Potting a Thai Giant Colocasia

So much has happened. I had paused on the recording because I was like, I think I need to fix my microphone. Hopefully it's fixed. I guess we'll find out with this video. I was waiting for a cleaning kit to come in the mail and clean out my ports and whatnot on the camera. And between that time and now, which is about 18 hours, we had a little tornado. A little, maybe a microburst. I don't really know. There was a whole bunch of rain. Not a ton of damage. Fixing things up. A few broken pots and things. Oh, wasn't that good timing. You hear that? Is it the first Monday of the... Oh, I guess it is. Okay. Um, anyways, let's repot an elephant ear. Just work our way through here. Oh gosh. Yeah. So here's the pot that I picked out. It's a 22 inch pot, which really for a Thai giant, probably not even big enough, but we're going to make it work. I had another pot out here that I was had that this was set on top of it so I could film it better, but it blew away. Here we go. All right. Got that. Thai giants. Let's get rolling. Oh, we've talked about the Leukocasias before on this channel. Usually for more of a, hey, watch out. You might be getting scammed perspective. These are oftentimes sold as bulbs and you're not likely to actually buy one of these as a bulb. You might get the giant Callocasia esculentis, the Jack's giants, but not a Thai giant. All right, here you go. Get that toy. Go swim. The Leukocasia gigantea, they generally take a few years to form up a sizable tuber. Something that you would be able to store. That's typically just not how most people store them. All-purpose potting mix. Drains well. Not a brand I would ever buy again. It's going to be fine for this plant. Main thing is that it drains really well. With the Thai giants, I supplement nutrition so much anyways. I'm not all that worried about this being a really barky mix, but that is something I would avoid if I were you. Just a bad batch. Bad batch as well. Yeah, organically rich, well-drained. That's something that, you know, we always say when it comes to plants. But with the Thai giant, that really is true. The organically rich part is important. Now, a lot of potting mixes aren't actually organically rich. All we really mean when we say organically rich is that try and have some compost in there and be prepared to fertilize. So a fertile potting mix or an organically rich potting mix. Fertile potting mix just means that you've added some continuous release to it and be prepared to be on a fertilizing schedule. Because these plants are absolute nutrient hogs. Gosh, this is, this is not great soil. It's fine soil as far as the loftiness goes. It's going to drain well and that's what I care about the absolute most. And I can fix this. I'll add some compost to it and everything. But uh, man, it's clumpy. It's partially clumpy because we had a ton of rain. We had like two or three inches of rain in about an hour yesterday. So I had this spread out to dry and it just, it caked up. So that's really neither here nor there. Just remember, well-drained mix. Probably gonna need to add organics to it. I used to grow my Colocasias, sorry, Leucocasia giganteas in the ground. And they did wonderfully that way. They would get huge. These plants, if you don't know, these get massive. Getting interrupted right now. They're like one of the biggest ones you can get, for the most part, one of the biggest of the more common ones that you can get. But I've been having some issues with squirrels the last several years, ground squirrels, uh, and shrews and voles and stuff, just destroying the tubers. So I'll plant them, they'll put out a few new leaves, get nice and big, and then they just blah blah blah. And I dig them up and there's nothing left underground. That's why putting this in a pot. So something that I like to pay attention to when I'm repotting any elephant ear, whether it's an Allocasia, a Colocasia, Leucocasia, Stansysoma, doesn't matter. I actually enjoy seeing some root swirl. I want to feel that pot and feel some squish. Not squish. Opposite of that, I don't want to feel any squish in the container because that lets me know that these roots are pretty solid. If the plant has a lot give up top, like if it wiggles around on top of the soil and you can squeeze it really well, I would hold off on repotting it. Leucocasia specifically, they tend to throw an absolute fit if their roots are disturbed too much. So even with this down here, I'm just very lightly going through. I'm just going to pull a few of those out. Not going to do what I would do with a lot of other plants where there's a lot of squirrel, I just go through and just demolish the root ball and try and free up every single root. As long as the bulk of them are freed up, then it's going to be just fine. These aren't by any means delicate plants, but it's nice to repot things without them having a major setback and doing too much down here would be a pretty big setback because, like I said, they are just babies about having their roots messed with. Another thing you may notice, this pot is huge and this plant is not. It doesn't care. It's summertime, it's very warm out, and this will root into this very, very quickly. So yeah, you know, we have that whole rule about staying within a certain diameter. Generally, what do we say? One to two inches, the outside diameter is what you should pot your plants up to. Yeah, I don't think I care about all that with this one. You can plant them a little bit high. Mine do tend to rot where I live because of the humidity, which, you know, you think they would just love, but sometimes it's a problem, more so in the wintertime. So I have to take these inside during the winter. I'm in 6b, 7a, and even though I have actually had these return from the ground, they can be surprisingly cold hardy. They never get really big and impressive by the end of that growing season, their next growing season, after their first winter. So that's something I bother with. So in a container, I just move out. It's a lot easier to do things that way, and having plants just a smidge high just helps with some of that issues with rot inside the container. But yeah, that's not really high. That's about level. When I add water, it'll probably go down a little ways. This plant will root into this pot within probably a month. They have very fast growing extensive root systems. I'm not sure where my clippers went, so I'm just going to use this. Oh, well, that should work just fine. There we go. Cut that bad leaf off of there. There we go. Isn't that lovely? Hard in the background. Gotta put everything back together. I have this lantana here. Does that look good in here? Yeah? Maybe? It's awfully low. I could have put a little bit more soil in here. So I like to have a decent sized lip with certain plants, specifically things like elephant ears, bananas, anything where they like to have a really big drench of water. It's just easier to let them sit lower in the container, because that way during the wintertime, I usually water with a bucket when I'm doing some fertilizer tasks in the wintertime, and it's just easier to take the bucket and they'll just dump it on there and not have the water pull all the soil out of the container. Do you know what I mean? Right? So I do like to have them lower down, but that makes an issue if I want a trailer, because that's, yeah, it's pretty far down there. I don't know. I want to do lantana in here because the way I overwinter the tide giants and lantana, fairly similar actually. I don't know. I should probably go over more about their outdoors here before I go over if I do some indoors. Outdoors though, it's pretty cut and dry with these guys. They want a lot of sun, they want a lot of moisture, and they want a lot of nutrients, a lot of minerals, lots of fertilizer. So, you know, compost is great. You can add your biotones or whatever you want to the mix, and just remember that those things take time to actually kick in. So I think it's personally my opinion. I like to go in with synthetics and use the organics at the same time. The synthetics help get them going, help get them moving, and then once, you know, things have settled down, you don't want to use the synthetics anymore. The organics are starting to break down and you're starting to have lots of microbial activity down there around the root ball. Yeah, that's the main thing. Don't let them dry out for too long. Make sure that soil drains well. If you live someplace that's really, really tropical though, these can, I mean, you can put them in your pond if you want to. They can handle that as long as they have the warmth and that water is circulating. That does help an awful lot. There are other types of Leucocasia too, of the gigantea. There's one that's called, I believe it's called Cerviboraceae. It's not possible. I'm pretty sure that's its name. I planted one several years ago and it was a survivor. That thing came back for me here in 6b, 7a, and it has for a few years, but when it comes back, it only ever gets like, I don't know, maybe a foot or two tall. So yeah, that juice isn't worth the squeeze. There's lots of other hardy elephant ears that grow flawlessly here, so there's no reason to bother with that. But if you live in like 7b, 8a, and maybe you've had a little trouble with these, although the Leucocasia gigantea should be good in zone 7b with some protection, but where I am, uh, yeah, I don't know. We have better options. So that's what I like to do with them. Just like to make sure they're getting a good amount of water. Drip irrigation, if you have them on drip, oh, they grow very, very well. Very well when you can get that water right down into their roots. But I don't have any fancy fertilizer tricks or anything for these guys. They're just, you know, you know, you can grow kind of like every other elephant ear. Only other issue I've had with these I don't typically have with other elephant ears is that they just seem to be more prone to rot. I don't know why. Never used to be an issue. I know that there were, I, well, I think that's all been handled a long time ago, but there were some viral issues with these plants a long time ago in the trade, but I pretty sure that's been taken care of. So, you know, hopefully that's not something you have to worry about, but you know, watch out for weird coloration in the leaves. Usually you're going to see what looks like a bleeding, like striping along the veins inside of the foliage. So this one had discoloration in here and then weird, pardon my dog, I'm sorry. God, that startled me. Hopefully it wasn't too bad for you guys. Uh, yeah, uh, odd irregular growth. That could be something viral. Take pictures, take them to your local nurseries, let them look at them. They can help you decipher whether or not that's an actual, like, a virus, a pathogen, something you really need to be concerned about, or if it's just some sort of nutrient issue. You know, because there are lots of things that can cause odd growth and discolored growth, improper fertilizing, and light conditions, drastic changes in temperature that come out of absolutely nowhere that'll really change things up. I doubt it's something you'll have to worry about, but if you do, you know, take pictures and google it. Usually pretty easy to figure out what those things are coming from. Okay, the winter care part. Whenever I overwinter these, uh, it's pretty simple. I don't give them a lot of light. There's actually different ways. So let me start with the way I do it versus probably the more practical way for most people to do it. So my garage is set up into a growth space. I have a pond in there and keeps things nice and humid in the heater, so things are typically pretty warm depending on the temperature outside. If it's like, you know, minus five Fahrenheit outside, there's only so much a heater can do in the garage, but you know, typically it's above 70 in there. We try most days. So with those temperatures and a good amount of artificial lighting, I'm able to keep these growing during the winter time, but that is actually more challenging than just letting them be dormant and sit still. Like, there's different ways and different levels for overwintering. So there's that way where I have the warmth, the humidity, lots of light, and just keep them growing, but it's hard to avoid getting really spindly growth when you're growing these under artificial light. You need really good lights to keep them having that really nice sturdy shape that they get. So what I tend to do is stick them someplace in my growth space that isn't getting anywhere near as much light, and they're away from any splashing water, anything like that, more on the cool side because it's a garage. The closer you get to the door, the cooler it's going to be, and just let them chill out. You know, they don't need much, and the lantana, that's pretty much how I overwinter a lantana as well. I just let them chill out. They don't need much of anything special. I just let them sit dormant. So if you have a basement or a cool space that's ideally above 40 and below, I'd say 60, you can cut all the foliage off of your plant and just scoot it into that area and let it stay there until you're ready to get it going again in the house or until you are ready to move it outside when frost is past. Okay, well, that's a lot of noise in the background, but everybody's got yard cleanup to do, so, you know, just is what it is. So doing things that way where you just let them sit dormant in a cooler space, that's really the easiest way to do it. After you've had them for a few years, you can plant them in the ground and then lift them and cut the foliage off and store the tuber like you would any other elephant ear, brush all that dirt off, let them dry for a few days someplace where you can observe them, and then go ahead and put them someplace like under a sink or someplace that's dry, cool, and dark, and then replant them. Like I said, it usually takes a while to get a sizable bulb on these guys. Oh, that survivor one I forgot to mention, it offsets readily. Like you plant one and you have a whole bunch. Now there's an airplane. Oh my gosh, this is the noisiest video I've ever made. It's the fifth plane I've paused recording for. Okay, anyways, yeah, the joys of being outside. I love it. Wouldn't have it any other way. I like to do it the way I was describing where it's kind of a middle ground, so instead of keeping it really warm with all the light and keeping it growing and risking having that really big spindly growth on it, doing things where it's dark and it can just kind of hang out usually does the trick. These guys, for me, end up covered in mealybugs by the end of the winter time, so you'll want to check on them if you have them someplace where they're kind of out of sight, out of mind, and you wouldn't think they'd get bugs on them. I would still go and check on them, usually going in with just an insecticidal soap and just brushing everything down will do the trick. The nice thing about these is they grow fast, so if they do end up with bugs on them, I just usually cut everything off and start the plant over, but you know, you don't have to do things that way. You can just spray them down and hope for the best. Spider mites and mealybugs, I should have said, they really, really enjoy the elephant ears, all of them, not just the tide giants. So the tide giant, I like to bring them out when things are really warm out. I have some other Colocasias, mostly the Escalenta types, where I just bring them out as soon as temperatures feel like they're, you know, warm enough, we're free of frost, and ground temperatures are above 65, 60, then I'll put them in the ground. These guys, though, I hold off because they tend to just sit still and do absolutely nothing until there's a really good amount of warmth outside, meaning, you know, regular temperatures above 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, that warm zone, when you get over 77, you start to get into where you have a nice vapor pressure deficit. That's a whole thing, a whole other nerdy plant thing, but yeah, you want to match warm soil with warm temperatures and evening lows that aren't too terribly cool, and I'm referring to Fahrenheit here too, so I'm saying 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you get a good amount of growth out of these, they move pretty quickly. This thing will look totally different in just a few weeks, and it will need a new pot next year. They grow so fast, in fact, it might need a new pot when it's time to take this inside for the winter, but you know, I like this pot, I was like, oh, that's neutral, and it was cheap because, you know, Walmart, but really, these, if you want to keep them a pot long term with their massive sizes, you're gonna have to go up to something, you know, I have like a 35 inch back here, that would probably be big enough, but you know, those are expensive, so moving on to like wood crate territory. Hey, baby. So yeah, in a container, you're not going to get the really big, impressive plant anywhere near as quickly as you would get it in the ground. In the ground, these just, oh my gosh, they grow so fast, it's amazing, and so much fun to watch them grow when they're in the ground. It just really isn't an option for me anymore because, you know, I'm going like five years in a row here now where they just, their roots just get destroyed, and I guess I could put a cage around the root ball, I could try that sometime, but no, I don't really need to. I can just keep them in a container. I've overwintered these many times indoors. It's really not a challenge unless I'm trying to keep them growing actively and trying to get lots and lots of growth out of them. If you're doing it that way, that's a challenge, but no, if you could just cut them back and let them sit still, no big deal. Keep them on the drier side, and they'll typically be just fine. All right, hey, that's everything. Thanks for hanging out through the chaos that was this video. Unexpected chaos. I'm gonna take this guy down, get it watered. I'm gonna hit it with a root stimulator, one to, you know, keep that plant nice and healthy, help it have less stress while it's adjusting, and the lantana because I divided those out of a hanging basket, and lantana, they don't always respond well to having their roots torn with like that, so, you know, we'll see what those do. We'll see what they do. Hopefully they'll be fine. All right, hey, hope everybody's doing well. Have a great day, great living, and grow an absolutely beautiful flower.