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Hey @janetmurphy8726 - Pon is another type of semihydro substrate made by a company called Lechuza in Germany. You can find it online (pretty pricey) or in some boutique plant shops, or you can make it yourself. I think there's a recipe listed in this video but you can also dig it up online pretty easily. I'll post it on my website at some point soon just for reference! You can do LECA (clay balls) or Pon (more of a granular substrate made of smaller particles, mostly even parts lava rock, zeolite, and pumice) for Anthuriums. I'd say stuff with smaller, thinner roots will do better in Pon generally speaking. LECA works better for stuff with thicker more established root systems. You can also start stuff off (just to acclimate to semi-hydro) in plain perlite or pumice if you want to start a little simpler. LECA is generally pretty cheap (probably about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of Pon) unless you make the Pon yourself, in which case they're about even if you buy your materials in bulk. Thanks for the question and feel free to ask more, I'm going to use some of these for an update video later this fall. Cheers!

Thank you soo much for answering my question it seems happy at moment I’m thinking just perlite ?

much appreciated! but you give my fashion sense too much credit 😆

Hey @MindfulWan! I find my Monstera do a lot better in LECA than Pon in general, primarily due to the thickness/juiciness of the roots. I've also used @PrettyInGreen's method (LECA + perlite) and that's worked well for me on my Monstera deliciosa var. Brazil as well (so far that's the only one I've tried in the hybrid LECA/perlite substrate.) I haven't had the greatest luck with Pon and really thick-rooted Monstera in general, but that's just my experience... it's possible others have had better luck. If you're sizing pots up from LECA-to-LECA (are you?), I honestly wouldn't even bother touching the roots at all, just take your existing net pot and dump it into new LECA as-is. Now, If I'm understanding you right, though, you're wanting to convert your Thai Con to LECA, but I'm not sure if you're coming from Pon or coming from soil... ? Either way, when you're moving up pot sizes, my general advice is to try and not touch the roots at all, or at least as minimally as possible. The less you screw with the roots, the better the plant will acclimate to the pot upsize. Now, losing some roots when converting substrates is pretty unavoidable so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Actually, a little light "root pruning" (some loss around the outer edges) can actually trigger some root branching - that's what you see when you use net pots with semi-hydro or fabric pots with your veggie garden outdoors. So in that case, don't stress about it, some root loss is inevitable and it's not necessarily a bad thing unless you're losing _a lot_ of roots. Either way, try to avoid disrupting the root system too often unless you absolutely have to do it more than once... the more to disturb things, the slower it will be to recover and keep sizing up. If I misunderstood your question, let me know - I'm not sure I totally grokked it or answered it properly. 😃

@@theproppist Thank you so much for taking the time and provide such great information,.. I'm looking to convert my Thai Constellation to a new substrate. It came in soil with a wicking pot, and I've had challenges. I tried washing the roots but couldn't remove all soil, so I put it in coco chips about a month ago which was supposed to be temporary. I lost two small leaves, likely from overwatering at the start, been more careful with watering since and plant looks happy, I dont think this is the best mix tho. so based on what you shared I'm considering the LECA + perlite mix, now the question is: Should I use a reservoir with a wick, or a pot with drainage holes for this mix?

Olá! Nunca vi a forma curta A. wendlingeri - apenas a forma longa que é vendida mais comumente aqui no Canadá (via Ecuagenera). Vi no exoticaesoterica.com que há algumas formas curtas encontradas (site de Jay Vannini), mas nunca vi nenhuma pessoalmente! (Espero ter traduzido isso bem! 😊)

Hey @brittnyblain9762, appreciate the feedback, although there's a pretty visible timestamp on the videos shown in search results, so it should be pretty obvious that it's an hour+ long video before you click on it. Anyhow, not to disregard the impetus behind your (rather long, haha) comment, but my regular viewers and folks who've interacted with me in the comments in the past really seem to appreciate the longer in-depth commentary, for the most part. I get a lot of positive feedback about it. If you take a look at my main channel page, you'll see almost all of my videos are 30m-1hr long, so that's in line with the channel theme. Extra-long videos are *very* popular in the houseplant collector scene here on UA-cam - some of the videos from other similar channels are 3+ hour long plant chore videos full of chatty stuff, so I'm definitely not THAT long-winded in comparison. 😉 I'd suggest to you that there are plenty of short videos talking about this subject that you could check out instead. UA-cam actually has a video length filter you can use in your search results if you're looking for shorter content, give it a try sometime! Either way, thanks for stopping by and I appreciate the comment. 😊

@charlottesedita3136 Sorry for the belated reply on this! I was away on vacation when this came through and I'm just getting caught up on comments (kinda late, my bad!) There's no real obvious indication that LECA is doing what you want it to do in terms of actual "volume absorbed/wicked" besides the colour of the LECA balls themselves. You have to check this well after watering unless you're somehow bottom-watering or filling your outer/cache pot and then placing your inner net pot into the nutrient liquid so it doesn't soak the upper part of the LECA. If you do it right after (top) watering, then you won't be able to tell anything as all of the substrate will be wet for a while. If you wait a day or so, things should dry out enough that the wicking should be visible in the darkness of the LECA above the water line. The darker it is, the more water it's absorbing. Once it's a consistent level of darkness, it's at max absorption. It will fade upwards until it dries out towards the top of the substrate in your net pot. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

How are they now?

Hey @dangerouslydeliciousbbq6097 & @VeryKinkyCurl - I think I may have discussed these guys in one of my later videos last summer, but I never did an official update because (a) most of these plants died except two, and (b) I kinda got turned off the whole TC/deflasking process due to buying a lot of bad quality tissue cultured plantlets from sketchy sellers, tbh. The long and the short of it is: I had a lot of bad luck and wasted a lot of money in the process, got pretty annoyed by the whole thing because my seller(s) were honestly ripping people off, and ended up not placing another order after summer 2023. I know it's probably not great practice to send folks away from your own channel (lol), but I'd suggest checking out one of the other channels that cover TC really well like @plantsinjars - that will definitely help you out _much_ more with working with TC plantlets than anything I could offer!

Yes @NicoleVillos, absolutely! I think I may have mentioned it in one of my full-length videos talking about tree fern, but the fact that you can observe the water absorption pretty easily with the naked eye is definitely one of the more useful things about TF. It's much easier to eyeball moisture levels with tree fern than it is with, say, sphagnum moss. Arguably Fluval stratum is in the same ballpark, because it does darken up a bit with water, but personally I'd say TF is the easiest to deal with when it comes to gauging moisture.

Hey @kbm4409 - many apologies for the super late reply to your question! I actually completely missed this one in my comments queue until today. I'm kind of a no-soil household (except for new acquisitions that are already in soil) so I'm probably not a great person to ask about moving from LECA/semi-hydro _back_ to soil. I could see some valid reasoning to doing this, such as (a) it's hard to find really large semi-hydro containers if your plant is getting huge, so you need to put it back into soil, or (b) you live in a climate where you can grow giant Alocasias outdoors, in which case it makes sense to grow 'em where they can get big. Not sure what your reasoning is, so feel free to share. 😉 Now, from anecdotal experience, you'd need to be careful with the move - first off, make sure the Alocasia is healthy and not struggling before you transition it. Then I'd probably let the plant dry out somewhat in its current substrate (LECA) before attempting a move. That means until the water level is below the roots, or the semi-hydro substrate + outer pot/cache pot is totally dry (you can empty it out and let it sit for a day or so if you don't want to wait around for it.) Then you can transfer to soil, but I would probably keep the soil moist (not soggy but watered) for at least a couple of weeks after transitioning. **Note:** Just don't wait too long after letting it dry out in semi-hydro, or the plant will begin to suffer - if you see leaves start to droop (or worse, yellow/brown), then you've waited too long. At that point, just water it, let it stabilize, and try things again once it perks back up again. Anyhow, just like you lose soil roots moving from soil to semi-hydro, I would assume you're gonna see some root loss and potentially root rot when switching the other way as well, until things acclimate. Those water roots won't be happy in soil right away and you'll probably lose a bunch of them on the way out. Not to worry, though - Alocasias root systems are super tough for the most part and will acclimate well enough given some time. Thanks for the question - definitely thought-provoking! I'll save it for a future FAQ video if you don't mind. Will give you a shout out!

@@theproppist I moved her from soil to Leca and I was wondering how not to kill her in this new setup

Thanks for the comment! Absolutely… I use clear pots with all my smaller plants. It’s really hard to find very large clear pots to work with semihydro net pots unfortunately so unless you can match up a perfect 64-128oz deli container to a net pot, you’re kinda screwed. I personally don’t mind some of the self-watering pots you can get on Amazon but it takes quite a bit of trial and error to find the better ones. And if you haven’t watched my Semi-Hydro Gear Guide video yet, take a look at my channel page, should be easy to find!

My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have any questions!

Thank you so much, very glad to have you here! I try and be as honest as I can, and I kill plenty of stuff due to experimentation and a whole lot of unintentional neglect (lol). Trying to be a bit more meticulous about my smaller seedlings. The one advantage of killing stuff is you have more room for new stuff, right? 😉

Hey, thanks for watching! Yeah, the prices ave definitely come down on these guys since I posted this. The NSE Wendlis are still a bit more money but you can get them for $75-125 depending what size you're getting. Seedlings are the way to go if you can get your hands on one, so congrats! Let me know how it does and thanks for watching! 😃

Hey Kyle, thanks for watching! That's an excellent question and one I probably haven't addressed directly in a video anywhere (maybe I did, but indirectly? who knows...) I think I'm gonna note this one down for a future Q&A, but I won't leave you hanging in the meantime. 😉 In terms of up-potting, I have had issues with roots or root branches going THROUGH the wicking here and there, but not really to any major detriment to the roots systems. Often the wicking is loose enough woven that you can pull the roots back out without harming anything. Worst case is having to give the roots a trim, but that's not really all that terrible of an outcome. The other option when upsizing pots is just to take the existing substrate (whatever's sticking to the roots) along with the existing wicking and putting it through the holes of the new inner net pot. If the old wicking's not long enough you can always add some more and not have to worry too much about it. Personally, I just pull it out if it's stuck in the wicking and just re-do it in the new pot. Not usually a big deal! Hope this helps and thanks for watching! Appreciate your support! 🤘

Hey Eve! Thanks for the comment and for watching! This is a bit of a tricky question because I had some issues in my tent earlier this year that affected a number of my plants that were on the LECA poles. I'll try and do a video showing some of them off once they've recovered a bit, but I had to cut down a significant amount of them due to a major underwatering event (i.e. I was on vacation and a bunch of stuff dried out, unfortunately.) I can tell you without actually showing you that I've had really good experiences with the smaller poles - medium and small size work great with LECA. They hold the clay balls in there pretty good and don't "leak" too often during watering. Once roots start penetrating the pole, stuff barely moves at all in there. I would say that you either need to keep the wicking moist by watering at least once a week, or if you keep the "poled" plant in a tent or cabinet with pretty high (60%+) humidity, you can probably drop that watering schedule down to bi-weekly. My P. "Glorious" and a bunch of Syngoniums did really awesome on the LECA pole. The two Monsteras.I had tried it with, my Burle Marx "Flame" & my deliciosa albo, both got underwatered pretty severely, so I had to cut them back down quite a bit. They were on the large sized poles so I can't really speak for those right now until they recover and get back up to size again. All in all, I think the method works as long as you run the wicking with some give inside the pole, i.e. let it be loose in the pole so it has a little room to wrap around the LECA as you fill it. Also, make sure to top off the LECA in the pole intermittently as the plant grows. If you forget, the plant will grow INTO the pole, which is no fun - my Glorious did this and it was a HUGE pain in the ass to pull the growth point back out of the inside of the pole without breaking it. Hope this helps! I'll try and include an update on the LECA pole method in a future video, I just need to give it a couple of months for things to recover. Thanks again for the question!

@@theproppist Big thanks for the lengthy answer! 😄 Looking forward for a video update in the future. In the main while I've started a Monstera on a leca pole, hope I made the right choice in giving it a try 😊

Hey there! No, there is absolutely no reason you can't use a nursery pot for semi-hydro if you have it inside of a container or cache-pot, if that's what you have on hand. It's not ideal, but it will work. Just make sure to clean off any soil before you do the semi-hydro transfer (from both the plant and the nursery pot.) The only reasons I'd say NOT to use a nursery pot would be: 1️⃣ - The plastic might not be the greatest quality as nursery pots are usually pretty cheaply made, so it may go brittle and then you'd have a bit of a tougher time transplanting or repotting later, or keeping a reservoir. 2️⃣ - Nursery pots often have pretty large drainage holes, so your Lechuza pon may spill out into the outer container or cache pot, which can be a bit of a pain in the butt. You can avoid this by either putting a LECA layer (larger particles) at the bottom, or if your pot's holes are too big for that, adding some mesh at the bottom before you lay down your substrate. 3️⃣ - Sometimes nursery pots only have a couple of small holes on the bottom, which can make running wicking into your reservoir kind of difficult. This isn't always the case so feel free to play it by ear. As long as the drainage from the inner pot is decent, you should be fine. You can always either drill or use a soldering iron to add some additional holes if necessary. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further Qs!

@@theproppist thank you so much for that detailed response! That helped a lot 👍❤️

Glad I could help! 🤘🏽

@MyLocksMyPlants Thank you! It's not quite up there with @kevin.'s (HakunaLaPlanta) but I'm pretty proud of it. Probably time to upsize the pot it's been in for >2 years, though... lol. 😂

@theproppist lol it looks great! gotta do what ya can when you have time lol

If it makes you feel any better, I did the same. I had bought one off Facebook a couple of years back when I was first piecing together my grow tent, then once I had it setup I realized I didn't need it at all. I ended up reselling it for the same price I paid for it. Worked out! 🤷‍♂️

I’ve never used distilled water in my humidifiers and they work fine.

Thanks for the comment! It’s kinda the same deal with humidifiers across the board… it’ll run fine on tap but it’ll eventually gunk up with sediment and mineral build up and conk out on you. I have the same issue with my CPAP machine but since that one goes on my face for hours I need to be a little more careful about it. 😆

@@pbjgurlyea I don’t use distilled in mine either but I have a filter on my hose and in my house for the plants to I’m hoping that keeps it from gunking up as fast. I want to convert into semi hydro, I tried it with a few of my plants they seemed to do ok with the switch. I’m just not as educated on it yet

Yeah, the perlite containers had a airflow issues until I started cutting holes into the tops. Those were a couple of my earlier attempts that failed pretty miserably. I just kept them around for demonstration purposes... they're gone now. 😉 I'll definitely check out Cannazym... the world of cannabis cultivation can teach us aroid collectors and semi-hydro/hydroponics buffs so much, they've been doing this stuff for decades. I think folks just need to be more open-minded to knowledge sharing since we're all basically doing similar things. I found it on Amazon so I may buy a bottle just to give it a try. Thanks for the tip!

Hey Mona, thanks for watching! Golden Bones used to be quite a bit more expensive when I got mine back in... 2021? (I think.) I'm pretty sure you can snag one for cheap now, I'm not sure if they're in garden centres but I bet you can get one off Etsy or a local plant swap pretty easily. And if you're ever up in Vancouver, BC, let me know and I'm sure I can dig you up some corms. 😆

Thanks for watching! Much appreciated! 💚

I have a container of diatomaceous earth for outside garden use, but I've never used it indoors! The main reason I don't use it in my tent or cabinet is that I regularly use beneficial insects (with sprayings in between bug cycles). As far as I know, diatomaceous earth would be just as lethal to my beneficials just as much as it would kill the thrips, right? 🤷 Feel free to let me know if my assumption is off-base!

@@theproppist I never thought of that . I did hear we don't have access to the thrips medications in Alberta Canada anymore so diatomaceous earth saved my sister's plants from thrips it can be rinsed away later once the thrips are gone. I've also used it on ants to deter them from the house. They can be outside not inside

@Fixup1000 Hey Ruby! I'm in Vancouver, BC, Canada so I know exactly what you mean! Azamax and Bonide aren't available in Canada and you can't order them cross-border without doing some shady stuff to sneak them in. 😬 I know some plant shops (I won't name names, but hydroponics guys know what's what) carry small supplies here and there if you ask nicely, and sometimes folks can buy it down south and drive it up if you're stealthy enough about it. Either way, we're stuck with stuff that doesn't work as well, like pyrethrin (e.g. Safer's End-All), etc. That sucks, but the beneficial insects are available if you want to try them. I use GrowLiv (growlive.com) out of Ontario for mine, but there are shops you can order from in Alberta and BC, too, I just haven't tried them because the prices and shipping work out cheaper with GrowLiv. Also, the folks at GrowLiv are pretty awesome about helping out with suggestions and answering questions if you have any. I may actually have someone from there on an interview video later this year on this channel, keep an eye out for it. 😉

@@theproppist thanks for the info :) I run aquariums too so fish medications went away with the insecticides. Thanks for reaching out buddy🤩

Hey @heartinthecity! Thank you for watching. I just wanted to tell you that this comment made my day. I took a screenshot and showed my wife. 😃 Love that you found the video helpful and that it took the edge off somewhat! I'm trying to alternate this type of video into my stream of other planty content as I feel like it gives a bit more of a balanced view compared to the "buy buy buy" / FOMO mentality we all end up falling into when collecting. Since I started collecting close to 4 years ago, I've discovered I need to take a break now and then from buying for 2-3 months at a time just to reset and feel inspired by my collection - and honestly, to take better care of the plants I have, including getting rid of some stuff I don't feel too attached to, propagating, and ditching dead stuff. Seems like a natural balance to the collecting lifecycle and it brings quite a bit of respite when you start feeling a little overwhelmed or burnt out. Glad I was able to help and please let me know if there are any other topics you'd like me to cover! 💚

Hey Janice! Awesome that you've managed to do so well keeping your stuff alive! I tend to experiment with all sorts of risky plant behaviour so I probably kill way more than the average person. But that's part of the fun of it for me. I probably have 200+ around here including seedlings and props at this point, and I also work F/T with 3 kids, so I absolutely get it! I'm probably going to purge a few this summer to focus more on the ones I really want to grow big/spectacular. Props to you, 70 plants isn't easy!

40 pings!!... I'm starting to wonder if maybe YOU'RE the one who was selling me those damn things. 😂 I never actually saw her face... mostly COVID door pick-ups before I got wise and stopped buying them! TBH you're probably 100% right on how to keep them alive if you're lazy. The sphagnum thing, maybe with LECA underneath, I hate it for Anthuriums but it would probably work great to keep pings alive. Not that I'll ever know. 🤷‍♂️ 😆

Hahaha

I screenshotted this for my... ugghh.. scrapbook? Not sure what to call it. I don't think I can admit to having a scrapbook. Jokes aside, I love this though. Thank you. 😉