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Taking care of my hoyas
First of all I want to make clear that what I have written down here is how I take care of my hoyas. Read it and try it if YOU think it makes sense.
Light and humidity varies from home to home and makes it impossible to say that this is the only way to treat a plant. Ask any other hoya-enthusiast
and you will get a completely different answer.
I grow all my hoyas indoors, the majority of them in the windowsills. I have an old aquarium with lights where I keep some hoyas, but I can’t seal
it properly which means that I have a problem getting the humidity up and the hoyas dry out rather quickly. In my house I have central heating and
the temperature is around 20-22 degrees C. It varies in the windows since the sun in the summer makes it a lot hotter and in the winter the marble
sills cool down the pots. In some windows I put thin sheet of styrofoam as protection against the cold.
Planting
When I plant cuttings and repot my hoyas I buy a bag of soil at my local supermarket. I mix this with 2 mm leca and vermiculit. The idea is to get
a mix that doesn’t get waterlogged but still keep the moisture for a while. I’ve had a problem with those annoying black little flies. I read somewhere
that to get rid of them you should bake the soil in the oven. I do this from time to time, but if I don’t have the time I water with a solution of
pyrethrum twice once the flies occur.
Pots
It doesn’t matter to the hoyas if you choose a plastic pot or terracotta. I myself prefer terracotta for the ones standing in the windowsill. I think
they look better and they are heavier than plastic. A big hoya on a trellis can overturn quite easily. For the hanging hoyas, though, the weight can
become a problem so I’ve chosen plastic pots for them. A friend of mine uses self-watering pots and she has the biggest hoyas I’ve ever seen. Inspired
by her I’ve bought some of my own, but I find it difficult to know how often to fill-up on water. I still believe this is one of the best ways to water
the hoyas, once you find the right rhythm. More on this under Watering.
When it comes to choosing the right sizes of pots I tend to use rather big ones. Some say that hoyas bloom ones their roots reach the pot and I’m ready
to go along with that. Whenever I have a hoya flowering for the first time I try to remember to look under the pot. Eight times out of ten there are roots
coming out of the bottom hole. However I have noticed that in order to develop really nice big leaves they need room to develop big roots. I have also
noticed that once a hoya starts flowering it’s reluctant to grow new leaves. I have a couple of hoyas that flowered when they were really small with maybe
only 5 leaf pairs and they simply refuse to grow on. OK, you may have guessed by now that I’m in favour of big pots. =) In February every year I go through
all my plants and write long lists on which hoyas needs to be repotted. When I first plant a new cutting I use small 7 cm square plastic pots. After a
while when it really starts growing I repot it into a 9 or 11 cm clay pot. When they grow out of that I choose a 13-15 cm clay pot, unless it’s a hoya
I know will become very large. In that case I choose an even bigger pot.
Watering
I try to water my hoyas twice a week during winter and every other day in the summer. Hoyas, like most other house-plants do not like to sit in water.
On the other hand most of them come from the rainforest with a humidity that is much higher than we can ever have in our homes not to speak of all the
rain that falls. Since they are succulent they have the ability to survive dry spells, but that doesn’t mean they thrive from it. I’ve had problems with
pests on the hoyas standing in one of my windows. To get rid of it I took them out in the bathroom spraying them first with insecticide and then after
half-an-hour I showered them to get rid of the insecticide. I repeated this for three weeks and after about a month some of the hoyas started growing
leaves twice the size they already had. Humidity IS important.
Fertilisers
I use a weak solution of liquid fertilisers every time I water the plants. From March to October I use about 2 ml per liter water and and then rest of
the year I use 1 ml per liter water. I want nice and big plants and I believe that they need some food in order to grow and flourish. I admit
that some hoyas are stubborn and may need a close-to-death experience to flower for the first time but if they should go on flowering they need food.
I use something called Blomstra which is the cheapest fertiliser you can buy and it contains exactly the right proportions of what a plant needs to grow.
Pests
Pests come in through the windows or come in with new plants or cuttings. I used to have problems with thrips before growing hoyas and sometimes scales or mealy
bugs. I look very carefully on my hoyas every time I water them, checking for any sign of pests. In Sweden you can find a product called Provado which
look like big pills and you put them in the soil. They are very good against sucking creepy-crawlies and the working ingredient is Imidacloprid. Make
sure to remove any scales or mealy bugs you can actually see with some alcohol on a Q-tip.
Nowadays the biggest threat to me is red spider mite. The ordinary spider mite leaves a little cobweb in the nodes, but red spider mite is almost
invisible making it very hard to detect. Whenever I have a hoya that starts putting out funny looking leaves I use a magnifier 12X to examine the leaves.
The mite is very hard to see but look like small yellowy-red spiders. The only product that affects mite allowed in Sweden is a spray called
Provado Plus. The working ingredients are Imidacloprid and Merkaptodimetur.
Trying to sum this subject up in a few sentences I would say that if you pay normal attention to your plants whenever you water them you’ll soon get
the feeling for when they don’t look well. Make sure to have a closer look and take appropriate action. Get a good magnifier and you may find a
completely new world!
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