Hello. I work for a training organisation that teach disadvantaged teenagers horticulture. We specialize in bedding and perennials but have recently tried to grow a few tropical plants and we have created a lush tropical garden at a local park. The star of the show was going to be a large Colocasia burgandy stem. we are currently over wintering our plants in a heated greenhouse running at about 16 degrees C. Most of the plants still look very healthy. The colocasia does not. A lot of the leaves are browning at the edges and the leaves seem to be losing their waxy coating. Can anyone help us out as to what the problem is? My first thought is that maybe it has been getting watered to much by our inexperience trainees. Could this be the case? Or is the temp too low?
Should we cut our losses and remove all the foliage?, allowing it to re-shoot, or will it eventually spring back?
As i said before, tropical plants are something that is quite new to us so any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated as we would hate to lose these beautiful plants but embarrassingly lack the knowledge to best advise the trainees as how to best look after them.
Many thanks
colocasia
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GREVILLE
Re: colocasia
Hi, dthom and welcome to the forum.
Overwintering C. burgundy stem and keeping them perfect is well nigh impossible. Even when successful their condition in January looks tatty. Providing the corm at the bottom is still firm and not rotting your plants are merely at the dormant stage. They will pick up and regrow as light levels rise along with temperatures. Unseen runners/stolons can still reshoot giving you new plants
Even kept at 16c they require little water over winter.
Look under the 'Exotics' tab at the head of each page and click to Aroids and there you find some excellent info on Burgundy Stem. Plenty of informative posts can be found through Search
Overwintering C. burgundy stem and keeping them perfect is well nigh impossible. Even when successful their condition in January looks tatty. Providing the corm at the bottom is still firm and not rotting your plants are merely at the dormant stage. They will pick up and regrow as light levels rise along with temperatures. Unseen runners/stolons can still reshoot giving you new plants
Even kept at 16c they require little water over winter.
Look under the 'Exotics' tab at the head of each page and click to Aroids and there you find some excellent info on Burgundy Stem. Plenty of informative posts can be found through Search
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Blairs
Re: colocasia
Browning of the leaf edges is a sign of over watering. One of mine is showing the same thing and I have overwatered it. I have others in a 50% compost/Perlite mix and they are ticking along without the leaf edges browning.
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dthom
Re: colocasia
Thanks. I thought it might be over watering. I may try knocking off the wet soil and repotting them in a perlite mix.
Lots of great info on this site. I've obviously come to the right place.
Lots of great info on this site. I've obviously come to the right place.