Pothos on parade

My wife came home from a school board function one December night eight years ago with a lovely 6-inch devil’s ivy in a decorative wicker basket. It had been the centerpiece of her dinner table. The next year, same nice gift.

We grew them in their wicker baskets in our sunroom for a couple of years before I decided to feed them to see if I could increase their numbers.

I normally don’t root cuttings in water, but pothos cuttings root readily that way, so that’s what I did. Several times over. Here are a couple of photos I shared with you in a story I wrote here some time ago.

Large, succulent roots started developing within days. Click image for larger view.
This is one of the two original plants still growing in its original wicker basket. It has now been “mother” to probably 50 new plants. (This is an antique table radio that’s probably 85 years old.) Click image for larger view.
After potting the rooted cuttings I let them grow for an extended time on our front porch, then I harvested several dozen more cuttings. Click image for larger view.

At the same time I was taking more cuttings from those original two plants (which are still in our sunroom). I was growing them in my greenhouse, some in pots and more in the ground beneath a 50-foot bench. Those became my propagation stock.

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Click image for larger view.
Click image for larger view.

One year ago we potted up several hundred of them into 6-inch pots, and this summer, just for ease of caring for them, we brought them over alongside our house. To say the least, they have thrived!

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As soon as the weather breaks I’ll start lifting these up, trimming and shaping them and using the overgrowth as cuttings for more pots for the next crop. It’s certainly not the way the pros do their business, but it’s been a fun way to turn two lovely plants into several hundred, soon to be a thousand.

Good therapy for these crazy times!

Posted by Neil Sperry
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