What's up everyone. Kevin from Epic Gardening here.
Welcome to houseplant corner and today we're actually talking about probably the
most basic, the basic bee of the houseplant world, which is the pothos.
But what's interesting about this is there's quite a bit of interesting history
to it. There's quite a few interesting varieties of it,
and care for it is exceptionally easy,
which makes it a perfect houseplant for a beginner.
So before we get into the varieties,
and I've got three varieties that I have in my house right now as well as some
other ones that I can talk about. Us, what is it? It's Epipremnum aureum. Now,
what's interesting is it was endemic,
meaning that it was limited to a specific Island in French Polynesia.
It's a member of the Society Islands, I think the island of Moorea.
But now because it's such an easy to care for plant,
it's become native in a way.
It's actually invasive to many of the countries in the tropics,
which is not necessarily good, but for us as houseplant owners,
it actually is a fantastic,
fantastic houseplant to grow because of how easy it spreads.
That means that it's actually quite easy to care for in the home as well.
Now what's interesting is pothos actually has not produced a flower despite it
being a plant that should, uh, since 1962.
So they think that it's because of some mishap or some sort of issue that's
going on with gibberellin production as the plant moves from young adult to
adult phase and goes into what should be the flowering phase.
But that's caused some interesting naming convention problems.
It's hard to classify the plant because if you can't see the flower, that's a,
it makes it a lot harder to figure out what to call it.
So Epipremnum aureum or pothos has also been called Scindapsus aureus,
I believe. It's also had the name Rhaphidophora.
And we'll see why that matters in a second when we talk about some of the
varieties.
So our variety number one is going to be Epipremnum aureum green queen aka basic
green leaves. Uh, it's still a cool look though. I mean honestly,
the most common pothos you're going to find at the stores is a variegated
variety. It's the golden pothos variety,
which I actually don't have at my house. But green queen is a really cool one.
I mean it is a little basic. It's a little standard, but it's a vigorous grower.
You can propagate it very easily. It looks wonderful and as you can see,
I've got quite a bit of growth here and it's already starting to trail.
The vines are already starting to trail,
so I'm probably going to have to repot this one,
get it into something that I can hang up and have it start to trail down.
So that's variety number one.
Variety number two is Epipremnum aureum marble queen.
I like to call it the cheesecake leaf because it kind of looks like a nice
cross-section of a cheesecake to me. Maybe I'm just always thinking about food,
who knows? But the variegation on this one is quite extreme. The golden pothos,
which is maybe the most classic one, does have some variegation for sure.
But this is quite different. It's much blotchier.
It's much more patchy rather than being in specific sections of the leaf.
So we can see when we go close up that the variegation on this one is just
quite,
quite extreme and it's certainly a wonderful looking variety of the pothos.
The contrast against the, the,
the green queen is incredible and you can put these in the same area of the
house and have this really nice little contrast. Honestly,
you could even pot cuttings of each of these into one pot and then you could
have trailing vines that are different colors that look really,
really beautiful. So marble queen is variety number two.
Variety number three is going to be the satin pothos.
So this is a wonderful looking plant that you can see the leaves have a
completely different texture to them.
The green is much darker than the green queen.
It's sort of a forest green and it has this silvery sort of variegation to it.
It's actually not Epipremnum,
it's a Scindapsus pictus but the care for it is relatively similar.
What you can see on mine is I've got it vining and so I have it attached up top
here. It's sitting on a little platform, which you can see if I pull it away,
sitting on a little platform.
I've got my tray there so I don't overwater and it doesn't spill all over the
floor.
But it vines quite nicely and I've actually pruned the bottom of these off a few
times. I mean it's,
it's gotten to the point where it had trailed down to about there,
which would be somewhere around eight to 10 feet of growth.
And you can actually trail it downwards or if you want you can take the vines
and trail them upwards and sort of go across your ceiling,
which is pretty interesting.
So there's a lot of different ways that you can place the pothos in the home.
All right, well we've gone over some of the types. Like I said,
these are the ones I have.
There are definitely a few others you should check out,
but I wanted a classic non-variegated variety,
I wanted a highly variegated variety and then I wanted a crazy, interesting,
unique variety. So the green queen,
the marble queen and the satin pothos over there definitely fit the bill.
And let's talk about care. So first of all, like I said,
this is a plant that has become invasive in many other tropical countries aside
from the one that it originated in,
which means that it's going to be relatively easy to care for.
Anything that's invasive in a certain region typically means either it has no
competition in that region or it is able to adapt and it doesn't require a whole
lot in order to survive. So pothos is the same.
In the wild actually pothos can grow up to 400 meters tall,
which is like 1,300 feet.
And each of the stems can get about two inches thick in diameter. Of course,
it's not going to happen indoors.
We're not providing anywhere near the growing conditions that it would succeed
in to that level.
But what that tells me is this is a plant that can take a little bit of neglect,
little bit of abuse, which I've certainly doled out to my houseplants.
And if you're watching this video, you probably have too. It's not a crime,
it happens all the time. Um, so let's talk about it. Light.
It's gonna want pretty bright light. It can take pretty bright light.
I would say that the variegated varieties probably could take a little bit less,
but you know, this one pretty bright light. I have an east facing window,
I have a north facing window.
I can place these pretty much anywhere in my room and it's going to be just
fine, but it will take lower light if you don't have that much light.
Now a pothos is renowned for being neglected and doing okay when it's neglected.
So don't worry if you have a, you know, kind of like a bad light area.
Throw a pothos in the area,
see if it responds well to that area and chances are it will. Now,
when it comes to soil, I mean, just give it a well draining potting mix.
What I like to do, I always like to use um,
moisture trays underneath mine because I just,
I water on like this plant stand over here and I don't want to dump water in and
just have it spill all over.
I always use drainage holes in the bottom of my pots for the most part.
And I throw a tray under. I like the look.
I actually think that the basic terracotta look looks really cool.
So those are the types of pots I would put a pothos in.
And then if you want a mod, you can actually hang it in something like this.
This is just a plant hammock, macrame thing, so it's really neat.
But for soil, well draining potting soil is going to be perfectly fine.
Now when it comes to fertility, fertilizer, you kind of have a couple options.
You can either not fertilize it at all and that's fine. The pothos will do okay,
won't do fantastic.
You can throw some compost on the top maybe once a year and maybe a half inch,
inch of compost once a year.
And then eventually that organic matter will break down and become bioavailable
for the pothos plant. You can use a liquid fertilizer,
maybe at half-strength once or twice a year. And if you're going to do that,
it makes sense to do it during, excuse me, the plant's growing phase. So spring,
summer, good to fertilize maybe once in spring, once in summer,
let that growth go crazy. And then once the winter comes around,
you're going to cut back on that fertility.
You're also going to cut back on watering.
So this is a plant that does not require a, you know, diligent watering 24/7.
In fact, the satin pothos you saw earlier in the video,
I've been on vacation before and I've forgotten to water it for,
I would say three weeks to a month and it suffered a little bit for sure.
I definitely had some stems that just didn't make it, but you saw the plant,
it came back just fine with some, some good pruning, some repotting,
some fresh soil. You know, add some fertility in there, make sure I watered it,
it came back just fine.
As far as pruning and sort of taking care. It's up to you.
This is a vining plant. It's gonna,
it's gonna either fall down or it's gonna climb up.
So if you want it to fall down,
you would put it in a hanging basket and just let it trail.
If you want it to climb up,
you might put it on something like this against the wall and then you can either
train it up with like a stake or a trellis of some sort,
or you can actually just tie it.
I actually have friends who have pothos plants that are,
each vine is maybe like 20-30 feet long by now,
and they've like threaded it across their entire ceiling,
which looks pretty cool. It kind of looks like the,
like the portal in Stranger Things with like all the goop stuff coming out.
It's like going into the upside down of the pothos world. But it's pretty cool.
It's pretty interesting how it works. Um, it's just a wonderful plant.
It grows so quickly, it grows so easily that the pruning is not a big deal.
Now as far as propagation goes,
I'm going to put out an entirely different video on propagation,
but I'm actually going to show you a sneak peek right now.
I have some leaf cuttings that I've done in this cool little propagation
station.
Now these are probably my favorite ways to propagate pothos and I don't like to
use soil for pathos. I find that it does not respond as well.
And so what you'll do, and there's various ways to do this,
but you're going to want to cut in between each leaf node and propagate the
individual leaves. That way if you cut off a vine that's like four feet long,
you can cut each individual leaf and you'll propagate that.
Roots will start coming out of the growth nodes of each of those leaves.
And then you can pot up like 10,
15 different leaves at a time once they've set root.
And so what I'm doing is I'm propagating a few different varieties and I'm going
to pot them all up into one pot and have sort of a hybrid Frankenstein pothos
that really is three different varieties growing out of one pot and trailing.
So that's kind of like what I want to do. Create this like weird pothos jungle.
But that's what I'm about. Well there we have it, everyone.
How to care for pothos, some different varieties.
A little bit of interesting history.
If you have any favorite varieties that you did not see me grow in this video or
you didn't see me mention, I'd love to know.
I'm always looking for interesting varieties of plants, you know,
whether that's just a basic non-variegated variety or something kind of cool.
Certainly something like satin pothos. So let me know in the comments,
what's your favorite pothos variety and where did you get it?
Because that's really the key.
Sometimes you get a plant and you got it in a way that no one else can get it
and then that's not very helpful. Right?
So if you found a really cool pathos variety, let me know where you got it,
whether that be online or in person. And I would love to hunt one down.
So thanks for watching guys. Good luck in the garden. Keep growing.
And I'm going back into the pothos jungle.