Hi SnowStorm :)

It's great you finally posted. I enjoyed reading your tale of budding green-thumbery. I love people's origin stories because my beginning wasn't that long ago, and it's fun to look back over how many goofy things I've done since then. I was going to say goofy and brilliant, but that would grossly misrepresent how frequently I do anything brilliant. Mostly I am goofing my way through everything.

It sounds like you're doing really well fostering your carnosa. The little purple nub is going to grow into another vine, like what you have going on on the opposing node. Hoya carnosa tends to like to grow a long bare leafless vine and then grow several peduncles on it. So, get excited when you see a long ugly pointless-looking vine. ;P But you should be excited regardless because your Hoya looks very sturdy and healthy and all is going as it should.

It sounds like your watering schedule ramp-up was very thoughtful. And as far as fertilizing goes, I fertilize with every watering, year round. Because you grow under lights, and Hoyas don't really go dormant (unless they have insufficient light/warmth), you can handle them the same year round. The exception being that some, like austalis rupicola, like a winter dry season. Since Hoya carnosa starts blooming in the spring, you could give it a bloom booster fertilizer just before. I don't use bloom boosters, myself, since at this point I'm too focused on just getting all my Hoyas healthy and mature, and if they want to bloom they can. But plenty of people I respect do use them.

I also agree with zackey that you should go ahead and plant the cutting still rooting in water. It's never too late as long as the plant material has life in it. It'll adjust to soil just fine.

> I enjoyed reading your tale of budding green-thumbery.

Hehe I love this name for what we are witnessing here!

Congrats on coming out of the wood works, SnowStorm! You obviously did a good job here, as the new growth on the plant can attest. The results are particularly good for rooting it in the challenging season, in Zone 5, and only a couple months ago!

A couple of things I would do differently are:

1. I would skip the water rooting stage if your intention was to transfer it to soil. Water roots are structured differently from soil roots, so when transplanted, the water roots will die, and it'll have to root again. But I agree with others that potting it up now is a better idea than doing it later. Carnosa can take a lot of abuse (just ask my plant - it can tell you horror stories about how I treated it before I got a clue.)

Ignore the above paragraph completely though if you intended this as a soil-vs-water rooting experiment, or if it turned out to be. I can never say no to an experiment. Learn away!

2. Your soil plant looks overpotted. I'd use a smaller pot next time. 2-2.5 inch diameter is plenty for a cutting of that size or smaller. (Although the plant is growing nicely, so who am I to judge?) And note that a small pot will dry out faster when it is standing separately like this and not grouped closely with a bunch of others or not enclosed somehow, AND is close under a warming / drying light - which brings me to #3.

3. Incandescent bulbs are not the best for plants. They produce too much heat and too little light, and the light is in the less than optimal spectrum for plants. Daylight fluorescents are better. Feel the leaves - they should not feel too warm to the touch. (But again - there is new growth, so the plant is happy and I am being nit-picky here). Another way to say what I am saying here is: you can probably remove that incandescent lamp altogether because it's not doing much productive work in your setup.

GG has given you a nice scoop on bloom expectations. Basically, it's way too early to expect it yet. Carnosa is not the fastest blooming hoya - you'd be lucky to see blooms within a year from rooting, and my bet is you'll have to wait longer.

One of my hoyas (H. diptera) has pushed out a rather unsightly leafless vine that must be about a yard long, and a peduncle (that is what a flower spur is called) started growing almost right away, and buds are visible well before the peduncle even matures. Those vines generally leaf out after the first blooming is over. Carnosa leafless vines are generally shorter than that, in my experience, but the growth habit / sequence is the same. Some hoya species flower without those leafless vines, so there are some growth habit variations within the genus Hoya.

I would avoid bloom booster fertilizer formulas (where the middle number is higher than the two others) at this stage - and actually at any stage, but that is a bit more controversial. I use a high nitrogen formula (3-1-2 proportion or something close) to encourage leaf/stem growth, or a balanced fertilizer (three equal numbers or close). I rotate a few fertilizers with different ratios from different manufacturers, just in case one is missing something. And like GG, I also fertilize "weakly weekly" all year long, with perhaps monthly flushing of all pots with water, to wash off the accumulated fertilizer salts.

Interestingly, my H. carnosa bloomed first in the fall, and it's budding again now in the winter. So, even if there are no blooms in the summer, it does not mean that you'll have to wait till the next spring or summer to see (and smell!) the blooms. I grow indoors under lights, so some edge is taken off of the seasonality of my growing. But it can basically bloom at any time if it's ready and happy.

Thanks for posting your story, and happy growing going forward!

This post was edited by greentoe357 on Fri, Jan 23, 15 at 17:11

Thanks everyone for your followup! :)

Zackery
> I would pot up the one you have in water now. I think it will be ok.

Yeah, I need to plant it soon.

Greedyghost
> The little purple nub is going to grow into another vine, like what you have going on on the opposing node.

I kind of figured. It's strange because it hasn't grown at all since it appeared weeks ago, but I'm starting to see it grow into two, which makes me thing a leaf pair will be popping out soon.

> Hoya carnosa tends to like to grow a long bare leafless vine and then grow several peduncles on it. So, get excited when you see a long ugly pointless-looking vine. ;P

It's so unfortunate because the original has a couple of these bare vines right now! It's in an optimal decoration location, hanging over a bannister. Too bad it's not sunny enough there...

> And as far as fertilizing goes, I fertilize with every watering, year round.

That sounds like a good idea. The fertilizer I used said it was okay to use a stronger dose, bi-weekly. Though the more I think about it, consistency might be better.

Greentoe357
> The results are particularly good for rooting it in the challenging season, in Zone 5, and only a couple months ago!

Thanks :) It has been a very dim and cloudy winter so far, but this might be a blessing in disguise. I don't think I would have been as meticulous with the lighting if the sun was shining some of the time.

> I would skip the water rooting stage if your intention was to transfer it to soil. Water roots are structured differently from soil roots, so when transplanted, the water roots will die, and it'll have to root again.

You are echoing some great advice I read here back in November! I did not know that water roots were useless in soil. I have tried to plant something directly into soil many times in the past, but it never worked. Even so, I decided to trust the excellent advice on this site and give it another shot. I'm glad I did. The one in water was just a backup in case the one in soil didn't work. I don't really want two carnosa plants, but I can't bring myself to dispose of the little guy. I'll plant it at some point soon and give it away.

> Your soil plant looks overpotted. I'd use a smaller pot next time. 2-2.5 inch diameter is plenty for a cutting of that size or smaller.

I've been considering repotting it, actually. It is common advice to create a well draining potting medium. I just used regular potting mix. If I decide to repot it, I will also take pot size into consideration.

> you can probably remove that incandescent lamp altogether because it's not doing much productive work in your setup.

Funny you should mention this because it burned out a couple days ago :P I will remove it from the mix.

--

Anyway, I have a couple more updates if anyone is interested.

First, one night this week I noticed that my plant table was getting a fair bit of ambient light from streetlights outside. I've created a box to cover my plants at night. This might be overkill, but I think it might be a good idea.

Second, I've decided that when summer rolls around, I will place my carnosa outside. My back deck gets direct afternoon sun in the summer so I'll give it a parchment paper shade. In general, does this sound like a good idea?

Thanks again for all your feedback! :)

PS Here are a couple pics of the original if anyone is curious. The plant came with the house when my parents moved in, in 1990 (before I was born!). When I was young, I remember it blooming. The aroma was wonderful and the flowers were stellar. Here's hoping this year it might bloom once more.

{{gwi:2126430}}

why dont you just go ahead and stick the other back-up cutting into the same pot of soil with the other cutting to make a larger plant?

> the original has a couple of these bare vines right now! It's in an optimal decoration location, hanging over a bannister. Too bad it's not sunny enough there...

Suggest to your mom to point a light toward the plant, to try to get it to bloom. It's difficult to light these huge plants properly though, just because they are so big. Maybe a T5 bulb of appropriate length, suspended vertically - because that is a way to light up the most of the leaves. It's an absolutely gorgeous specimen plant, by the way!

> The fertilizer I used said it was okay to use a stronger dose, bi-weekly. Though the more I think about it, consistency might be better.

Use 1/2 or even 1/4 the label dose though. They want to sell you lots of fertilizer, so they generally mention the highest dose the plant can take, which is not optimal - especially if your cultural conditions (light, water, temps etc.) are not absolutely perfect, which indoors they generally aren't.

> I've been considering repotting it, actually. It is common advice to create a well draining potting medium.

Well, you gotta be careful with conventional wisdom. If conventional wisdom says one thing, but my eyes tell me another, I am going to be open-minded and attentive to what others are doing, but at the end of the day, I am probably going to trust my eyes and my experience, and what the plant is telling me. Your plant is growing - which is my answer to any sort of criticism of your setup (including the criticisms I came up with myself, as you noticed!)

So, I would probably consider not repotting now - not if it continues to look happy and grow as it does now.

> I will remove [the incandescent lamp] from the mix.

Yeah, or replace it with fluorescent if it seems like there's not enough light.

> I've created a box to cover my plants at night. This might be overkill, but I think it might be a good idea.

Yeah, I think it's an overkill. A few other house plants (not hoyas) absolutely require a (totally) dark uninterrupted period of a minimal number of hours for blooming, but I do not think I've ever read any requirement like that for hoyas. Not for H. carnosa anyway.

> I've decided that when summer rolls around, I will place my carnosa outside.

Yes, a good idea. I do not have outside space, but people say it's a whole different ball game - their plants go on all sorts of amazing growth spurts, mostly unimaginable to indoor-only growers.

> One of my hoyas (H. diptera) has pushed out a rather unsightly leafless vine that must be about a yard long, and a peduncle started growing almost right away.

About that - I just noticed another peduncle growing on that leafless vine, at the very last node. It's really quite a... khm... unusual (ok ugly) look. But I am excited, of course.

Hello everyone, thanks again for your tips, ideas, and chatter :)

It has been exactly one month since I posted the previous photos, so I think it is time for an update!

I haven't much to say really, it has been smooth sailing so far. Just wanted to share my happy hoya! :)

Such a beauty! Are the young leaves lighter in color?

mimalf - thanks :) The young leaves are a lighter green with a yellow tinge

Wow, so they look like in the pic! Amazing color! It reminds me of the new growth of some of the Zamias.

Aww, it's so cute. It's almost like a sibling since you grew up your whole life with it's mama. I hope you'll keep updating. I love following its progress. It's a beautiful plant. How's the water-rooted one doing?

Stonetreehouse, haha that's a great way to put it, like siblings :) I've done away with the water rooted one. Though while still taking care of it, it produced many roots, and one set of new leaves.

As for the main one, there has been extensive progress since I took the last photo. I've gotten it a spire to climb up on, as well as a new pot. The pot is the same size as the last one, I just thought it looked nicer ;)

(Note that it's outside for photo taking purposes only. It's still too chilly for it outside.)

That's a really beautiful trellis thing! I need to find some of those! Love that legacy hoya. :-)

That is a cool trellis. It looks great.