How do YOU grow H. lacunosa?

....and are you successful?

For me, and many others, H. lacunosa is a wonderful everblooming hoya with the most marvelous fragrance - for others it is a nightmare. Let's try to find out why this big difference in success?

Let's start out our comments with either Successful or NOTSuccessful and then explain how we grow it...and what our growing conditions are. Hopefully we can help those with no luck.

I am successful. My environment is humid but not 'soggy humid', not HOT (never over 90deg. and rarely over 85deg). We even have occasional very dry weather/wind. Our nighttime temps in the winter can get into the mid-50s. My mix is very loose and I keep H. lacunosa moist with occasional dryouts. I grow in indirect very bright light

So I can echo just about everything Carol said. My conditions are just about the same,
slightly drier on my side of the island. I've only had H lacunosa for a few months now,
but she's growing and already bloomed for me. I would tentatively call that successful...

She's in a small, small pot, very chunky loose soil. Since it's drier over here I may be
keeping her a little drier than her previous owner, because I only water once a week.
Hmmm, I might have to up that to twice, cause she's been blasting buds... Keep ya
posted on results or changes...

I have so far had no real luck with H lacunosa. My conditions are similar to Carols, tho I seem to draw a blank on this one....grr... I grow it outside under protection with summer max 90 down to winter 55. I have several pots now trying to find which method works. The one that seems to be getting ahead a little is in a Plastic pot..my others are in Clay Pots. It does stay damper in the plastic, and it dries out a lot fewer times than in the clay pots. Ive never let any of them get too dry...a problem?.....and I grow it in an mix of Picon ( course volcanic ash) Orchid Bark and Perlite. My lacunosa 'Tove' seemed to be doing ok, even better than the others, but it got continually soaked in a recent downpours, and all the leaves went to mush.....we'll see if it manages to come back. I had gotten it to flower inside, and it was doing fine........so. Now I have 1 in a clay pot inside, some outside in a clay pots, and I outside in a plastic pot, and its this last one that seems to be doing better. I must say....and Im sorry its going back to the infamous H linearis, that since Ive stopped faffing and worrying about H linearis....its seems to be growing well........Im going to stop faffing about lacunosa too......maybe thats the trick??
A very disgruntled H lacunosa grower

Paula...is yours growing out on your deck? I know all of mine get really good airflow, which I take for granted since we live on the windy/wet side of the island.

I think airflow is a BIG factor in growing hoyas and that's why evryone has such success when they put theirs out for the summer!!! It isn't air like a blast when the door or window opens, but air 'movement'....

Carol

Dom...hoyas and especially some in particular, have delicate root tips, which I think suffer in clay pots unless you can keep the clay pots damp all of the time....

What about baskets, Carol? Most of mine that dont end up in the ground are going in baskets..open metal ones which I mostly make myself with treated moss linings. To me it looks better aesthetically ( must be the artist in me ) Same mix, easy draining and lots of air ?

By 'root sensitive', do you mean that if they dry out in contact with the clay when its dries, they die?

Yes, most of my Hoya are now out on the deck. And doing marvelous ! They are all growing
and we have nice breezes daily. They seem to love it.

I was an over-waterer, so I have to hold myself back. These are no-fuss plants for sure !

Paula

Yes, Dom. What happens is that the growing tip of the roots dries out and dies, then when you water, that dead part rots and rot travels throughout the root system.

Dom, if your pots are too large, you won/t have good growth either...The ones that grow thru the bottom of the plastic pots in a basket and have 3' of roots growing outside the pot in the moist outer pot seem to be the happiest!!! That's when i repot!!! The baskets with moss liners? Dunno...I haven't used those but I don't see why not.

Aaah ... H. lacunosa, one of my favorites, not so much for the foliage but I do love the fragrance, and lacunosa is one I find very easy to grow.

I have both the solid green lacunosa, as well as the speckled leaf. Originally I had three of each. They were looking really great for a long time, until I decided to move them to another location! For two years they were on the front porch, the east side of the house with filtered morning sunlight. Don't ask me why I would change their location when they were doing perfectly well ... sometimes I just need to remember to leave well enough alone!

Anyway, I moved them both to the lanai on the west side of the house ... waaay too much sunlight! Even though the area is filtered by the screened pool enclosure, our Florida sun is just too intense, I should have known better! The foliage faded out and looked pretty bad. I ended up moving them to the covered deck where they get bright light but no sun and they are slowly recovering.

The lacunosa are planted in the same medium that I use for 99% of my plants ... a combination of miracle grow potting soil, lots of orchid bark mix and lots of perlite. I water once or twice a week during the spring and summer, depending on rainfall and not so often in January and February (our coldest months), sometimes going two to three weeks between watering then. We have a lot of humidity here in my area: http://www.cityrating.com/cityhumidity.asp?City=Daytona+Beach and the plants seem to love it.

I am sporadic about fertilizing. I use Eleanor's VF-11 most of the time but there are times when I use miracle grow and even orchid fertilizer.

Right now we are having a cold spell so my hoyas are inside the house, I usually leave them outside most of the year but we are having unusually cold night time temp's ... it got down to 34 here last night and we are predicted to have low temps fluctuating in the 30's and 40's for the next week so I am not moving them back outside until I'm sure the weather has stabilized.

I love the lacunosa for it's lovely little fragrant blooms which grace the plant off and on all year round. I even have a little cutting that rooted in a jar of water, and I found a bloom on it last month.

edited to add: I use plastic pots for all of my plants with the exception of orchids which are in the wood baskets. I tried terra cotta/clay pots many years ago and they dry out too quickly for my taste besides the fact that I am a klutz and tend to drop and break them!






This message was edited Jan 17, 2009 5:03 PM

I've been really good at killing this one. My first one died, ditto the second one. I kept lacunosa tove going nicely for a couple of years before killing it, quite recently, and it had some some really nice blooms. Fortunately I gave friends cuttings - so now I can get it back again. In the meantime, I got a lacunosa cutting from a friend, and her plant was really unhappy looking so didn't give it much hope. Of course that plant is now very happy and healthy and blooms nicely and regularly. Echoing here: it gets very bright indirect light, airy potting medium, plastic pot, let it nearly dry out between waterings. All my hoyas are indoors by default, and the room its in has a ceiling fan that I use regularly.

I see a pattern. Gosh but its flowers do smell lovely.



Christine

I went into a toilet in Gran Canaria airport last year........dont worry, it gets cleaner..and they had used some cleaning agent all around... A really distinct smell I couldnt pin down yet I knew the fragrance from somewhere, and theres me sniffing, lord knows what the others thought..Pleasant and familiar, I thought, what does it remind me of. distinct yet different..and I knew I had smelt it before................................................. H lacunosa...!!!!.. Not the smell of the loos, but the cleaner they had used.. Funny old world ( hope I'm not gonna get kicked off the forum for that little snippit? ) .......Hope not......true story....this thread just reminded me, thought I'd share it......once a Hoya addict....

--Successful--

I have one indoors and one outside, though in winter it stays in the garage with artificial light.
Indoors is kept at a west window and gets full sunshine from three in the afternoon until the sun sets. I always have either the ac or heater running and I keep the house at 77 degrees in hot months and 69 in winter.The one outside is in the porch facing east, getting sunshine until around 12 noon with very high humidity. It is very hot during summer and during spring/fall, temps at night can drop to mid 30"s.
Both are the same type of plant (exotic angel); however, I see a huge difference in the leaves (color, shape, size) between the two due to different growing conditions.
Inside leaves are very smooth, much darker and longer. The outside leaves are lighter green, smaller and rounder with a "pattern" on them. I've also noticed that it grows much faster than the one inside. Both bloom most of the year for me and I keep both very, very dry .

Successful

I never thought (I guess because I never knew) that H. lacunosa could be difficult. I treat it like a simple carnosa in regular potting mix that is a little heavier than Miracle-Gro. Mine grows inside the house in the west window all year. I do not have air conditioning, and it can get up to 90F in that room, and as low as 55F in the winter. I try to remember to water it when one fourth of the soil is bone dry (but remember my medium is much heavier than most). The air is very dry, December through February. No additional air movement, other than the forced air furnace ducts.

--Successful & NOTSuccessful--

I currently have a H. lacunosa "Lankawi Island" and the H. lacunosa that EA refers to as "Sno Caps". Both are growing outside in large clay pots. I do find that neglect does these plants good. During our wet season...usually May thru September is when I lose my lacunosas as a rule. They bloom profusely during that time if they are not suffering from the storms and humidity. Any type of sunlight seems to work for these bloomers except of course direct Florida sun...screened patio works best.

I have had some problems with propogating the lacunosas. I think the problem is putting the samll plants in plastic pots where they are not allowed to dry out as quicly as the clay pots?

Carol,
I have all of my 'mother plants' in clay pots with great success...for over 10 years? With all the humidity here and someone else managing my crop, while I travel...the clay pots seem to protect the plants from being too wet.

It IS strange how we can have such opposite problems and the same plants! Joni, vine layering works well with H. lacunosa and others like walliniana, sipitanguensis etc.... The hoyas I have hanging outside in pots I plant in a very VERY lose medium where the water runs all the way thru without stopping...and they don't seem to mind it...we get about 160" a year!

My lacunosa has always suffered over the winter from the terribly dry air in the house. This year has been different. The basket is full and now over three feet long and has flowered non-stop all winter. I have it in my plant room and it is lit only by a single t-5 florescent tube mounted vertically on the wall. It gets no natural light at all; I rotate the plant daily, and the humidity is always over 50% in that room. I always keep my lacunosa on the wet side, which seems to be very different than how most of you keep it. I feel that for me the extra humidity is key for keeping this plant happy.

I have had an almost impossible time getting new starts of this plant until trying the semi-hydro method. They just would not grow at all and kept losing leaves, and would fade away. Now I have two nice small plants growing happily in little clay balls.

Doug

Doug, it must be cool in that room with only a T5 florescent tube (and only 2-3ft long?).

The room itself has lots of other lights, but only one tube shines specifically on the lacunosa. That tube is 4 feet long - 54 watts.

Doug

Thanks for the info, Doug. I had never heard of a tube narrower than a T8 that would be 4ft long, let alone 54W! Usually a T5 is 18 inches or less. And a normal 4ft T8 is only 32 watts.

In case you want to know more about the fixture, here is a link to it: http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-High-Performance-Light-Reflector/dp/B000UU4MIQ/ref=pd_sbs_ol_1

Here is a link to a thread I started quite awhile ago on my plant room - it shows a pretty good picture of the fixture, which is so lite it can hang anywhere.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4729341

Doug

My sister in Montana swears she came back from hunting one winter and found the lacunosa she had left on the porch covered with snow...and it warmed up and kept on running (inside this time). I would not try this without parental supervision!

Thansk for the links, Doug. I too am impressed by your set up.