How to use Leca for your houseplants

What is Leca?

Leca stands for "Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate", so they're baked clay balls. These balls are great and soaking up water and keeping your plant well hydrated.

Which plants can you grow in Leca?

You can grow any plant in Leca that likes to dry out and grows roots quickly. These plants will look for moisture in the clay balls, rather than soil.

Cleaning the Leca

Before we can use the Leca, we'll need to clean any clay dust off. Do this by washing it in a bucket of water until the water stays mostly clean.

Preparing your plant

You'll need to clean the soil off the roots until it looks a little like this photo. Try to get them as clean as you can.

Get your pots ready

We can now fill the pot with clean Leca. Place the pot with holes inside the water holding pot. This way you don't lose small balls through the holes.

Add a base layer of Leca

Let's add a base layer of Leca. This prevents your plants from sitting in water when we're watering it. Roots that sit in water will be at risk of getting root rot.

Plant your plant in Leca

After the base layer, we can put the plants in the pot. You need to add Leca around the plants to keep them stable and help them stand up.

Feeding your plants in Leca

A note about feeding your plant: You'll need hydroponics nutrients to feed your plant. These nutrients contain extra ingredients that you usually find in soil.

Water your plant

After planting your plant in Leca, we need to water it. Do this by adding water + hydroponics fertilizer in the water-holding pot. Don't go past the base layer.

And that's how you do it!

We've successfully planted your plant in Leca! Leca is very versatile, so you can use it for many different plants.

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