Hoya Obovata – Carla’s Hoya Haven

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.

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