Pothos is a tropical evergreen climbing member of the Araceae family of plants.
There are about 15 species of Pothos plants, and you may hear it referred to by several common names, such as:
- Golden Pothos
- Devil’s Ivy
- Hunter’s Rove and more
By any name, when this plant is at home in tropical regions of the western Pacific and Southeast Asia, it can be found rambling about the jungle floor and enthusiastically climbing up trees.
This article explores how to get Pothos plant to climb and ramble about your home. Read on to learn more about climbing pothos plants.
Train Your Pothos To Climb The Way You Want It To
In hot, humid tropical settings, Pothos vines run rampant. In your home, this indoor plant may be a bit reticent. Making your pothos climb and trail in a lush, controlled manner can take some training. Learn how to make your pothos grower fuller.
Refer to these step-by-step guide to successfully train your Pothos:
1. Choose the Right Climbing Pothos Plant
Begin with a fairly mature pothos plant (a couple of years old) so that you’ll have something to work with. The stems should be long enough and strong enough to support the plants’ larger leaves.
Some of the best indoor climbing Pothos are:
A plant with several trailing vines can be guided and secured onto a climbing structure. A Pothos kept as a hanging healthy plant is an ideal candidate.
2. Decide How You Want Your Pothos to Climb
Even with some fairly long vines, you will probably need to secure the plant in place to get it started. Soft cord, such as jute, lightly tied, works best.
Be careful not to tie the cord too tightly because this can be damaging. Once your plant has attached to aerial roots, you can cut the cord away.
As wild vining Pothos clamber up trees, they anchor themselves along the way with aerial roots. To give your plants stability, you’ll need to provide them with something to hold onto.
This can be a trellis, driftwood, a wooden stake, a post, a moss pole, a metal pole, a wire frame, bamboo canes, etc. One of the most popular choices includes bamboo canes and metal poles.
You could train larger plants with a taller stake, such as a curtain rod or totem pole. But whatever you provide them should be sturdy, strong, and secure.
Also, ensure your material does not rust or contain any phototoxic chemicals, so it can easily withstand the pressure of plant vines.
Pothos’ aerial roots and root nodes will help hold the plant in place as it grows. It is possible for your plant to climb up a wall, but if you plan to use one of the interior walls of your house, you’ll need to provide small command hooks or nails to steady and guide the plant.
This is unsightly and can be damaging to the indoor wall. Furthermore, the plant roots will damage the paint slightly, even though they are not strong enough to embed into the wall.
3. Place Your Pothos Carefully
A low placement is typically more successful than a high placement. For example, placing your Pothos on a high shelf will tend to trail down toward the ambient light in the room. It will not have a reason to climb up.
If you put your Pothos in or near a bright window, it will gravitate toward the sun and may travel up the insides of the window frame, but it will not travel into the room. Place your plant so that it needs to climb to get to the light.
4. Direct With Light
In a jungle setting, these plants may grow from the ground to the very top of a tree. They do this in search of sunlight, so if you want your plants to climb in a particular direction, you can encourage them to do so with lighting. They will travel and grow toward the light.
Generally speaking, Pothos do best with bright, indirect light for six or more hours daily. Moreover, you can add a grow light if you are growing your vining plant indoors. This will provide the plant with the light it needs and encourage it to climb.
5. Make Your Pothos Comfortable
Although these plants are quite rugged and able to withstand a wide variety of adverse conditions, if you want vibrant, enthusiastic growth with larger pothos leaves, you’ll need to provide a setting that mimics the temperature, humidity, and lighting of the plants’ natural environment.
How Do You Make A Plant Wall With Pothos?
You can either place Pothos planters low and near the wall and then provide lighting from above to encourage the plants to grow upward or place the plants in hanging baskets near the ceiling and coax them down along the wall with clever use of artificial light.
As mentioned above, create anchors on the wall with hooks or nails, or attach a trellis system to the wall. You can add garden twine, fishing string, or wire as guides between the anchors if you wish.
Gently guide the plants’ tendrils as you wish, and secure them in place by tying them lightly with a jute cord.
Understand that the type and amount of light you provide may affect your plants’ foliage coloration. For example, variegated types will lose variegation and go green if you do not provide enough light.
Large wall displays of variegated Pothos may be solid green far away from the light source and brightly colored near the light.
Create A Climbing Pothos Specimen Plant
If you don’t want to do an entire wall, there are all sorts of attractive ways to train your Pothos vines to climb a small trellis, wire structure or frame, moss pole, bamboo pole, etc.
Of these choices, a moss pole usually gets the best results because it provides a good surface for the Pothos’ aerial roots and helps keep humidity levels high.
You are more likely to get lots of large, lush leaves when you use a moss pole to train your Pothos to climb over a bamboo stake.
This sort of climbing display requires a bit of planning, grooming, and guidance. When your indoor climbing plant has reached the top of its climbing structure, it will begin looking for something else to climb unless you keep it well-trimmed and continue shaping and guiding its growth.
Moreover, it’s also important to provide your climbing plant with adequate drainage and remove excess water. This will prevent root rot, a common problem in overwatered pothos.
Climbing Pothos Are Natural Pothos
Climbing is the Pothos’ way. When these vining houseplants are given what they need to climb, they produce more and larger leaves. This is because climbing Pothos typically have more indirect sunlight exposure than trailing plants.
Gary Antosh
Source link
