organic matter. You're not using any soil. You're not using moss. You're just using like clay or pumice or different substrates that mean semi hydro. God, that was a bad way of explaining it. I'll put some more information on the screen so that you get a better idea, because I'm aware that that was just words. But previously, like the years before, I had tried semi hydro and I hadn't gotten that well with it. But I just kind of thought as a last resort for this plant, I'm going to give it a go. And oh, my goodness. When I put this plant into semi hydro, this is when I started noticing the most insane changes. As you can see, it's got roots coming out the bottom of the pot here. And that is what the semi hydro mix that I'm using looks like. It's the brand that I'm using is called Soil Ninja, and it's essentially just a chunky version of Lechuza Pond that doesn't contain fertilizer. But that's when I really, really started noticing this plant wasn't doing so much of the cycling. It was actually starting to put out lots of lovely new growth and the older leaves weren't dying back. The ones typically nowadays that I get dying back are ones like this. And this one, as you can see, was very recently completely white. It was a complete ghost leaf. And although they look really beautiful, they typically don't last very long because they don't contain any chlorophyll. And so you can just chop them back right away. I tend to just let them stay there because, as I say, they do look pretty for a few weeks, a month or two. And yeah, and then when they start to naturally die back, I will just chop them back. But now, as I say, I mean, the conditions of my of my flat and where this plant is in its spot, my flat is naturally really quite warm. I live in a timber structured building. I'm on the top floor. It does get ridiculously warm in here. And I think most days at this time of year, it's at least 25 degrees Celsius. But that plant seems really happy with that. Humidity wise, I do run humidifiers from time to time in my flat. But to be honest, a lot of the time the humidity does drop a little bit lower than I'd like it to. And surprisingly, this plant hasn't seemed to mind at all. So considering it was in my cabinet before and getting kind of upwards of 70% humidity, it now on a daily kind of average probably gets around about 50%. And it's not complaining. I've never had any any symptoms of it being unhappy due to lack of humidity. So I wouldn't say that's a massive factor. Obviously, if you are growing this plant in very, very dry conditions and you notice the leaves start to brown, then I would absolutely say up it. But on the whole, it doesn't seem although it looks like maybe it would be quite sensitive to lower humidity. It doesn't seem like it minds that much. So so, yeah. And in regards to fertilizing, again, obviously it depends on what you're growing your plants in. And I, as I've already said, would absolutely recommend Lechuza Pond or a semi-hydro equivalent for this plant, just because I had no luck with soil. Like I know some of your probably comments saying, oh, what kind of soil mix would you recommend? I mean, typically I would say something as I've already said, like chunky bark perlite, well draining, nutritious, but that didn't work for me for this plant. So yeah, semi-hydro. And obviously, if you are using Lechuza Pond, then that does contain a slow release fertilizer. The reason that I like using one that's kind of been mixed without fertilizer is because I personally love the fertilizer that I use. I use a brand called Liquid Gold Leaf, and it's just given me the most amazing growth in my plants. And I use it for literally every single one of my plants. So that is what I'm currently fertilizing this one with. And so long as it's putting out new growth for me, I will continue to fertilize it. I used to be one of these people that would stop as soon as growing season stopped. But nowadays, if my plants are still giving me new growth, then I will continue to fertilize them. So yeah, this one, I'm just doing a very diluted measure and watering or keeping the little reservoir at the bottom of the pot filled with some fertilizer and some water. And on the whole, it seems really happy. I can also tell now that finally its growth is starting to size up. Like if you look at the size of that leaf there, it's getting really quite big now. And I just love how every single leaf is so unique. It's like a fingerprint. They're all so different. And I showed this leaf in a video the other day. I think it's just amazing because it's got very much like block variegation and it's just very different to the splashy dappledness of the other leaves. And one thing you'll notice when you strike a good balance with this plant and it does start to put out more growth, it does start to size up, is that very often, and this happens with pretty much every alocasia, but very often it will start putting out corms and essentially propagating itself, which is pretty amazing considering how unobtainable in a lot of places this plant is. I have actually now got two plants growing in the same pot. This just here is a little baby and I could absolutely divide it and I could create a brand new plant. But for now, my focus is just trying to get this one to fill out and continue to grow as healthily as possible for me. So I don't want to mess with it too much. But yeah, as I say, my main advice I think for this plant would be to disregard anything you think you know about this plant when you start caring for it and essentially wipe the slate clean. Get it into semi-hydro. I would totally recommend that and put it just back from a fairly bright window. Don't worry too much about humidity. Try and keep the temperature relatively high. The other thing to say with this plant is that it is a magnet for pests. As many velvet leaf plants are, this one is very susceptible to thrips and spider mites and it's often quite difficult to tell because of the variegation on its leaves what is potential discoloration and damage and what's not. And in fact, I've got a leaf here and I don't know how well you'll be able to see but it does have a little bit of spider mite damage on it. Just around there. I don't know if you can tell. But yeah, that is definitely something to keep in mind and I personally use predatory mites biological pest control for all of my collection at the moment and it's working pretty well. But yeah, feel free to hit me with any questions you've got about this plant down in the comments below. As I say, this is one that really took me a while to get to know. It wasn't a quick overnight tick boxy thing. There was a lot of information that I read about this plant online when I first got it that I don't believe to be particularly accurate. I would do things very differently now. But I feel like I've got to the place where it is now happy and it has been stably happy for a while. So yeah, I really hope that this helped and I hope that your variegated alligator phryodex grow beautifully for you. And if you enjoyed this video and if you found it useful then please make sure to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel. Have a lovely day and I will see you in the next video. Hey sexy plant lovers!