Indoor plant noob checking in again! Hi!
So many of you have been really sweet and had good suggestions for me, so I want to share where your replies took me.
The pothos, which is my favourite plant so far has grown intensely much since I first got it. Basically, it got so big and dense that you couldn’t even see the climbing stick through the leaves anymore. I even wound it around the pot a few times to keep it in check.
I wanted to give it a bigger stick to climb on, and figured I would move it to a bigger and fancier pot and have it on the floor instead of a shelf.
So, off to the garden store I went armed with the list of suggestions from
@NoReturn ,
@anliteralidiot and
@The Skeksis Emperor .
First, I picked up the longest coconut fibre stick I could find: 1,5 meter or almost 5 feet for the Americans. That should give it enough space to explore for some years. I hope.
Then I went looking for the prettiest pot I could find and settled on a tall one of some pricy Italian brand. Smooth, matte white glazing that I thought would look great with the Pothos’ glossy dark green leaves. And it did!
On the way to the check-out, instead of the list of suggestions, I fell for some carnivorous plants. Whoops? They were just so cool and alien-looking I couldn’t pass them by. So I had to loop back to get more pots for those. I picked up some miniature duplicates of the big pot, so now all the plant pots in the office matches each other.
I returned home, happy with my haul. Pulled into the driveway at 14:15, and I know since that was when I ended a work call.
On to move my haul and the Pothos out on the terrace where I could make a mess…
The pot had some self-watering system/water reservoir thing insert, but I picked it out because I was afraid it would be too top heavy with the long stick unless it was full of water all the time.
I stuffed as much soil as I could into the end of the coconut fibre stick, watered the fibre and filled the pot with the amount of dirt that seemed to match with the extra space.
So far, so good.
Then immediately I realised I had bitten off more than I could chew.
My plan of unwinding the pothos, moving it and then rewinding it would probably take all day.
The vines where completely and thoroughly braided into each other. Luckily, it’s a surprisingly not-crispy (Is that a word??) and flexible plant, so I was able to pull it back through itself with surprisingly little damage.
But holy crap. It took me all day bent over it in various uncomfortable positions. I was done with Project Pothos past 8 pm, and ended up leaving the carnivorous plants for the next day.
Most of the time was spent untangling it from itself and I have used up every drop of patience I have. I ended up having to ask husbando for help to hold the vines because it started re-tangling itself after a while. Sort of like when you braid really long hair, and it starts re-braiding itself at the ends.
After like four hours of careful detangling (And cursing myself for so carefully having wound it up and secured it around itself) I finally got to the end.
The pothos only had five vines in total, and that surprised me. Two of them were really short too, less than a meter. But one was a hugely long one that dwarfed the rest, and I would guestimate around 9 meters. I was really surprised at that. Unsurprisingly, the mega-vine was the biggest headache because it was also the thickest and stiffest to deal with.
Can you tell something about the plants age by how long the vines are?
I was proud of myself for my patience and how little damage I had managed to do to the leaves though: I snapped one vine-end and had pulled off only 5 leaves in the end. Not bad for doing something that was basically impossible to find a comfortable position to sit or stand in, and where I rarely could see what I was doing for the leaf-cover.
Now for the next part, which I assumed would be a problem: Getting it out of the pot and into the new one. I assumed I would need to cut open the root lump to put it back around the new climbing stick.
I also thought I would have to destroy the old pot to get the roots out, but nope. They were tiny, just like
@NoReturn said. I could easily scoop them out and hold them in my hands, so I unceremoniously stuffed them down one side of the new pot.
Then I wound it back up on the new climbing stick, which was surprisingly quick. I tried to keep from trapping the leaves as I went, so only the vines themselves were connecting to the coconut fibre. Mega-vine first and secured it with some pins, then the smaller ones after. I tried to tighten them so they could connect with the fibre and send their roots in it.
By this time, it was looking a little sad and saggy after having been outside in the scorching sun for so long, but once I got it back indoors and it had some water, it really perked up.
And… I’m so freaking proud of myself. It looks great! It looks like one of those office plants from some specialised plant service. I did that. Me: The plant noob!
I just really hope the new climbing stick will tie it over for some years, because, goddamn, does my back hurt still. Ouch.
