Hello six weeks ago I made a moss pole using jewel twine for my pothos to climb on.
So in this video I'll be showing you how I made it and what the plant looks like after six weeks. All
you need is some jute twine, a pair of scissors, and a stick or pipe that will not rot in water.
I'm using the handle of my old mop. It screws off like this and as a bonus, it's extendable.
So that's what I will be using. I want the pole to stay short first like this
and then when the plant grows longer I'm just going to extend it. And because of that, I want
to put this end of the stick in the pot. The pot I'm using is a six inch pot. I'm going to cover
the stick from here on. Let's do that. So first get your twine. I'm going to tie
a knot at the very bottom. To make the pole first you want to secure the rope on the pole, but you
don't have to wrap it around the end of the stick that will go into the soil. Just wrap it around
the part you intend on keeping above the soil. After that I'm just going to wrap the jute around.
Because of how thin my jute twine is, this step took much longer than I expected,
so if you're trying to make this too I hope you have a good podcast or youtube video ready to
listen to or watch at the same time. Okay we have reached the end, so I will cut this right off here
and tie it up. All right, so that part is done. I didn't bother with covering the tip of the stick
with the rope but it will look better if you do. I can always add more twine to this part later
if it really bothers me. Right now I'm just going to pot my pothos into this big pot with the pole.
Now that we've finished making the moss pole, or I should say jute pole, you know what I mean,
I'm grabbing the pot and my plants. When I place the pole in the center of the pot, you
can see that because my stick doesn't even have a flat bottom, it doesn't stay upright on its own.
After I put a layer of soil made of half house plant potting mix and half perlite in,
I am taking the plants out of their nursery pots and placing them in this new pot around the pole.
Then I filled up the rest of the new pot with more soil.
After that, I cut a few short strands of twine to secure the long vines to the pole.
These two are a bit too short for me to bend them towards the middle, but once they grow longer,
I'll try my best to tie it up. And that's about it. Now that we've gone through the process
of making the moss pole, here's what I've been doing to maintain it. Number one is to water it
regularly so that the extra moisture provided by the pole will encourage the aerial roots of
the potholes to grow. I've tried dumping water from the top which is supposed to work well if
your moss pole is actually made of sphagnum moss. But I found it doesn't really work well
for jute twine poles at all. The layer of twine is so thin that the water just rolls down and
it gets really messy. So I've just been spraying water directly onto the pole. It does take a few
sprays for the twine to become wet. I spray it whenever I water the plant, which is about
every one to two weeks. But the pole actually dries out much faster than
the soil, so I really should have sprayed the pole more frequently.
The second thing you need to do is if you notice any new growth that is not attached to the pole,
then you will need to give it some help and tie it to the pole yourself. I've just been doing that
with the same row of twine that I used to make the pole so that it all blends in. It is now
about six weeks later since I put this pole in and this is what this plant looks like.
You can see that the vines have definitely grown longer.
And now I want to talk about what I liked and didn't like about using jute twine as
a replacement for moss on a pole. The first advantage is that it's really easy to make.
And for where I live, jute twine is just so much easier to find in shops than things like
sphagnum moss or coco coir. And it certainly looks better than the bare mop handle. So it
does get the job done if you're just looking to provide some support for your plants.
What I didn't like though is that there's not much room for the plants to grab onto.
I had only noticed one aerial root actually being attached to the pole, but because it couldn't get
deep in there, I actually accidentally ripped it away while I was spraying the pole one day.
So now all the vines still rely on my extra strands of twine to stay on the moss bowl. However
if you use a thicker rope maybe this won't be a problem for you. The second thing I didn't like
is that it was hard to keep the pole moist. I have to spray a lot of water for the twine to get wet,
and I'd say about a day later the twine becomes dry again. And that's okay if you're just using
the pole to support the plant, but if you want to get the pothos to grow big leaves as they climb
then making a moss pole out of jute twine may not be the best choice. This is all just based on my
personal experience and specifically for pothos. So if you have tried making moss pose yourself,
let me know what your experience was like in the Comments. See you next week, bye!