Whether or not you take pleasure in dabbling in indoor gardening or are considering of including some unique vegetation to your backyard, you’ll love the superb Colocasia Black Magic plant and its putting, daring architectural foliage, generally referred to as black Elephant Ears or Taro.
The Colocasia Black Magic might be the best-known of the decorative colocasias. It has the potential to be a surprising plant with massive (as much as 60cm) heart-shaped leaves in a deep sultry purple-black. The leaves emerge inexperienced initially after which darken to a deep purple-black color with age.
Advantages of the duty
These vegetation are stunning to take a look at
May be grown indoors and open air
Make nice container and patio vegetation
Making the duty simpler
As Black Magics aren’t fussy about soil kind, you possibly can observe Jason’s recommendation and use regular compost when potting them
To assist assist the expansion of their lustrous leaves when overwintering, you possibly can feed these vegetation fish fertiliser every so often and/or use water out of your pond when you have one
Caring to your Colocasia Black Magic
The Colocasia Black Magic plant is a perennial plant with stunning purple-black leaves. This can be very frost tender and doesn’t do properly in chilly climate.
Though tropical in origin, the Colocasia Black Magic does remarkably properly outdoors in UK gardens all through the hotter months and might present a surprising, contrasting backdrop to accent surrounding flowers. It fares greatest when planted in a sheltered dappled shade place and must be well-watered and fed all through the rising season.
What makes these vegetation barely completely different to most alacasias is that they like to be in moist soil and might even be planted 15 cm (6 inches) beneath water degree. They love moist buggy circumstances which makes them excellent for ponds they usually’re additionally not fussy about soil kind.
These vegetation are simply as comfortable in pots as they’re in borders and in the event you place yours in a big container, it can reward you with massive leaves (NB You may also add black grass (black mondo grass) so as to add floor cowl within the container).
This sort of plant will develop properly in a balcony backyard as a result of its darkish foliage can soak up loads of direct warmth with none detrimental impact – particularly through the scorching summer season months.
If you happen to check out Jason’s video (see hyperlink under), you’ll see that after 3 weeks the leaves of the plant grew to become bigger and produced a brand new leaf. By the tip of summer season, the stem had bought thicker and the leaves had grow to be actually huge.
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Easy methods to overwinter a Colocasia Black Magic
Putting the plant indoors signifies that the leaves will begin to revert again to a inexperienced color because the plant received’t be receiving as a lot direct daylight because it did when outdoors. So in the event you determine to carry your plant indoors to over-winter, it’s price investing in some develop lights to ensure the plant is getting loads of gentle.
The foundation system of the plant can grow to be fairly intensive and if you’re overwintering your plant indoors, you’ll want to consider how one can handle the watering and drainage from the pot – for instance, you may place a tray beneath the pot to seize the surplus water.
As a result of the plant grows properly in ponds, one other of Jason’s ideas is to present the plant some fish fertiliser every so often. Jason makes use of water from his pond which the plant appears to love and helps it proceed to supply its lustrous leaves.
One other method to overwinter these vegetation is to cut off every part on the high and dig out the corm and preserve it and retailer it someplace dry able to replant subsequent 12 months.