Nora Mutalima is a medical researcher, indoor plant collector and online sensation who is passionate about growing her collection without soil. “Plants are my saviors,” says Nora, “My mind is very busy. I’m constantly making lists in my head, but when I’m taking care of my plants all that noise is gone.” With an extensive indoor plant collection Nora says, “I don’t know how many plants I have because I’ve never counted them, what is the point of counting? Am I going to say when I get to 400, I’m going to stop?” While large statement specimens adorn the home, Nora, as a mother of three, cares for most of her collection in a dedicated grow-room. “My youngest (child) is 6 years old, she loves to play around. I want to give her that space in the home where she feels she can do what she likes to do, without running into mummy’s plants,” says Nora, “it’s also easy for me to control the conditions for the plants.”
With a medical degree and PhD in epidemiology and public health, Nora says, “I love to bring my background into how I grow my plants.” By trialing different kinds of grow-lights, mediums and fertilisers, Nora says, “I love researching and I love how that actually can be applied in the plant space.” One of the unique ways Nora grows her collection is by using a no-mess, semi-hydroponic method. “I grow my plants a little bit differently from other gardeners and I’m very uncompromising about that,” says Nora. Instead of soil, Nora uses clay balls known as LECA or lightweight expanded clay aggregate. Nora explains, “They get a bunch of clay, put it in a very, very hot environment and they pop like popcorn. They’re very porous and they easily suck up liquid.” The plants are housed in a double-pot system, where the clay balls and roots are inside a clear plastic pot perforated with holes, and that pot sits inside a solution of water and fertiliser. “This plant always has water and fertiliser and is always feeding,” says Nora.
“When you think about hydroponics you think about pumps, you think about pH and all sorts of equipment,” says Nora, “but what’s really different about semi-hydroponics is it’s like hydroponics-lite. It’s the easy version.” Another important aspect of growing plants indoors is the provision of light and Nora says, “a grow-light doesn’t have to be anything expensive. I’ve got my grow-bulbs living in just a normal indoor house lamp… my plants are able to grow because they’ve got that full spectrum of light that they need, that they would be getting from the sun.” One of her standout specimens is a Calathea, Goeppertia orbifolia, “this plant has just taken off so beautifully. The leaves usually don’t get this big,” says Nora, “but this beauty is just going from strength to strength, and those leaves are just pristine.”
Nora shares information online on her YouTube channel, The LECA Queen, and says, “it is not easy. I had to learn everything from scratch” including how to operate a camera, record sound and edit. “I remember one time I recorded a whole session where I was extending the moss pole of my monstera. It’s a really big plant, it’s something I can’t redo, and when I sat down to edit there was absolutely no sound. It crushed me,” says Nora, “but you know, these are growing pains and I think I’m a bit better than that now.” The channel is an opportunity for Nora to encourage more science to the indoor plant world. “You really cannot get away from science because plants are beings. They have cells and all the systems that beings need to actually get nutrition,” says Nora, “photosynthesis respiration… it’s a bit ‘science-y’ and that’s where I think I come in with my science background… I’m always trying to explain why I do what I do.”
“I’ve got my plants and I think those will always be my first love, and then I’ve got the YouTube channel. I love both aspects of it,” says Nora, “I’m learning so many things that don’t have anything to do with plants, which is awesome, but plants, they’re the OG.”
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