Category Archives: Plants

Plants I got from AJ at Growing Grounds: Peperomia Hope, Peperomia Parallel, Peperomia Xiang Cao, Pilea Peperomioides, Calathea Sanderiana.

Just an update shot!

Everything is growing bonkers in there. Every single plant has been pushing out new leaves. It’s getting hard to try and stop them from touching each other!

Calathea Makoyana (AKA Peacock Plant).

Dropped in to see Alex at More Plants today and picked up another plant to live outside of my cabinet. This time I picked up a Peacock Plant (another Calathea) because A) It’s got a wonderful painterly pattern on it’s foliage and B) it’s going straight into the spare room which I’m setting up as an art studio and C) It’s pet safe, a good thing as Mia’s still chewing leaves!

Yes. I caved. The ultimate goal is to have a Queen Anthurium with huge perfect leaves as the only plant in the cabinet. I bought a baby queen a little while back, and it’s pushed out a new leaf, but it’ll be years before it gets to the size of this one.

Anthurium Clarinervium pushed out this cute new little leaf (how is this not heart shaped?!). It gets bigger every day. Fingers crossed it’ll be way bigger than the biggest leaf!

Alocasia Cuprea pushed out this amazing new leaf!

Late night internet shopping is nasty. I had seen this Queen Anthurium for sale over a month ago on Rootd Plants. It was the last of the batch that no-one wanted as the leaves on it looked pretty banged up, but late the other night I saw it was still there and I pulled the trigger on it. It came quick and was packed well. She’s definitely pretty beat up. They have very sensitive leaves which many who keep them say not to touch. A small mark on a small leaf will become a HUGE mark once the leaf gets big.

I have every single plant in the apartment growing in leca now except this queen. I’m nervous about moving her over, but at the same time I’m a little less nervous as she’s not the perfect specimen.

I stumbled upon these amazing plant trellis made by a brother and sister duo in the US. Love at first sight! I had to have the evil eye trellis! Viv is NUTS about the moon (and she has a lot of plants!) so I bought her the moon phase and sun, moon stars ones too. Visit: https://pineandsprout.com

Sitting perfectly on my coffee table.

What a perfect specimen from more plants.

Obsessed!

Found a guy (Sirius) on Facebook marketplace who was selling baby alocasias. I could clearly see in his photos that he was growing them in leca (semi-hydroponics) which is perfect as that’s what I’m using for most my plant cuttings which are doing amazing (lots of root growth and some have even pushed out new leaves!), best of all he lives literally 10 minutes down my street!

I swung past to pick up 4 plants, but walked away with 7 (since I took the lot he sold them all to me for $10 each).

Super nice guy who shared a lot of advice. The best tips he gave me was to note that alocasia’s are very hardy plants (despite what many say), and that insects/pests (particularly spider mites) are almost unavoidable and basically part of the hobby (again, similar to pests and algae issues in aquaria). He also said that alocasias don’t particularly need super high humidity and that he kept all of his at 60-65. I was previously freaking out when my humidity hit 60 (most of the day it’s at 70-80 in the cabinet).

He has more plants to sell, but I’ve legit got no more room in the cabinet now (especially with the rate things are growing at). I somehow doubt that’s going to slow me down from buying more plants though!

Plants: Alocasia Black Velvet, Pink Princess, Green Shield, Green Velvet and Melo.

PS: Follow Sirius on Instagram: @hemanlikesplants

Walked over to More Plants again today (yes it’s a walk away!) and picked up a couple more plants for my cabinet. I caved and bought the Alocasia Longiloba ‘May’ (Hybrid), which I fell in love with the first time I visited the store 3 weeks ago (SO surprised it was still there!). Also bought a Philodendron Billietiae in an attempt to fill up the top half of the cabinet.

Coming together nicely! Still have some cuttings from the garden in there that don’t suit the aroid theme. Will most likely remove them at some point.

Got roots?! Leca is amazing!