How to Grow Houseplants in LECA 

Growing houseplants in LECA is a total game changer. If you are curious as to the biggest reasons why, check out my post 5 Reasons to Grow Houseplants in Leca.

If LECA is something you want to give a shot then follow my tips below to ensure success.

First let’s start with the two BIGGEST no no’s

• Do NOT rinse your brand new LECA in indoor plumbing. The small clay particles will do a number on your plumbing. For the love of everything good in the world take it outside and use a hose and a colander. After the initial washing it is okay to rinse indoors, but I still prefer to do this outside just to ensure no pesky balls find their way down the drain.

• Do not transfer all your houseplants in to LECA at once. Start with something that won’t crush your soul if it dies while you are learning what works for your environment. The last thing you need is to get ahead of yourself and kill a Thai constellation, Queen. Get your sea legs and then take on transferring more plants.

Okay so now that we got that out of the way let’s move on to the easy peasy, fool proof methodology that I have used to successfully transfer more than 50+ houseplants to LECA and see them thrive.

How to Grow Houseplants in LECA

1. Setup
   • Decide what type of container you want to use. I recommend a clear container with drainage holes (the best option, in my opinion is clear orchid pots because they have a ton of airflow on the sides as well as the bottom and your roots will be so happy for it), that sits inside of a cache pot (a pot with no drainage). This way you can see the roots growing and easily adjust the water levels in the cache pot. Or you can reduce/reuse/recycle and use any bottle or tupperware you have lying around.
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   • You can also use a glass container but if it does not have a drainage hole about 1/2 way up on the side then you run into the issue of having more difficulty flushing algae and other debris, out and you will have less air circulation around your roots.

2. Remove Soil
   • Take your plant out of the pot and gently massage the roots with your fingers to get all the soil off. Then BLAST the roots with a hose until they are clean. I’m not kidding, like jet setting y’all! The only exception to this would be super super fine roots like string of pearls or peperomias, maybe use a more gentle hose setting for these babies.

3. Repotting
   • Now, take that rinsed off LECA and fill your container about ⅓ of the way with LECA. Then place your roots inside the pot and continue to fill the container. Wiggle your plant around and pull it up a bit so the LECA fills all the voids and the bottom of the roots are at about the ½ way point. 

4. Wait 24 hrs
   • Place your draining pot into the cache pot and leave it for 24 hrs with no water in the reservoir. Since your LECA was wet from rinsing and the roots got a nice drink when you were BLASTING the daylights out of them, they need a night to recover.

4. Water
   • Now your LECA is dry and the roots have recovered from the previous days whiplash, they are now looking for their water source. Pour enough water in the cache pot to fill it about ⅓ of the way up. Remember our roots are at the ½ way point so the water won’t be touching the roots, but through the capillary action, the moisture will rise up to about that level if not a little higher. 

6. Patience
   • Your plant may seem a bit sad and thirsty for a week or two. Your roots will be going through a bit of a transformation here. They will be searching out their water source and finding their way down to the water. You may lose one or two leaves, but this has rarely happened to me. As long as you can see that the moisture line (not the water line) is reaching the bottom of the roots, then there is no need to add more water. There is a difference between soil roots and water roots. Soil roots will suffocate and rot in water. This is why we keep the roots above the water line initially. The roots that grow into the water reservoir will be water roots, and it is totally fine for them to be sitting in water when they make their way down there. 
7. Adjust Routine- For Needy Plant Babies
   • Figure out what works best for each type of plant. I would say that I follow the same routine for 95% of my LECA plants. They are not finicky at all, like y’all my fiddle leaf fig exploded and didn’t care about any changes, as long as she had water. Normally FLFs throw a fit anytime anything AT ALL changes in their environment.
   •  The outliers for my collection were succulents, peperomias and pothos. These plants have teensy, tiny roots, so I found mini LECA worked best for them. Regular sized LECA had too large of voids. You’ll notice in the pictures of my peperomia transfer that I used large LECA at the bottom and then mostly mini LECA towards the top.
   • For pothos, they like to dry out inbetween waterings. All my other plants are happy to always have a bit of a reservoir, but pothos want about 24 hrs of no reservoir before watering again.
8. Fertilizer
   • I give my plants about a week after transferring before adding nutrients or fertilizers into the mix. I do this because I don’t want to shock them with too much change at once. If you are using LECA to propagate plants do not use fertilizer until they have established some mature roots. Because LECA is an inorganic substrate, it does not have any nutrients to offer the plants. This may seem like a negative but I find it to be a great benefit. I know exactly what my plants are getting. I fertilize with every watering. No guesswork involved like with soil.
   • These are my favorite hydroponic fertilizers.
      

One pro tip that is very important- If you have calatheas, you already know how DRAMATIC and NEEDY they are. They are definitely not a beginner plant. You likely already know they need distilled, or old water that the chlorine has evaporated off of. Don’t forget to rinse your LECA in distilled water before putting a calathea in it, if you washed your LECA in tap water. Other than this calatheas actually thrive in LECA because it provides that extra element of humidity that they require.

I nailed down this method by watching a ton of youtube videos from other plant enthusiasts and figuring out what made the most sense. Remember that most people posting about LECA are just trying it out as it’s just becoming popular in the last few years. For that reason, these people may not have the best advice and are just trying to post something that will get a lot of views.

For instance, I watched one popular plant youtuber give a ton of advice on how to transfer your plants- her advice included waiting until the plant was very thirsty before transferring, using dry LECA and not watering after the transfer… she did a followup video a year later and said how a ton of her plants died due to her method, but NEVER RETRACTED HER OLD VIDEO or put any sort of disclaimer in there *gasp*. So my advice is to get information for multiple sources.

P.S. you will see people suggest that you should boil your LECA or let it soak for 24 hours. This is total nonsense and unneccessary, with the exception of if you are using the LECA for a calathea and don’t have oil or distilled water. You can boil the Chlorine off the water. Boiling can be useful if you have a plant die in LECA and you think it may have had a fungal or bacterial problem.

With all that said, enjoy your LECA journey and feel free to ask me any questions you may have .

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