I have to preface this tutorial by saying that pothos plants are toxic to cats. So if you have a cat who will eat plants, then this isn’t the plant for you. My cats ignore plants, preferring to break all my glasses. 😼 Anybody else have a glass breaker? Our last house had tile floors and oh how Indiana loved to watch the glass shatter clear across the entire kitchen floor and into the dining room. Must have broken a dozen glasses.
But anyway, this is a photo of 2 of my pathos plants. I’ve had these particular two for 4 or 5 years now. Pothos plants are super hard to kill, they grow like crazy, and you can take 1 and turn it into many plants, all over your house!
The first thing to do is to take cuttings. A few cuttings, a foot-long each, is enough to start a new small plant. The reason you need at least of foot for each cutting is because nearly half of that is going to be planted in the soil.
Now comes the trick: Pluck off at least 2 leaves from the stem, next to the cut end. THIS is where the roots will grow—out of the plucked leaf. I’ll show you that in a second.
Use a tall jar with a narrow opening to root your cuttings in water. Dressing jars like this one work really well. (You may recognize this jar from Easy Paleo Meals. I used about 6 of them for my salad dressings photo in the book 🙂 )
Put the cut ends into the water, making sure that the parts of the stem where you plucked off the leaves are fully submerged. However, don’t put any leaves which remain attached to the stem in the water.
About 2 to 3 weeks later you will have roots where you plucked off the leaves:
Those are roots that the arrow is pointing to. 🙂 Now they’re ready to plant!
Gently fill the soil around the stems and their new roots in your pot, being careful not to break the new roots. When the pot is full, and the roots are securely down there in the dirt, then you can pack the dirt down on top just slightly. I like to leave an inch of space at the top of my pots so water doesn’t accidentally spill over.
Note: If your pot has holes for rope like this one above, then the dirt line must be below the rope, or the rope will rot and break.
Above: the pothos in my half bath (which has a window), after 6 months of growth
I’ve been keeping and growing these plants for 20 years now, and I adore them! I water them every Friday, about 2/3 a cup of water each. (The tiny ones in the bathroom get much less water.) You just have to pay attention to how they look to know if they need more or less water. I think the only way to kill them is to drown them in too much water, in a pot that doesn’t drain. So feel the top of the soil to make sure it’s not wet before you water it each week. And you can always water it more, but you can’t take water out, just like with cooking (you can always add more salt, but you can’t take salt out once it’s there). 🙂
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I loved creating it for you!
Get links to these shelves and more HERE!
♥, Kelly
