Your plant's roots aren't sitting in water, so they'll absorb the moisture from the clay balls. Since your plants aren't sitting in water all the time, like often the case with soil, they're not at risk of overwatering, they're just in a moist and oxygen-rich environment. If you're growing thirsty plants in Leca, they will start to grow their roots towards the water that's at the bottom of the pot and absorb moisture directly from there. This makes Leca perfect for a large variety of plants, from drought-loving cacti to moisture-loving Alocasias. How do you fertilize your plants in Leca? J. Arthur Bower's Hydroleca is a lightweight clay aggregate formed by special clay minerals expanded at a high temperature. This produces ceramic "pebbles" with a smooth outer crust and a honeycomb interior. These pebbles are sterile, non-toxic, inert, resistant to algae, extremely strong and can absorb up to 40% of their own weight in water. They are not damaged by frost and have good insulating properties. Keep the Hydroleca moist so that it gradually releases moisture to the plants placed on its surface and improves greenhouse humidity Make a trough or dig a trench to contain the bed of aggregate. The minimum depth is 15cm (6in), but no more than 25cm (10in) is usually used. Covering the entire greenhouse floor with aggregate is also possible.

Leave the newly potted plants on the greenhouse floor, not the aggregate. As the plants grow, space them out so that the leaves of neighbouring plants never touch. This will avoid leggy growth. We know how important your garden is to you. We've listened to our customers and introduced a new improved speedy delivery service, meaning Express deliverycomes as standard. At this point, you might be wondering: why would you even consider using this for growing your plants? This growing medium can't feed my plants on its own...why would I use this? These are excellent questions and they're the exact questions we're going to look at in this post. Leca can't feed your plants for you, but it brings a lot of fantastic benefits that make it a great growing medium for a lot of different plants and plant owners of any skill level!

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The inert nature of Hydroleca clay granules makes them highly suited to mixing with your potting compost of choice. Used in a 3:1 ratio (3-parts soil to 1-part Hydroleca) they bring many benefits. They Hydroleca has a neutral pH so using it won't affect conditions if you mix it in with your growing medium of choice. Using these clay granules will provide more air gaps and to help avoid compaction, with the added benefit of water retention. They also provide the perfect surface to harbour plant-beneficial bacteria.

Large items are sent via a standard 48L (48 hour large) service. Large items take from 2 working days to arrive. After the crop is finished, remove the aerial parts of the plant and ease the roots out of the aggregate and discard. Whether you call them leca beads, hydroton balls, expanded clay balls, hydroleca, or hydroponic pebbles, they’re essentially all the same thing. (Honestly, I just call it “leca” and drop the capitals for convenience).Pot up offsets (mini rosettes) in spring into a free-draining, gritty compost. You can make your own using half and half sharp grit and John Innes No.2 or buy a ready-made cacti compost. Plantlets may already have roots, so tease rosettes apart carefully. Keep moist and out of direct sun and they should establish in 4-6 weeks. Hydroleca also forms an ideal microclimate around your plants so the soil near to your roots stay adequately moist and the air around your plants remain sufficiently humid. A layer of Hydroleca looks attractive laid out on top of pots as a topper and also helps retain moisture, adds humidity and helps to avoid evaporation

Keeping a 5 cm depth of Hydroleca moist on a bench in a greenhouse can help improve humidity levels. When you're using soil, you're watering when the soil feels dry or the plant looks a certain way. Watering is much simpler when you're using Leca because you're watering when the water in the pot is gone. When all the water is gone from the bottom of the pot, your plant has absorbed it all or the clay balls have soaked it up. Adding extra water, even if the clay balls are still full of water, won't cause the plant to be overwatered. Your plant won't be overwatered, because the plant absorbs the moisture as it needs it. If you were growing your plant in soil and you were to add more water when the soil is still soaked, you might kill the plant by overwatering it. Using a layer of hydroleca instead of pebbles or broken pots will help with drainage and provide excellent aeration. Tuberous begonias are grown from round, fleshy tubers. They have big, showy flowers in bright shades of pink, yellow, orange, red and white, throughout summer and into autumn. They make excellent pot and hanging basket plants, as some of them trail. As they won't survive in cold weather, the tubers are often planted as annuals each year, or dug up and stored indoors for the winter. When you're ready to water your plant that's growing in Leca, you'll need to prepare the water first. You'll need to add the hydroponic fertilizer to the water you use to water your plant and mix it well. This will help to dilute the fertilizer with the water and turn your plain old water into a hydroponic nutrient solution. You can water any of your Leca-growing plants with this nutrient solution and you're done! It's a little bit of preparation before you water your plant, but that's all you'll need to do to take care of a plant that's growing in Leca. Conclusion

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Leca is a great way to water your plants without overdoing it. Your plants will be healthy and thriving without the effort it takes to do the same for plants in the soil! In this plant care guide, we've looked at what Leca is, how you can use it, and what its benefits are for you and your plants. I hope I've convinced you of its ease of use! Be sure to share this guide with your friends and family so they can learn how to take care of their plants too. Although Roelof Jan may not have formal gardening credentials, his expertise has been cultivated through caring for many plants and providing valuable guidance to fellow plant lovers just like you. Leca is an acronym and it stands for: Lightweight expanded clay aggregate. It sounds very complicated, but when you break it down, it's a good and descriptive name. Essentially, Leca is a growing medium, like soil, in which you can grow your plants. Because of their excellent inner clay structure, your balls will never become rotten or decayed - meaning that you can keep using, and reusing LECA to grow your very own bureau of indoor tropical cuttings with exceptionally strong roots! As mentioned in the previous paragraph, you water your plants in Leca where there is no more water in the bottom of the pot. The Leca lets the plant absorb moisture when it needs it and this helps to avoid overwatering. Because it's very difficult to overwater plants in this case, the chances of getting root rot are low.

Let's go over each of these benefits to see how they can help you to take care of your houseplants. Leca makes it easier to water your plants If you'd like more than 10 bags of compost please call our Customer Service team who can arrange for a bespoke competitive quote on 01480 774555 (standard network charges apply)While any slow release feed you've included in the potting medium will last several months, once that has been used up, you can supplement with a monthly general liquid feed in the growing season. Plants growing in the ground are unlikely to need fertiliser. Overwintering In addition to providing an attractive finish for the pot, the Hydroleca will retain and slowly release water and nutrients to the growing media, will help maintain the temperature of the compost, and will increase humidity around the plant. With an average diameter of 1cm, LECA balls have a million and one functions within the world of houseplants. Most commonly used when water-propagating a cutting, you can even mix them into a potting mix to improve the overall structure and moisture-retaining profile of the soil. This is especially good with houseplants that HATE dry spells or excessively hot climates, as the balls will soak in the moisture for the roots to use at a later date.