How I Grew My Alocasia Jacklyn BIG In Just 1 Year 💚 Alocasia Jacklyn Care Tips + Tricks

I'm trying to figure out how I can have this plant in shot and still be able to speak to you. I have an idea. Am I a genius? I think so. So this is my Alocasia jacqueline and I've had this plant for just over a year now. I got it for my birthday last year and it was a tiny little plant when I first got it and as you can see she has grown beautifully for me over the last year and it's really really sizing up nicely now but this is a plant that I deliberately didn't get for quite a long time because to be completely honest I was just a little bit scared of the plant. I'd heard lots of lots of whispers in the plant community about how difficult this plant was to look after, how susceptible it was to spider mites and I think at that point in time I just kind of couldn't be bothered with the agro so I put off getting this plant for a while but now that I've had it for just over a year I feel like I've really really kind of figured out what it likes what it doesn't like and yeah I feel like I am in a good position to be able to give you some tips on this plant. But first if you're new here hi my name's Claire and this is Yolie. I make videos all about houseplant care sharing tips and tricks I've learned over the years to help keep your plants happy and healthy and yeah so today I'm going to take you through everything that I've learned about this plant in my time of owning it, things that have worked, things that haven't worked quite so well, things I wish I'd known sooner, all that sort of stuff. So yeah I hope you enjoy it and I hope you find it useful let's get into it. So one thing that's important to say before we get into the care tips for this plant and chances are if you've done your research before bringing this plant home then you'll already know this but this is a houseplant that's poisonous so if you've got small children or pets or anything like that that is definitely something to bear in mind. A lot of houseplants are poisonous I would say probably about 90% of the plants in my collection are toxic so it is very very normal. I know some people kind of freak out when you say a houseplant is toxic but it is just a very standard thing so just don't eat this plant basically and also that might be worth bearing in mind when it comes to pruning this plant as well because not specifically with the alocasia jacqueline but with other types of alocasia in my collection particularly like my big alocasia portadora for example I have noticed that when I've been pruning without gloves on it can get quite stingy quite stingy on your fingers so yeah I would highly recommend wearing gloves. But the first thing to think about when it comes to caring for this plant I say this with pretty much every single houseplant that I talk about but it's just always a good idea to look at where this plant naturally grows and this one's native to Indonesia so think about its natural conditions and just think about how you can try to essentially replicate that a little bit in your own home to grow the plant in as close to what would resemble natural conditions as possible. I know you're never going to get it bang on in a home environment but my goal is always to try and replicate it to the best of my ability. So when it comes to light typically for this one they absolutely love what's known as bright indirect light which could be quite self-explanatory but it basically just means that they don't cope particularly well in low light conditions and they also don't cope particularly well in direct sun and this is one that can be can essentially be acclimated to tolerate some direct sun like for example when I had this plant back where I previously lived it got a couple of hours of sunlight a day direct sun and it was absolutely fine but I had built that tolerance up over a few months I didn't just suddenly put that plant in direct sun because if you do this then chances are your plant is going to burn. But something to think about at this time of year so I'm filming this video in November in the UK so we're just kind of coming into the winter months and really really commonly a lot of people say that over the winter months with alacasia they notice them go very dormant some people even notice them die off and although there's a lot of people out there that are just going to tell you that this is normal for the plant it's normal in the sense of the plant is responding to its surroundings however it is perfectly perfectly possible to keep this plant growing beautiful and full all year round. Mine is still giving me new growth at the moment and even last winter it was pretty consistently giving me new leaves so if you just make a little a few little tweaks in your home to keep this plant happy then as I say it's perfectly possible to keep it healthy. So I've currently got my one growing in a south facing window which at the moment is absolutely fine for this plant I haven't got it under grow lights or anything like that I might possibly as we get into the days where where it starts getting dark at like three o'clock in the afternoon I might potentially start using grow lights for a couple of hours just to give this plant a little bit of a boost but I would say that probably it just being in a south facing window is going to be enough for it over the winter months. This is one as well I know I've spoken about burning when it comes to sunlight with this plant but this is a plant that I've also found very very susceptible to grow light burns and I did used to grow this plant in my Ikea greenhouse cabinet which I've got just behind me here and granted it obviously outgrew the cabinet it is now very very big but when it was when it was getting about that close to the grow light I suddenly noticed that loads of its leaves were really really scorched and although like I don't have massively heat emitting grow lights and I've also got some other plants in my cabinet that are pushed up right next to them and haven't burned so this is just a little bit more of a sensitive plant in in many ways um but I'll get on to cabinet stuff when I talk about humidity but light-wise I didn't I didn't notice a massive change when I brought this plant out of my cabinet because again I've already mentioned acclimating plants to different lights and different conditions some plants would really struggle when you bring them out of a cabinet environment I've had some before that just throw a complete tantrum and go oh my god this is so different to what I was getting before and this one literally has given me no grief at all so despite the fact that it can be a little bit temperamental in some areas when it comes to acclimation in other areas I would say it is a pretty straightforward and easy plant and the other thing that I do mainly just over the winter months in my case because I feel like on the whole my flat does get pretty good light but you could do this all year round if you wanted to is invest in a foliar spray I use the liquid gold leaf one which is called photo plus I'm I'm not sure if there's other brands that do similar products to this this is the one that I just personally really love to use um but basically what it does is it's like magic it just helps your plants to photosynthesize although they they call it sunshine in a bottle this isn't sponsored either by the way I just really love the product um but yeah they call it sunshine in a bottle because although it doesn't actually increase light for your plants it allows your plants to get more out of the light they're receiving it allows them to absorb it better and effectively photosynthesize to a higher level which I just think is amazing and obviously when your plants aren't getting as much light year round I tend to use it during the darker winter months and as I say I don't tend to notice a big difference in growth for my plants over the winter months but the other thing that you will definitely notice when it comes to lighting for this plant is that although it's not the fastest growing alocasia in the world it is one that chases the light very very quickly and if you don't rotate this plant you're going to notice it leaning within the space of probably like a week and to be honest with a lot of my plants particularly my climbing plants that I grow or moss poles I don't actually rotate them anymore I just I'm very happy with the fact that all their growth faces one way but what I find with this one if I don't rotate it you can see already it's starting to grow a little bit whoa a little bit off that way and if I don't rotate it it actually pulls the pot over so I would definitely recommend just giving it a spin every few weeks or so um but the other thing I was going to say is and again especially especially in the dark winter months but this does apply all year round is keeping your plants leaves clean is a really really good idea and I always talk about dusting and wiping the leaves obviously for the alocasia jacqueline it's not as straightforward as that because it's got not like furry leaves but they're kind of bristly they're like little hooks so dusting them isn't always effective and it isn't always the best thing to do what I typically do with this one is I get it into the shower and I just give it a really good spray down I know some people have said before because I've said that I don't typically spray down or wipe down with water my velvet leaf plants the only reason I say that for velvet leaf this is not a velvet leaf um but the only reason I say that is just because if you don't have brilliant air circulation then sometimes it can make them more susceptible to fungal issues but as I say with this one that doesn't apply I get it in the shower I give it a really good spray down I also use this as a really good opportunity to check for pests because as I say unfortunately this is one that is very susceptible to pests and that as I said at the beginning of the video is the thing that kind of put me off and scared me a little bit about this plant at first and I can't lie I have had thrips I've had spider mites I've had mealy bugs on this plant in the time that I've had it and touch wood right now to my knowledge the last time I pest checked we are currently pest free um but this is one that as I say it can just be a little bit difficult to deal with when it does get pests because of the texture of its leaves spider mites I found typically tend to affect the underside of the leaves so when I get it in the shower I just make sure that I spray both sides of the leaves really well spray the stems as well but the worst one for me was mealy bugs because they got right into the bristles and some of them were so small that I didn't even see them I eventually got them gone and I've I've made videos on how I treat pests before but it's it's it's been a little bit of a battle at times and is definitely an ongoing journey I do now use predatory mites and biological pest control to help keep things at bay and I found that to be really effective but that being said I do still shower down this plant a lot and when it comes to watering for this plant so this really comes down to what you're growing your plant in because when I first got the plant as you would have seen in the clip that I included when I first got it it was just I think it was just kind of in like a coir soil mix and I did repot that plant and I put it in kind of like a chunky soil mix I had lots of perlite I had lots of orchid bark I just basically created a really lovely airy allocation mix and the plant was happy in that and then I for other reasons with another allocation I was struggling with I started playing about with semi-hydroponics a little bit more when I first moved here and as I say I was having other issues and I turned a corner and I realized that semi-hydro and when I say semi-hydro I'm specifically talking about latusipon and latusipon look-alikes things that are like latusipon yeah I just realized that it was the most incredible thing in the world and I transferred pretty much all of my allocations into it and I currently got this one as you can see in latusipon and then a little water reservoir that I keep filled just at the bottom so yeah that's how my watering has got a lot easier since I started doing this I've had far fewer issues since doing things this way oh I've also just realized the clever little bit of string I put on to keep everything together well that's just fallen um but yeah if you are growing this plant in in soil as a substrate then I would say allow allow the top layer of soil to slightly dry out between waterings it is a plant that does quite enjoy moisture in the soil the only thing you do risk is when you when you kind of are watering a lot you do risk over watering and when you're growing in any kind of organic matter that can lead to things like root rot and fungal issues and with alacasia root rot is a little bit more complex than it can be for some other plants because if your plant gets root rot and you don't notice it right away then that can essentially spread to the rhizome and if that happens and that starts rotting then there is really nothing you can do to save the plant so yeah that's something you've got to be very very careful with so I found that although keeping the soil fairly consistently moist my way to tell was to to make sure that the top layer had dried out ever so slightly before I watered again and also using a pot with drainage if you're growing in organic matter as well is a very good idea because otherwise water just collects around the roots and again then you're back to root rot but yeah as I say if I was to recommend anything I would recommend jumping in with semi-hydro latusipon soil ninja also do a really good latusipon equivalent that's slightly cheaper and it's basically the exact same thing and that's what I use nowadays but yeah and then with with semi-hydro as I say all I need to do is keep the reservoir of water filled and that's my watering kind of done so it has just made my life so much easier when it comes to caring for lots of my plants but striking the balance with slightly more finicky plants like alacasia it's just honestly made things ridiculously easy for me and then when it comes to fertilizing this plant I know I've already spoken again about liquid gold leaf in this video that is just the fertilizer that I personally like to use I use it for all of my plants it keeps them really happy and I do I am now nowadays I am a year-round fertilizer so long as my plants are giving me new growth I will continue to fertilize them I say nowadays because back in back in the day when I first kind of was getting into plants I would never fertilize them over the winter months if I notice that a plant hasn't given me any new growth for a while then I won't overload it with nutrients it doesn't need but this one is still giving me growth so I continue to fertilize it and I'm fertilizing it every single time I water the thing with my plants growing in semi-hydro I do just dilute the fertilizer down a little bit more than I might do if I was watering a plant in soil I kind of I mean I don't do it exactly but I roughly half the measurement that I would give if I was watering a plant in soil if that makes sense obviously it depends on what kind of fertilizer you're using as well but that is just what I do and then when it comes to humidity for this plant as I said I didn't have any major issues when I first took this plant out of my cabinet and just put it into normal room humidity and I say that because my cabinet typically does have much higher levels of humidity than just kind of like standard in my room and I know a lot of allocations can be very very sensitive to lower humidity levels and you'll notice lots of browning brown edges brown tips and that is a classic sign of humidity not being high enough but I personally haven't found this one to be awful and maybe like for me I feel like my humidity levels are low here because I've been used to such high humidity levels previously but maybe that is just like normal I don't know um but typically the humidity in my flaps at the moment is around about 50 percent if I can get it a little bit higher I will I do run humidifiers in this room but I don't run them all the time typically I just tend to run them when I've had the heating on because again at this time of year central heating dries the air out so much and not just allocations pretty much all of your tropical plants are going to suffer if you don't do something about humidity you don't like I'm again I won't get into all the the details of it now but I have made money saving videos on like what to do if you can't afford to run a humidifier all the time and the same with grow lights and stuff like that so I will link that video down below if anybody's interested but then yeah apart from that though the other thing to think about is temperature and this one isn't quite as resilient when it comes to lower temperatures as some of my other plants I've noticed that this one will almost immediately go into dormancy when the temperature does drop and I've said it before but I'm quite lucky with where I live I'm on a top floor flat and I do get sun for most of the morning and typically my flat does heat up quite well so I'm usually in kind of like the early to mid 20s celsius wise here and this plant seems really really really happy with that so I would say between about 18 and 28 degrees celsius if you possibly can for this plant but something to think about as well and this came up in conversation actually at the recent plant swap that I went to but a lot of tropical plants are more than capable of surviving in lower temperatures as well I think just because just because they might not be putting out as much growth they are more than capable than surviving a little bit lower and I know with the current energy crisis don't don't always panic about the fact that you can't keep things at a tropical temperature for your plants because most of the time they'll be absolutely fine but yeah I think that's pretty much the gist of it for this plant if anyone's got any questions about it or you want to know about I should say propagation there's not a huge amount to talk about cuttings wise obviously you can propagate from corms and division but if there's any more details you want to know then drop me a comment down below and I'll get back to you but I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you found it useful and if you did 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 stay sexy plant lovers