The Great Monstera
The Great Monstera Experiment continues. The last update was in September. It seems to have doubled in height since then. I’ve extended the poles twice now.
The plastic D poles are definitely a winner. I can see they are FULL of roots. And I’ve been able to expand them in height. I’m three tall now (2 feet each) and they are stable as all hell. I figured I’d need a plank of wood or something by now, but they’re solid. I put this down to me using two side by side that are attached together with zip ties. They’re giving each other stability.
Now that there is so much moss, they need to be watered every 3ish days. I do this with some plastic bottles (Powerade Zero to be specific). I drilled insanely tiny holes in the lids. So I fill those up (sometimes with some liquid food) and drop them in the pole and the water is absorbed by the moss super slowly. I did finally think to tie some fishing string to the bottle necks to make them super easy to pull back out. I tied ribbon on the end of the fishing string so it doesn’t get lost. Big brain. No way would i be able to keep up with the water in a traditional pole. I’ve noticed if I let the moss get too dry, it takes way longer to soak up new water. So we’re learning together.
The new leaves on the fastest growing vine are enormous. Also, I have been raising up the Soltec light, but it did burn one of the leaves that got too close. So there’s that. I’ve also added those round grow lights in the pole so that the leaves face out a bit and not all directly facing the ceiling. This has also let them grow out a bit and not be in such a hurry to go UP. The lights are anchored in the moss and then I have a string tied to the light head that then ties back to the pole to hold them up.
String of Bananas
The last String of Bananas update was in January. Holy shit has it been growing. Just now pulling that link and seeing how much it grew in 2 months – damn.
She was getting a little too close to the floor so I just gave her a hair cut tonight. Chop and prop. I took all the cuttings and rooted them back into the pot again. It’s like when your bestie gets a hair cut.
YAS QUEEN. Rock it.
It’s funny how this has gone from a plant I hated to wanting to show off. I can’t believe it used to be in a 2 inch pot.
Lemon Lime Prayer Plant
Welp, now that there’s dirt under my nails — time to pot up the prayer plant propagations. They all took like a champ! And looking back for those links, I see they’ve been rooting for a month. Most of these had more leaves but rooted at multiple nodes. So I cut the rooted nodes apart. Look at those roots!
*3 or 4 hours later* OK! Potted up my prayer plants. So the “mother” plant was three vines I bought a long while ago for maybe $20-$25 at Cat Bird Seat. It really took off. But it grew way too long. So I decided to hack it up. A big part of this was also that over winter, most of the leaves got brown tips. I don’t know what happened, but it did.
I’ve heard of people who chop and prop and ditch the old plant. I’ve always thought that was insane! Now I see why. So I separated out the tiny vine that is just now recovering from giving some props to K. It didn’t have the brown tips because it’s such new growth. I repotted the mother plants two vines and I might just give it away. Not the pot, the plant. It’s good roots. Just had brown tips.
I got 9 propagations plus the baby vine. So here’s momma (in red) and her babies (5 in each pot):
