Friday, November 17, 2006

Rescued Hoya.


There seems to be saying about Hoyas in the community that I've heard a few times now. You may have heard this or some variation. "Hoyas thrive on neglect" I've come across this a couple of times in the last fortnight. One was at a visit to a local produce/ nursery supplies where I'd noticed on a previous visit they had a Hoya planted in their garden. It was in pretty poor condition then, and on this occasion the whole plant was limp and yellow. The owner was nearby, so I said I think your hoya may have died. He said " Oh no! it'll be right you don't have to worry about them, It'll be O.K. I said if it's not dead it's close to it. Anyway to cut a long story short, He would have none of it. So I encouraged him to cut the plant back and give it a feed. About a week or so later I felt sorry for the Hoya Australis (pictured above) that was for sale in a local native nursery. It had obviously been in the tube container since being struck as a cutting. The the pot was so swollen I had to cut the plastic, and as you can see the roots of various reeds and grasses had clogged things up somewhat. So I carefully extracated the Hoya from the tangle and gave it a new home in a nice healthy mix of perlite and potting mix. We have to concede that Hoyas are robust, but maybe a better saying would be "Hoyas resilient in adversity" But like any other plant Hoyas thrive with a little bit of T.L.C.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yikes--that was extremely rootbound! It looks much happier in its new container, even without seeing it wiggle its toes. (It must be wiggling its toes, now that it can!)