Propagating Hoya From a Cutting

Propagating Hoya From a Cutting

   I've read of several ways to propagate hoya but this one has been pretty much fool proof for me.

Snip a piece of the vine from the plant that has a few leaves on it, about 6"-8" long and insert the cut end into a glass bottle of water.  Soon you will see roots emerging from the cutting.  
 

notice the roots growing profusely in the bottle

If you use a good sized wine bottle you will probably be able to leave it indefinitely to grow as is.   Every couple of weeks or so I replace any evaporated water with new that has some plain houseplant fertilizer in it.

   My Grandmother had one in a wine bottle on her water heater my whole life.  As a matter of fact, the picture above, which was taken just recently is THE SAME PLANT in the SAME WINE BOTTLE that my grandmother had!......More amazingly, my mother, who is 84, told me that that very same plant was in my grandmother's house for her whole life too.  Your hoya has the potential to become a member of your family it will live so long.  It will probably outlive you.

   Eventually my dad decided he wanted to put the hoya in soil so he built a planter that is rectangular, big enough to hold the original wine bottle and a round planter, side by side.  He simply laid one of the vines over the dirt and held it in place with a heavy object, like a rock.  It rooted at that point and a new plant was born.  Since the planter box was big enough to hold both the bottle and the round planter he never went any further, just building a trellis that the vine could grow upon.  If you wanted to though, you could snip the plant between the bottle and the new root to make two independent plants.

   Once I had a nicely developed, rooted plant in a wine bottle, I decided to put it in a planter with soil also but since I am not a woodworker I had to devise another way.  I liked the way my dad's planter system kept the potted plant and the one growing in the bottle together so this is how I did it:

"Plant" bottle in middle of planter.

Weight a portion of the vine down in the soil with a stone.

In a few weeks you should have good root growth.