How to Care and Propagate Your Pothos From Cuttings The Perfect Houseplant for Beginners

In this video, I'm going to show you how to turn this guy into this guy into this guy. Stay tuned. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. If you're new, my name is Christian and I love plants. If you love plants too, be sure to hit that subscribe button and follow me on Instagram for daily plant vlogs. So in this video, I want to share with you guys how to care for pothos and how to propagate them. They are one of my favorite houseplants and that's because they come in so many different varieties. I have here the neon pothos, the golden pothos, the marble queen and the pearling jade. I am still on the hunt for a Sibu blue. Hopefully I can get it this summer, but pothos are great. You can have them trailing down like you see here or have them climb up on a pole or on your wall. And another reason why I love them is because they are so easy to care for and easy to propagate, especially if you're a newbie and you're just starting out your houseplant journey. I always recommend you get yourself a pothos and that's because taking care of this plant will help you build a good foundation on basic plant care and basic propagation. And from there, you can apply a lot of those learnings to the different type of plants you may acquire as you kind of continue your plant journey. All right, so let me share with you guys how I care for them. Like I said, I have four different kinds here and for the most part, I care for them all the exact same way. I do not favor one over the other, although I love the neon pothos out of all of them. Don't tell the rest that. I'm just kidding. So let's talk about lighting. They pretty much can thrive in any lighting condition from low to bright light and in any direction. However, they do very well in a medium to bright light area and in the southeast or west facing window. They can do well as well too in a north facing window. You might just have to move your plant a little bit closer to it. However, if you have a south facing window, you might want to move them back a bit so that way they don't get direct sunlight where their leaves will burn. I do have mine fairly close to a south facing window. They do get a couple hours of direct morning sunlight, which is not bad for them. However, you don't want like mid afternoon hot direct sunlight on these guys because like I said, their leaves will burn. Pothos generally do grow pretty quickly. However, the rate of their growth and the size of their leaves will vary depending on the lighting condition you give them. So watering these guys is pretty simple and easy. They can handle a pretty erratic watering schedule. However, I always recommend to make sure that you water this guy only when the soil is dry or near dry. And a way to tell if the soil is dry is simply take a finger, stick it about half an inch, see if the soil is sticking to your finger and it feels wet. If it does, that means it does not need to be watered. However, if it is dry and on top of that the pot is light, then definitely water your pothos. Another way to tell as well too is if the leaves look a little bit wilted or gloomy versus the perked up like they normally should be. And then on top of that, you know, a light pot and that means your pothos needs to be watered as well. Now when it comes to the soil mix, pothos aren't as fussy or picky when it comes to the soil. Some of them can actually thrive really well just being in water. However, the soil mix I prefer to use is a combination of regular potting mix and regular cacti soil and a bit of perlite. And the ratio I use is pretty much just 50-50, 50% regular potting mix and 50% cacti soil. You can play around like a 60-40 ratio if you want. And then the perlite is just a way to add extra drainage because again, you want to make sure that you have a good well drainage soil in most of your plants. You don't want these guys to be sitting in water and wet soil for long periods of time because that is a one way to definitely kill your plant. Because pothos are pretty easy to care for and they grow pretty quickly. I actually have never fertilized any of them. However, if you do decide to fertilize them, be sure to do it at the beginning of the growing season. So that's in spring and do it only once a year and always use like an even balanced plant food, like a 20-20-20 ratio. Like I mentioned, I personally have never fertilized any of my pothos and I've had them for a couple of years and they're doing just fine without any fertilizer. So let's talk about pests. It's a houseplant, so naturally it may attract some common houseplant pests like fungus gnats, you know, spider mites, mealybugs or thrips. But I've yet to experience any of those at all with my pothos. So I would say these guys are pretty hardy when it comes to pests. However, if you do want to take preventive measures and making sure that they don't get any pests in the future, spray them with a natural insecticide at least once a month. You can either use a homemade one or a store-bought one. A homemade one, I simply just use rubbing alcohol, dish soap and a lot of warm water and just put that in a spray bottle and then wash my plants with that at least once a month to just prevent any type of pests that they may attract. Alright guys, so let's talk about propagation. So propagating a houseplant is a great and cheap way of obviously making more plants in case you obviously want to give it to your friends or family. You're also great if your plant is not doing so well and you want to save it. So obviously taking a clipping of it and rooting in water and propagating it is a great way to obviously save that plant. Alright guys, so we'll start our propagation by taking a vine off one of our pothos. And we're going to use a neon pothos as an example for this video. So you can see this guy has two beautiful long trails right now. And I love the way this guy is trailing down this bookshelf. And I actually debated whether I want to cut a vine off this guy because I really did not want to. But I'm doing this for you guys. No, I'm just kidding. Seriously though, I do want to create a new baby pothos to give to my mom when I go see her in Winnipeg this spring. So what we're going to do is we're just going to take maybe a portion of this vine, maybe about half. And what you want to do is you want to at least have, if you want to make a plant in a four-inch container, you want to have at least anywhere between four to six leaves because each leaf here will have a node. And the node you guys see right there is that little nub just, you know, behind where the leaf is. And typically on the other side is where the leaf is. So we'll cut maybe, let's see, two, four, six, eight, ten. We'll do ten. So that way we can do like two plants and we can do like five leaves on one and then five on the other. So grab clean scissors and you want to just cut, you know, between the leaf and the node right here. Don't do that. And there is our vine right there that we're going to cut some more and obviously propagate these guys. And I'll show you guys how to do that at the propagation station. All right guys, so here is our vine that we're going to cut and propagate. And there's about ten leaves here, which means there's about ten nodes. So there's a node right there and that's where the roots are going to grow out of. And on the other side is the leaf. So what we want to do is we want to leave like half an inch above the node and then half an inch above the leaf. So that's where we're going to cut our first one. So you can see here, this guy actually has about three little nodes with him. So we're going to do that. And here's half an inch or actually an inch, up to you. So there's one and here's another one. So there's the node. There's about half an inch there. And we'll do another inch right here. That looks more like an inch to me. But this obviously looks like two inches. We're going to just cut right there and then obviously just a bit more right there. So that's three. And then as well here, we'll cut a bit of this. And then there's four. And we'll get rid of some of this excess vine. And there's five. These guys you can just throw away. There's really no use for them. So you can just toss them to the side. We'll make a bit there. So there's half an inch and then half an inch right there. So that's six. We'll do this guy right here. That's seven, eight. And you know what? I'm going to leave this length right here only because there's little nodes right there. And again, that's where the roots are going to grow. So the more nodes there are that submerge in water, the faster these guys will root. So right there. And once you get to the end, you'll notice obviously this one has a new leaf growing. So I would just typically just, you know, right there, there's a node right there. So I would just leave it like that. And I'm good to go. So we have here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. All right. So now what you want to do is obviously get your propagation station. I have here that I got from Amazon. I'll provide a link in the description below. But you can use, you know, like a mason jar or even like a Dixie cup. Any, you know, cup. It doesn't have to be clear. But you just want to make sure that you can see the water and see the roots grow as well. So what you want to do is take one of these guys. I'll do this one. And you can see right here that the node is facing down and the leaf is facing up. So that's how you want to stick this guy in water. So you want to make sure that that node is always submerged in water like that. So we'll do that with the rest of these guys. We'll put maybe a couple, three in these guys as well. So always want to make sure that that node is submerged in water. And the leaf is pointing up. So that way the roots will grow down. Ta-da! Now that you have these guys in your propagation station, what you want to do is actually place them in an area that gets a lot of bright indirect light. But more importantly, make sure that the area is warm and not cold or has a cold draft coming through. Because temperature right now is probably more important for these guys than bright light. Make sure you keep an eye on the water levels because these guys love to drink. And you want to make sure that that node is always submerged in water. So you want to top it up with fresh water every three or four days, depending obviously how quickly they drink. Now the water typically will not get dirty. In my experience, it doesn't. But if it does, simply replace it with fresh tap water. You know, you don't need filtered water for these guys. So in a couple of weeks time, you should actually start to see the roots come out of the node. And here I have my Marble Queen Pothos that I've been propagating for the last month. And you can see how long those roots are. You can actually see a new leaf starting to grow out of it as well. And I typically will wait until the roots get about an inch to an inch and a half before I plant them into soil. So we're going to do that shortly. I have here actually a 6-inch container that we're going to use for all my Marble Queen Pothos. I typically will probably use a 4-inch container, but I can't find one right now. And but that's fine because this guy has about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 cuttings that I'm going to put into one so this guy can at least grow nice. And so what we're going to do is obviously use our soil mix, you know, put a bit of layer, a third of it, and then place the cuttings just to see how we want to place them. So let's go ahead and do that. I have here obviously my soil mix, you know, it's a cacti soil, regular potting mix and perlite. I want to mix these guys well first. And then what we're going to do is we're going to, you know, obviously, you know, put a layer here. I typically like to put maybe about a third or maybe half just to kind of, you know, I'm going to put half because these cuttings, I only put about an inch below the node. So that way we can make sure it's sticking up nice and high. And when it starts growing, it'll trail nicely. So yeah, so there's about a third there. We'll take a bit of our cuttings from this guy. You guys can see, look how healthy these roots are. And you can see right there, there's a new leaf growing already. So typically how I position these guys is I want to make sure, because I want these guys to trail out and not in, I'm going to point the leaf out. So I'm just going to place this guy right there and place that guy right there. And we'll take the rest of these guys as well. And we'll just create kind of a crown. So we'll just go around in a circle there. That's three, this is four, five. Actually, this six inch container is actually perfect for this many cuttings. Six. So you guys can see right there, there's those six cuttings pointing all out. And you guys can see right here. And what I want to do with this centerpiece, this was obviously the end of that vine. I'm actually going to put this guy in the middle. So that way it can grow like a nice top. Oh, this is perfect. Wow. This is actually a good size that I did here. So what we want to do now is, yeah, I'm just going to top this up with soil. And we got ourself a new Marble Queen Pothos. So let's go ahead and do that. Ta-da! Look at this beauty. I am so proud of this guy. And I'm glad I put all these cuttings in a six inch container. So it has this crown shape. And what's going to happen now is when the leaf starts to grow, it's going to grow out and trail in a circle, which I love. So, you know, obviously what I want to do next is just water this guy a bit to make sure that the soil and the roots merge well together. And then I'm going to place this guy back on the bookshelf near my south facing window. So it gets a lot of that bright indirect light. And in a few months, especially as we head into the growing season, these guys should start seeing some new growth and start trailing. Like you see here in the Pearling Jade that I have. This guy actually, I propagated last summer, rooted really well, planted it in soil in this four inch container. I had only four leaves. This guy originally started with four leaves and look at how much it's starting to trail already. Such a beauty. And I'm actually excited to repot the Pothos next week, because what I'm going to do with the Pearling Jade is I'm actually going to plant this guy back at the top to create more of that full crown while the mother plant continues to trail. And then obviously this will have that shorter trail, which will create kind of that cascading shell. Anyway, just a vision in my head right now of how I want that plant to look. So definitely stay tuned for that video next time. That's pretty much how you propagate a Pothos. They're a great way to make more of your plants and give them to your family and friends. On top of that, they are really easy to care for. So again, I always recommend newbies to get yourself a Pothos. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and comment below and let me know what you want to do with your Pothos. Are you planning to propagate them, repot them, and what kind do you have? Other than that, hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Stay tuned for next video when we do a repotting of all my Pothos. We're going to do different styles of repotting, everything from trailing down to growing up. Enjoy your weekend and we'll see you guys then. Peace!