Gardening has been a trendy hobby in recent years and a lot of people have taken the liberty to go about decorating their homes with beautiful greens. And as someone who loves gardening, you know that there is a lot to choose from. But we are here to help you know everything there is about the plants that can get a place in your homes and gardens.
Out of all the kinds of Hoyas one can choose, it is essential that you know which one we want to opt for. This article talks about Hoya Nummularioides and everything you need to know about them.
What do we know about Hoya Nummularioides?
Native to Asia and Thailand, Hoya Nummularioides is a very pretty plant with enticing features. And you need not be scared of their long name! It has vibrant green leaves, and despite their one-of-a-kind appearance, they are very fuzzy to the touch. This Hoya grows in gorgeous vines and has bundles of tiny flowers.
Unlike some other Hoya varieties that we know of, it does not require direct sunlight, daily watering, or repotting every few months. However, one non-negotiable thing is keeping it in well-drained soil with a suitable substrate like sphagnum or peat moss would be best for a healthy result.
Keep the temperature of the room that houses your plant between 65 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. You should also make sure that you water your Hoya regularly in the growth phase and sparingly when it is mature. For the best possible growth, the use of fertilizer after every few months would be beneficial.
You can grow this Hoya in multiple places. It can be grown in your garden, in ornamental hanging baskets, or even placed at your work desk in a pot.
The flowers on this Hoya are shaped like little white stars, with vermillion centers. The natural contrast between bright white flowers and vibrant green leaves is an aesthetically pleasing sight.
Owing to the beautiful blossoms, it is among the most richly-scented Hoya family members.
Everyone who knows about gardening knows that there exist several kinds of Hoya plants, and most of them take many years to blossom into flowers. But something that helps it stand out is the fact that Hoya Nummularioides is a fast-growing plant.
If you start propagating it with a few cuttings, it will barely take a few months to spread out and acclaim its space.
As a result of this, if you would like a beautiful plant that has the potential to add significant value to your place in a short amount of time, this would be a perfect choice.
Caring for Hoya Nummularioides
Like most other Hoya plants that you might have heard of, this plant is a very easy plant to take care of. This doesn’t mean that it can be neglected either! Here is everything you need to know about taking care of Hoya Nummularioides
Soil
As the plant resides in the soil, it eventually absorbs many nutrients and water from it, you must be mindful of the composition of the soil that you use.
This variety of Hoya is an epiphytic species that comes from rich and dense jungles. Due to its native location, it is habitual of feeding on leaf moss and organic debris collected from other plants.
When the Nummularioides are isolated for growing in other places, well-drained soil is best suited for their growth because it prevents water pooling and in consequence, causes the roots to decay.
You can find one in the market or, better yet, make your mixture at home. After experimenting with different ratios, it has been established that adding â…“ peat moss, â…“ perlite, and â…“ orchid bark to the potting mix makes for an ideal concoction of organic soil.
Watering Habits
Like any other plant that you know of, this species also need water for healthy stems, sturdy leaves, and vivid flowers. You can opt for flexible techniques when it comes to quenching the thirst of your Hoya Nummularioides.
Its water requirements are not that complicated, but like a newborn of any species, needs more nutrition when growing, your plant also needs more water in its growth phase. Remember to water the Nummularioides from top to bottom, every few days for the first few months.
Once it is fully grown, you can change the watering cycle to doing it every other week and not stick to a watering schedule. However, make it a habit that you keep an eye open for any dry and brittle leaves as they show dehydration in the plant.
Problems with watering habits
- Overwatering: this is when you give your plant more water than is required by your plant. In this case, the plant will not form buds. Even if it does, they will keep falling off. The leaves will start wilting off too.
- Underwatering: when the plant does not get the amount of water that helps it grow in the best possible manner, the petioles and leaf tips start to droop followed by them turning brown and yellow. The leaves might start falling off too.Â
The correct way of watering the plant
- Pour water on the plant from top to bottom regularly for the first couple of months.
- After the plant is out of the growth spurt, water the plant once a week or a couple of weeks.
- Keep an eye out for brown and yellow leaves as they may be a sign of underwatering.
- Keep watering the plant regularly during the summer months as the soil loses moisture quickly.
- Use a soil moisture meter, or simply a finger test, to check for the moisture in the soil and water accordingly.
- The water you use to water the plant should be at room temperature. Water that is too hot or too cold can damage the plant.
- Try to use distilled or rainwater. Using impure water or simply tap water has the potential to damage the roots. Contaminated water has loads of salt, accumulating on the roots and damaging them.
- Empty the pot plate beneath the plant to avoid standing on too much water.
Adequate lighting
As the plants start to grow in trailing and climbing vines, this variety of Hoya often finds themselves in places that offer the best sunlight. It has been discovered that they are more pleased near good light sources, but direct sunlight can be harmful.
If you place the plant in direct sunlight, it will end up causing heat stress symptoms like floppy leaves that most people try to undo by over-watering their plants.
excess of both water and sunlight is the incorrect approach to taking care of the plant as it will start distressing Hoya Nummularioides.
The best possible method to prevent it is to provide your plant with indirect sunlight. You can start by placing or hanging it next to a window sill so it can absorb the essential light without getting scorched.
If you have many trees outside, placing them right on the window sill would also be a smart choice as the branches of other trees will filter the sunlight while shading your plant.
It works best if you are cautious in the summer months as the sunlight is more intense then. You can also use artificial lights like LED, grow, or fluorescent lights during low light conditions like in winter months or overcast days.
If you place the plant in a southern exposure window, make sure you filter the plant using drapes and curtains.
Temperature requirements
The ideal temperature range for this uniquely beautiful Hoya is between 65 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the temperature it is exposed to in its natural habitat and hence suits it best. If you start steering away from the range, you’ll notice the plants’ growth will slow down.
And the farther you get from this ideal level, the laggier this will get until the point where growth stops completely.
Fortunately, this temperature is very similar to what we reside in (at the least in the middle range of it), humans like the 65-75 degrees range just fine.
The most important thing to know is that the plant cannot tolerate the cold. It is native to the tropical regions of East Asia including Thailand and Cambodia. Both these countries have warm to hot weather with no snow during winters.
This is further proof of the fact that the plant has not built up much tolerance for cold climates. You must try to avoid temperatures below 55 degrees as the plant will struggle there.
All this signifies that the plant is hardy to USDA Zones 10 and 11 since the winters are very mild and somewhat sunny during wintertime with no frost or snow.
Therefore, if you reside in a place that is below Zone 10 and experience freezing winters, it is a good idea to bring the plant indoors before the cold and gusty winds affect your plant for the worse.
The Right Humidity
Hoya nummularioides are native to rainforests and other regions with dense trees where the humidity content is relatively high.
Plants go through transpiration, distributing water and minerals evenly across the plant as it grows and humidity has a role to play in it. This plant is no different from its friends.
Generally, Hoya nummularioides tend to appreciate relative humidity ranging from 50% to 75% and will blossom with beautiful blooms more often if air humidity is maintained up to 60%. These plants don beautiful succulent-like foliage, which helps the plant to stay humid even in low-humidity environments.
Low humidity has the potential to directly affect the plant’s ability to grow and eventually halt the growth. Here is what you need to do to maintain the right humidity for your Hoya.
- Make a schedule to regularly mist the leaves and let the leaves dry on their own. However, you should know that the effects of misting are temporary.
- In the process, make sure not to wet the leaves too heavily because it may give rise to unwanted infections for your Hoya.
- Get a pebble tray and place it below or near the plant to maintain humidity.
- You can also play with the natural precipitation and increase it by grouping your plant with other plants.
- If you can get one, procure a room humidifier to keep the humidity level in check artificially.
Choosing a fertilizer
Plants sometimes depend on your help to get the right nutrients because they can’t always get all the required nutrients from the soil. As a responsible plant parent, it is best to fertilize your plant to provide nutrients or minerals from the outside.
You need to feed your plant with fertilizer rich in essential minerals like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous. Nitrogen is responsible for giving new life to the foliage, and phosphorous helps the plant when it is flowering.
Provide your Hoya nummularioides with balanced liquid fertilizer once a month during the spring and summer seasons when the plant grows in full fledge. Make sure you don’t fertilize during the dormancy months of the winter.
You can just go ahead and use general-purpose fertilizer too. Liquid or water-soluble fertilizers are recommended because they are easy to use as they can be diluted to the required capacity and applied directly to the soil.
Make sure you are not overfeeding your plant as it may lead to yellowing, browning, and stunted plant growth. Similarly, if the plant is under-fertilized, your green friend will have pale foliage and a weak stem
If you are looking for the right way of fertilizing, remember that you need to water your plant thoroughly before fertilizing. The moisture will potentially help the nutrients to spread quickly.
Repotting
To keep your Hoya healthy you need to repot your plant when you see its vines intertwining in complicated ways and roots start to crawl out of a drainage hole. While this may be a result of you opting for a small pot initially, this plant can comfortably grow in the same pot for years at a time.
Generally, these varieties of Hoya need to be repotted every 2 to 5 years, depending on the conditions and growth rate.
These Hoyas have a liking for cozy spaces, but keep in mind to not cause the plant stress by overly packing them in a pot for a prolonged period. If your plant gets stressed, its growth will gradually become stunted, and the soil will start to dry up quickly.
For the first potting, you can choose a pot that is about 3 inches in diameter and perfect for the plant’s rootball to fit into.
After this, you need to repot the plant in a container that is at least 2 inches bigger than the current pot it is living in.
You can opt for terracotta pots for repotting your Hoya as this material help maintain the soil moisture and prevent overwatering. You can also make a change in the baskets if you want those vines to spread out.
The correct repotting process
- Use the correct safety measures with gardening gloves, pruning shears, and knives. Make sure all the equipment you use is properly sterilized.
- Be extra careful and extremely gentle when you are pulling out the plant to avoid breakage.
- Prepare a proper potting mix for the plant with the help of the composition mentioned in the article.
- Take a size bigger pot for repotting and ensure that the pot has enough proper drainage holes.
- Fill the pot up to 70% with the prepared well-draining potting mix.
- Place the plant in the new pot and then gently dap the soil around it with your hands. Leave some space to provide the plant with fertilizer in the future.
- Water the plant whenever necessary and place it in an area that has adequate light.
Pruning
Before you learn about pruning the plant, you must know when and what not to prune in the Hoya.
Nummularioides flowers tend to grow on spurs or peduncles. The new flowers on the plant will grow from the same peduncles season after season. Therefore, it becomes necessary that you do not tamper with the deadhead of the flowers or remove the peduncles even after the blossoms have faded.
As far as the plant is considered, the Hoya Nummularioides is a fast grower. Although it won’t just suddenly get larger. You need to remember that it takes a few months to see entire vines grow.
Over time, the plant holds the potential of growing to reach 6 to 7 feet in length. That being said, the flowers take years to grow. And the plant is not necessarily that large. Most of its proportions come from its length.
This is why many growers grow this in a hanging basket. This will help the plant get elongated without trouble and still look good. Alternatively, you can give your Hoya some sort of support to climb it. This will help in saving space as it goes upward instead of outward.
As the vines get longer, they end up looking kind of messy. This is where pruning comes in handy.
Often, your plant won’t need to do any heavy trimming. You are more likely to end up doing light pruning a few times a year just to keep the plant looking neat. This also lets you remove any leggy stems along with the yellow or damaged foliage.
To manage this properly, this is what you need to know
- Always put on proper masks, gloves, and goggles.
- Get rid of only the leggy stems, dead leaves, and yellow foliage.
- Make sure all the equipment you use is sterilized to reduce the chance of any potential infections. If not, the plant might even die.
- Properly wash your hands after the pruning is complete.
- Dispose of the pruned parts to prevent the spread of diseases if any.
Propagation
There are mostly two major ways to propagate your Hoya nummularioides propagation by cutting or seeds. You can start cutting this in water or directly in a suitable potting mix.
Both propagation methods are quite easy and you can propagate your plant all by yourself. You can propagate your current Hoya plant, if they are healthy, to get more.
Propagation by Cutting
Cutting is probably the easiest method one could opt for. All you need is a healthy stem. You have to start by snipping off at least six inches of stem and plant the bottom part in a suitable potting mix.
If you water the plant regularly and properly, your Hoya cutting should be able to produce leaves in less than two weeks.
The plant may take a little longer to produce leaves in this method because it is still growing roots. If you are a bit restless with regard to your plant and would love to know the progress continuously, you can try starting the cutting in water.
To help your cuttings in developing roots, you need to dip at least three to five inches of it into clean water in a glass cup. Be mindful of replacing the water regularly so that bacteria do not grow in the liquid.
You might witness that roots growing in the part of the cutting submerged in water in less than five days if you are careful with the cutting.
Moreover, when you are content with the number of roots in your cutting, you can transfer the cutting into a suitable substrate and you should see leaves grow in no time.
Propagation by Seeds
This is, as might be obvious, the most natural way to get more plants, all you need to do is to wait for your plant to produce seeds after successful pollination. If you aim to propagate the Hoya, start collecting the seeds when they start falling off the plant.
You can use them immediately or store them carefully to use them in the future.
Get a substrate ready to start the seeds by making a mixture of one-part loam and one-part sand. Place the seeds in the mix you have prepared and cover them with ½ inch layer of sand. Water the Hoya seeds by misting them carefully.
When the seeds do germinate and grow up to a month, you might need to transfer them into a suitable and better potting mix for succulents and water them accordingly.
Common problems faced by Hoya Nummularioides
Even though the plant can grow well even in the toughest of times, you must know that this plant is not exactly indestructible. You must know about the problems faced by the plant.
Common Pests
Most of the hoyas that you are aware of are rarely affected by these pests. But that does not mean that they repel bugs as it is. They are still prone to pests and other diseases.
Due to its succulent-like foliage, some pests tend to be attracted to Hoya nummularioides. These are primarily mealybugs and aphids.
Mealybugs
These are incredibly common pests that happen to be extremely dangerous. You can spot these during the regular checking of the leaves and branches of your plant. If you notice some white powdery substance spread all over, it is a sign of their presence.
Checking with your hands uncovered is a bad idea, but if you accidentally touch them, you will sense that their little bodies are layered with a sticky fluid, commonly known as honeydew. This causes the plant to be deficient in many essential nutrients.
Moreover, they can freely crawl and infest different neighboring plants too. Even though Hoya is not that prone to catching mealybugs, it is not that rare an occurrence, and you should regularly examine the plant.
You can deal with mealybugs if you take measures promptly. Make sure you apply some alcohol on a cotton swab and dab it on the fluffy white area where bugs have affected the plant. Repeat this process every week till you see visible improvement.
Aphids
Aphids happen to be small, black insects with long legs and sharp mouths that they use to pierce through the branches of your Hoya. They can suck the plant’s life force, its cell sap, which forms nutrition like glucose and amino acid that your plant needs for energy and growth.
Some signs of an aphid infestation include the yellowing of the leaves which is in turn followed by the curling of the edges. The stem of the plant starts turning pulpy and swollen. The new flowers that grow from the plant end up being deformed and decay quickly.
The most obvious way of spotting aphids would be directly extracting the plant for their presence. They tend to hide under the leaves, so you might want to examine them there.
The best way of getting rid of these problematic pests is by blasting them with high water pressure. But you must not let too much water sit in the plant for a long time or it will give birth to other problems.
You can also opt for picking them by hand but remember to wear gloves and cover any exposed skin while doing it.
Solutions to the Problem
- Start with the application of some rubbing alcohol on cotton and dab the part where you can see the infestation until you get rid of pests.
- Spray the plant with high water pressure to get rid of bugs that seem too stubborn to let go of the plant.
- You can procure neem oil, a horticultural oil, to naturally get rid of the pests.
- Mix some soap with water and spray it on the Hoya.
- If it seems possible, pick some of the pests with your hands. Do remember that you need to use proper gloves.
Common Diseases
Hoya nummularioides is quite a vigorous plant and does not succumb to diseases easily. The most common disease that the plant can suffer from is root rot.
Root rot is possibly the most common problem that leads plants to an untimely death. The main causes of the disease are overwatering and waterlogged soil.
It is always better if you could detect the root rot before it starts to cause serious threats, but it would be impossible as the roots are under the soil.
The symptoms start showing up above the ground after some time. By the time they do, the roots will have sustained some damage.
Other symptoms show up as mushy stems on the plant. Further, the flowers will not bloom during the blooming season and the leaves will start losing color and turn yellow.
FAQs
Are these Hoya plants toxic to my pets and children?
Gardening isn’t always the safest hobby for your children and pets but a Hoya nummularioide is free from any toxicity.
The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) has not named this plant as a toxic one for animals. However, as the vines on this green beauty are long, your toddlers still have the risk of tripping over the vines.
How do I deal with the dormancy period?
Like most other plants that you might have had, nummularioides tend to go dormant with the decreasing temperatures in the winter season.
When we talk about dormancy, we don’t really mean the plant will stop growing totally; instead, it will just slow down and save energy for when it emerges from the dormancy.
During this period, plants don’t need as much nourishment with regard to water and fertilizer compared to their growing months. Watering it once a month during its slow period is enough for the plant to grow.
Similarly, it works best for the plant to cut back on fertilizing since these plants are not heavy feeders. Also, fertilizing too much in the winter can lead to chemical burns on the plant.
Is this a useful plant?
Nummularioides are suitable in your garden because they will help to prevent weeds. A major reason behind the popularity of the plant is the fragrance of its bloom.
The flowers on this beauty smell really nice, which is why you probably would want to hang the basket close to your favorite spots so that you can enjoy the aroma.
Conclusion
From everything that we have walked through, we know that this is an impressive Hoya that would bestow your garden and/or house with a beautiful aroma and impressive greens.
You just need to know that there are quirks of owning any kind of plant and it thus becomes necessary to know as much as possible about the plant before you make a decision.
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