Hey Guys, My name is Maggie and this is the story of how I revived a very sad looking Epipremnum
Aureum NJoy. It’s also known as the Snow Queen. It has a mixture of white to off-white variegations,
on glossy, wrinkled leaves. The leaf shapes are quite variable - sometimes they’re heart-shaped,
other times they’re more...blob-shaped. You can either let it trail like this, or grow upwards on
a moss pole. You might not suspect that there’s anything wrong with the Epipremnum Aureum from
this angle. Because it looks so lush and full at the tips here. However! A top down view reveals a
different story! There’s some major balding going on here. A lot of its oldest leaves have dropped
off. Yet the vines continue to grow longer, as it pushes out new and younger leaves at the tip.
In this bald section of the Snow Queen, where the leaves have already dropped off
t...you can clearly see the nodes, which are those lines along the vine.
The node is a critical area on the plant, where there is potential for new growth.
Most of these nodes have aerial roots already. Which’ll mean it’ll be much
easier to root and propagate eventually. If your Snow Queen is looking this sad too,
you need to determine the cause of the issue. Is it the frequency and quantity of watering?
Is it the amount and type of lighting? Are there plant pests that are gnawing away at it?
This plant actually belonged to my friend. She’s had it for about a year it had always
been big and bushy, but she noticed some of the oldest leaves dropping off. It was thoroughly
watered whenever the soil dried out. So it wasn’t a problem with watering. It lived on top of a
shelf a few feet away from a big window, where it received heaps of bright indirect light throughout
the day. So the lighting didn’t seem to be the problem either. In terms of plant pests or other
infections, my friend had a close examination and honestly couldn’t find anything. Yet the leaves
just kept dropping off... There was only one thing to do after that...dig up the plant and check
out what was happening beneath the soil. I waited until the soil was completely dry before doing so.
Pushing against the side of the plastic nursery pot helps to loosen the soil up a bit.
I find it satisfying when the root system pops out of the pot like that.
At first glance, it seems like the root system has completely outgrown the pot.
Because it’s like a solid ball of yarn! As I’m gently tickling the root ball to get
rid of all that old soil.. I noticed that a lot of the roots broke away easily. They
had no structural integrity, but fell away like dust, along with the rest of the soil.
The roots that remained were scarce and few. So sad. Okay so my first theory is that the plant
had become root bound. Which means that the root system had grown so extensively with so little
room to venture within that tiny pot, that it started wrapping around itself like a ball of
yarn. Which is why the plant continued to mature and elongate its vines. But then it got to a point
where the root system couldn’t grow anymore, so it had to sacrifice some of its older leaves to
keep sustaining all that new growth above the soil. My second theory is this...Can you see
how there’s one very large drainage hole on the bottom of this plant? It actually had a little
elevated wall around it. Like a Bundt Cake Tin! It means that there would’ve been some stagnant water
trapped around the outside of the drainage hole. The water had no way of truly draining properly.
So if my friend was feeling the top inch of the soil to determine when to water it,
she’d have thought yup! The soil is dry, it’s ready to be watered again. Not knowing that there
was probably still some residual water pooling at the bottom of the pot. I really didn’t see any
point in keeping those bald bits of the stem. So I decided to preserve the pretty parts of the stem,
leaving just enough residual vine with nodes and aerial roots to either propagate in water or soil.
The stems with a more substantial root systems and more leaves intact,
I decided to pot directly into some fresh soil. The soil mix I went for had chunky bark,
perlite and lots of fresh soil to provide more aeration, and allow water to easily flow through.
Most importantly, this is the new and improved pot:
It has 4 drainage slits on the bottom to drain the water to another tray underneath. Preventing
any stagnant water from pooling in the soil like before. That’s the soil propagation done.
Now for the stems with a couple of nodes and aerial roots, I separated them based on their
length into two glass jars, and filled them up with room temperature tap water,
ensuring that the water fully immersed all the nodes. The point was to get a healthy root system
going first in water propagation then eventually move in with the other soil propagation. 3
months later… This is how our soil propagation has done!
It looks like there’s a couple of healthy developments in the roots. In fact, you can
spy some tiny new leaf spikes emerging from the vines beneath the soil, which is just incredible.
And this is our water propagation after 3 months! Check out those roots! It even managed to push out
some deformed leaves. It was time to combine the water propagation in with the soil propagation…
Friends, after another 3 months.. Yes, that’s 6 months since we first laid ours on our sad sad
snow queen… So many new leaves have come through. The fresh chunky soil mix, with regular thorough
watering, and lots of bright indirect light have allowed it to push out healthier leaves.
Some of these new vines branching off are producing beautifully large leaves.
I gave the revived plant back to my friend, where it now lives
on top of a bookshelf about an arms reach from a bedroom window, getting that bright indirect
light all day and a bit of direct afternoon sun through the window. Well I hope the next
time your plants get bald, you won’t give up on it and will instead try to salvage
some healthy stems for water or soil propagation. Or both! Don’t forget to hit and subscribe,
and let me know in the comments how much you love your snow queen. Long live the queen! Bye!