H. sigillatis is one of those Hoyas I saw on YouTube and had to have it. I love the splashy leaves that sunstress purple. I purchased H. sigillatis from Land of Alice last summer. I have it right now half under the blue light and half exposed to a Sansi white grow light. The leaves are purple under either light. I had it in the grow tent over winter and it did pretty well.
This is another plant that doesn’t like to be over watered. It definitely prefers to dry completely between waterings. It grew a few leaves and very long stringy vines in the grow tent and they annoyed me so I cut them off and tried to propagate them.
I was tired and this was the last of my propagation for the day. I got my vines turned around and propagated my cuttings upside down. So now the new bits of vine and leaves grow down toward the potting mix. I have to keep pulling them out flat against the coconut husk.
I have a full pot of upside down cuttings. Ooops.
H. sigillatis is native to Borneo (Sabah) and is a climbing epiphyte or lithophyte and grows in the wet tropical biome. In my home it grows well during warm humid weather and is more apt to drop leaves when it’s cool and dry. It did like the warm humid environment of the grow tent but had a habit of growing long stringy vines that got tangled with other plants. I found this annoying.
I don’t recommend chopping off the vines like I did since that was probably where most of the new growth was going to come from this summer. It’s a lovely plant and is worth growing just for it’s lovely foliage.
I purchased H. lacunosa from Pistil’s Nursery spring of 2022 on a whim. It was there. I was shopping. I didn’t have this one, yet. So, I bought it. It looked a little rough upon arrival. It was dehydrated and rooted in hard packed potting mix. Turns out this one prefers to remain a bit on the dry side. I have since removed as much as the compacted soil as possible and repotted it in ABG/coconut husk mix.
H. lacunosa turned out to be a pretty easy going plant. Lots of light. Keep it on the dry side. About two months after I received this plant it produced blooms on two peduncles and the blossoms have a wonderful lightly sweet and floral scent. It reminds me of something I can’t quite place. Maybe a cross between jasmine and honeysuckle. It’s a very pleasant scent.
The native range of H. lacunosa is Thailand to W. & Central Malaysia. I felt this Hoya did much better outside the grow tent than in it. It is perfectly happy in average household temperature and humidity in Iowa. It’s not a fussy plant. The scent alone makes this Hoya worth growing.
Today I checked my Hoya cuttings from Garden of Hayden. Six of nine cuttings have yet to produce roots. The stratum was going dry so this could be part of the problem.
H. Glabra above is one of the first to produce some nice little roots. I noticed my hoya mix is drying out a bit fast and I’m having to water a couple times a week. I had some coconut coir and Tree Fern Fiber. I mixed them together in about equal ratios and put a little in the bottom of the planter and mixed some in with my Hoya mix. I potted H. Glabra into this mix.
H. viola also produced enough roots to pot them up. I prefer not to leave the cuttings too long in the stratum as it does have a tendency to clump at the bottom of the cup over time.
H. camphorifolia is the third one ready for potting. I used the same mix as above with the added coconut coir and fern tree fiber. My hope is that this will help add some moisture and wick it up through the mix to keep the coconut husk hydrated a little longer.
After potting them up I gave them a soak in water mixed with Rapid Start. In the end I added three new freshly potted Hoyas to my collection. On top is H. Glabra, bottom left is H. camphorifolia and bottom right is H. Viola.
H. shepherdii was a must have Hoya for me. I love the string bean shaped leaves. Weird leaves are my kind of thing. I purchased H. shepherdii from Pistils Nursery in April of 2022. I initially had good luck growing this one in a west facing window.
There is an ornamental crabapple tree that provides nice shade and dappled sun for my window plants in the summer. Then I started moving things around so other new plants could get sun in the same spot. I moved H. shepherdii across the room and then over to the side of the room and then upstairs in one location and then another. It wasn’t happy. When you find a spot where a Hoya is happy leave it there.
This year I purchased a new chrome shelving unit for more Hoyas because I can never have too many Hoyas. I’m trying out the new Good Earth Grow Light with separate blue, red and white light. It’s 4′ in length and fits the chrome shelving unit perfectly.
I’m trying out the blue light for propagation and added a few Hoyas to that shelf. One of those is H. shepherdii and wouldn’t you know under the glow of blue light it’s finally starting to grow a dozen new little leaves and a half dozen new vines. Unbelievable! This plant has numerous vines and oodles of growth points so maybe this year I’ll get some good growth out of this one. Blue light! Who knew?
Okay maybe somebody knew. If you have the time here is a nice little article on GPN – Greenhouse Product News titled “Effects of Blue Light on Plants” by Erik Runkle.
The native range for H. shepherdii is from Assam to E. Himalaya. It grows primarily in the wet tropical biome. However, it survives just fine in average household temperatures and humidity during the Iowa winter. It likes quite a bit of light and you must let it dry out between waterings. If your leaves are turning yellow and dropping off then you probably need to cut back on the water. It’s important to provide enough water and fertilizer during new leaf production but be careful. Too little water and the new leaves dry up and fall off. Too much and the new leaves yellow and fall off.
This is one of the earliest houseplants I purchased. I can’t remember the name. I think it was sold to me as pancake paddles from Succulents Depot. They carry a large line of wonderful succulents but as luck would have it I don’t have enough light in my townhouse for any of them.
I’m going to take this one to work where I have a small south facing office window and a 6″ ledge perfect for little plants. This one is a slow grower. I only water it once every two weeks. It’s doing fine in a 4″ pot. I recently added some new potting soil. The leaves are a bit iridescent. I think it will be happy in my office window for some time to come.
I purchased Hoya retusa from Hirt’s Gardens in August, 2021. I’ve had this one a year and a half and it finally bloomed for me in the grow tent. All I have is the one flower but it’s the most beautiful flower I’ve seen. Actually, I think it might have bloomed late last summer when I had it on a shelf in a bedroom. It was getting a bit of midday sun but otherwise it was in a shady spot all day. Every time a breeze blew through the window I would get a whiff of something lightly floral, slightly citrusy. It reminded me a little of hotel soap. There were four Hoya plants in front of the window and I kept searching for peduncles and finding none. I didn’t even think to check this plant.
H. retusa is a relatively easy plant to grow once you get the care down. It does like it warm, humid and moist. It requires regular watering and doesn’t want it’s potting mix to dry out. I currently have it in the grow tent underneath a carnosa for shade. I water this one once a week along with the other Hoyas in the tent.
It’s in ABG mix and coconut husk chips and I water it by soaking it in a small bowl of lightly fertilized water. Shade and humidity are key to its growth. The slender leaves can’t take to much sun or dry air or they begin to dry out. In the right environment it grows like a weed.
This is one of my favorites. It’s such an oddball plant. I love the little bunches of leaves. To me they look like a string of spiders. I’ll find a good spot for it somewhere in a bedroom this summer. I look forward to more fresh scented blooms.
I purchased Hoya obovata from Pistil’s Nursery a couple years ago. It grew rapidly the first year and last year growth was slow. I put it directly in this west facing window hoping to get enough light for peduncles and flowers this year. Instead I’ve had a hard time keeping it watered and it mostly grows new vines near the bottom. It’s in an 8″ pot and trellised on 24″ bamboo hoops. The original vines are over 3 feet long. The largest leaves are wider than my hand. Make no mistake – this is a big one. And, it is time to do something about this fellow before I can’t get it out without smashing the ceramic pot.
The roots are bit dry. I let it go a little too long without water since I knew I was replanting this one. It’s easier to pull this out of the planter when it’s dry. I think what surprised me most was the incredibly large branching root system. I had no idea what to expect. Since this was one of my first Hoyas and I was totally clueless I tried making sense of internet advice regarding Hoya potting mix.
In the end I settled on a combination of cactus mix, potting mix and I think some homemade pon with some additional fir and pine bark fines. What I got was a light, airy mix that drains incredibly well and holds little to no water. This level of root branching must be from the roots trying to find their way around the pon and bark fines. This is the second Hoya I’ve repotted from this mix that has a magnificent root ball with lots of branching. At this point I did what any reasonable person would do and grabbed a bucket and a gallon of water and soaked the root ball. Unfortunately, this only loosened the outside of the root ball.
There was so little dirt left and so much branching that the roots weren’t giving up their grasp on all that grit and pon without a fight. I would have had to pick it all off with tweezers and it wasn’t worth the effort so I carried on. I found a Mainstays 9″ Garden Planter with a tray at the bottom at Walmart and this was perfect. I mixed some coco peat, tree fern fiber and pumice.
I put the mix in the bottom of the pot to help with wicking water up through the remaining mix. The big root ball fit nicely in the middle and left about an inch all the way around. I added some of the tree fern fiber, coco peat, pumice mix to the ABG/coconut husk mix. I’m hoping the new additives will help wick water up through the mix for those plants that don’t like to dry out too fast but also prevent the cocopeat from becoming a clumpy, soggy mess. So far, this has worked out well with Hoya bella and Hoya polyneura.
However, before I could fill the pot I needed a makeshift trellis for this big monster of a plant to get all those vines out of the way. I used the fiberglass plant stakes and recreated a design I saw on my Hoya FB group. It works okay but the bottom of each stake likes to move around in the pot. Eventually, I’m going to decide on a color scheme and build this one a SuperTrellis. Until then this will work okay as long as I don’t need to move it anywhere.
Only 4 leaves were brutally mangled in the repotting and retrellising of this plant.
Hoya obovata is a gloriously beautiful plant with big round, dark green splashy leaves. It is endemic to the Indonesian islands of Maluku and Sulawesi as well as Thailand and Vietnam where it thrives in the wet tropical biome. It is also perfectly at home in average household humidity and temperatures during the Iowa winters. It’s thick fleshy leaves store plenty of water for this plant to thrive when conditions are dry. It’s a very forgiving and easy care plant. It likes a lot of light and will welcome warm humid weather in the summer.
I started out with just one small plant I purchased for just a few bucks from Succulents Depot. This is one of those plants that multiplies itself and once it gets started it cannot stop. I made the mistake of propagating leaves, too. Now I have 21 individual crinkle leaf plants.
This plant is incredibly low maintenance. I have it in a combination of cactus soil and Jack’s Gritty Mix. I water every other week. I keep it under GE Seeds & Greens grow lights. Without grow lights it will need a very sunny window. To propagate by leaf just lay the leaves on top of the potting mix and mist occasionally. The leaves will grow roots right into the soil and for each leaf you propagate you’ll get two new plants.
Even though this plant is weird and cute I’m tired of it and it’s not a Hoya. I just don’t have room for all the plants I like because they’re weird and I’m having to make some choices about what stays and what goes as I expand my Hoya collection. I divided the ones I propagated from leaves and snipped off all the tops of branches on the other pot and potted them up.
I even potted up the remains to see if they’ll grow all new plants. Just curious. Now I have 21 crinkle leaf plants ready for my great planty rehoming project also known as the city wide garage sale coming up in June.
Aeonium Irish Bouquet is endemic to the Canary Islands and more specifically the island of La Gomera. This is a wonderful Aeonium that’s very easy to grow and doesn’t get too large. I purchased one from Succulents Depot in May 2021 and it grew nicely for over a year. Unfortunately, these are sensitive to over-watering and susceptible to mealy bugs. My first plant succumbed to both at once. I had stem rot before I knew anything was wrong.
I snipped off dozens of the little branches and swished them around in a bowl of AzaMax which is an antifeedant derived from Neem oil. I mix AzaMax one shot glass to one gallon of water. It’s increased in price significantly so I switched to BioAdvanced products to treat for bugs. I dipped the end of each Aeonium branch in TakeRoot rooting hormone powder. This one has worked well for me.
Then I planted the Aeonium bits in cactus soil mixed with Jack’s Gritty Mix and a little pumice in a 6″ pot. I think there are nearly 20 little pieces rooted in this one pot. I misted them daily until they start growing again. Once they have roots it’s safe to start watering again. I use a fertilized water with some kind of root fertilizer. I use Bio Root and RapidStart and they both work equally well.
