Hoya Cutis-Porcelana – Carla’s Hoya Haven

I purchased H. cutis-porcelana from Steve’s Leaves in September, 2022. This one grew longer vines and a few new leaves in the grow tent but new leaves quickly yellowed and fell off. I find this one to be a little persnickety about watering. Too much or too little and the leaves fall off. I have it now in ABG/coconut husk mix and it likes to be watered once every 1 – 1.5 weeks. The mix needs to rehydrate but then any extra water should be drained off because it’s sensitive to overwatering as well as underwatering. The mix needs to dry but then watered again before leaves dry out and yellow.

The existing leaves faired well in the grow tent but in it’s current location they look a bit dry. I moved it to a spot next to the fireplace because I thought it might like the warmth but the air is a bit too dry and I think this plant will do better when it’s warm and humid outside and I can open the windows. Once I pulled it from the grow tent I trellised this on a bamboo cane loop but the plant died back a bit.

I recently started retrellising plants on SuperTrellis which is fun to work with. Here I have some corner pieces in ice blue, bases with stakes and hexigons in a cool gray, gold, copper, silver and a couple blush colored ones at the bottom and one crimp tool. The hexagons come with connectors and the corner kits come with L-connectors. I have everything I need to make a small tower.

I connected two of my corner pieces to the bases a shoved the stakes down into the pot. My intention was to leave one side open to let the plant vine out. I looked at this and something seemed off. I had put the corner pieces on incorrectly for a standard 1×1 tower.

Once I removed the corner pieces and attached them correctly my base now looked like this and I was ready for hexigons.

I fidgeted with this and then put the other on the base to make it more stable since I’m not using 4 bases here. I then attached a couple hexigons. I used the L-connectors on the corners to add hexigons to the remaining two sides.

In the end I wound up a with a tower with open spaces to allow the plant room to grow and move around. I used some plant clips to attach the vines to the trellis keeping the growing ends pointed up. The growing tips will die if turned upsidedown. They always need to point up in order to keep growing. Also, the vines are more likely to leaf out if they are secured to the trellis. This plant has plenty of new growth points so with some sun, warmth and humidity H. cutis-porcelana should be growing like a weed in the next couple months.

Below are my first three SuperTrellis trellises. The first one in back is a little too wide and tall and tends to fall forward a bit. H. caudata is one of my favorites and I want to display all the leaves. I secured it with a 2′ fiberglass plant stake. The one on the right is H. nicholsoniae and it’s going to be a large plant. I didn’t leave any gaps for the plant to grow and spread out a bit so I’m going to have to redo this one at some point. H. cutis-porcelana is on the left. It’s a small plant now but I’m hoping for some excellent growth this summer.

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