How to Care, Cultivate & Grow Bigger & Fatter Adenium Caudex
Can you see it? I think it's because the sun is actually; I'm actually facing the sun, so the lighting is quite bad, in this context. So let me see if we can actually see these flowers. all right, so coming back to the main thing here, when it comes to caudex, one of the most important things is watering.Very minimum watering, that means this is actually I watered it yesterday and I will not water it until I see this particular soil very dry it looks like cement dry. so in a way about two weeks time, so that also after, in after checking to see that there is no rod now when it comes to caudex this is actually planted by seed, if you do not plant them by seed and if you were to use cuttings to plant them it will not form this caudex.
So these are the things that you have to watch out for. So in scenarios where some people want to have a very thick flowering normally they'll trim off here, this is the last time that actually trimmed off. so this is a new shoot that is actually appearing I will normally trim once a year. So basically like over here I'll trim off this branch, I'll trim off this branch, trim off this branch, bring all these branches actually with three more in a year's time. One of the reasons that I do that is to actually induce flowering and for the size of this particular caudex to grow bigger.
So what I will normally do here is that I will actually repot them, I will remove this caudex and I will plant it one tenth of the size of this caudex to the soil. So what happens when I dig it up, there will be a kind of this tuberous kind of effect on the roots and I will expose it. So in the beginning it was actually here when I first planted it so I always exposed it somewhere like this and the year later it was like this, so yearly I will actually uproot this and replant it.
so you can see all these exposed roots, these are the features that are actually looking for when it comes to adenium roots. uh the plus point about this, is that you can actually check that you will not actually have the root rot, like my earlier videos, basically this is how I do it so that they are actually planted above so there is no chances of this uh root ball to rot.
in most cases when it comes to rainy season, a lot of this actually will start to rot because they were sitting in water for too long and the the soil medium is actually not suitable for this kind of adenium root balls.
Another factor here is that they really need hot, bright direct sunlight. something which I actually do not have, and because of that they really bloom so these kinds of things actually another factor here is actually just break off all these leaves and just keep them bare root. by doing this, you are actually inducing them to flower but of course do watch out for the latex, in most cases they'll be white latex coming out from this. so this is sort of like, toxic so watch out. do wash your hands and that when it happens and uh that that's uh things. uh also if you can watch out for scale-insect, aphids, mealybugs. that do come as a pest to them from time to time.
So in a way, do check on pest control on it because it may not be so quick, okay let me see whether you can notice this. okay, this was the last infection of aphids on it which I actually sprayed some uh which I actually sprayed uh pesticide on there and actually gone.
so it'll happen like this one whole leaf, next thing you know the whole thing will be actually covered by them. so you have to watch out for it especially with ants so these are the things that you have to watch out for. Other than that, I don't have much to worry about. Of course from time to time you will find that oleander moths will actually lay their eggs and you will actually have some caterpillars feasting on their leaves.
if you don't mind you can just leave it or if you do mine then remove the caterpillar off with some leaves and they will turn to pupae and they'll turn to a moth and they'll just fly away. so but the thing is when it comes to uh adenium especially is desert rose. The most important thing is the root ball, if there is a rot then 50% of this plant's life span might just die. Another thing is don't do mulching or anything like that by leaving it because it may cause fungus problems.
so do keep it as dry and clean as possible because they don't do well with mulching or anything that is actually sitting on the root ball
Other than that uh do also watch out if you have any fungus that is appearing upon the root ball, the drier the better but also do press make sure that it's not mushy because as a sign to say that the root ball is actually rotting away. Now you will find that these new aerial roots are appearing. so don't trim them off because they are still active and they will eventually grow downwards and become fat. So in a way these are the things that you have to watch out for, when you're growing adeniums.