Cypress Vine - Easy Climbers

The Cypress Vine or Ipomoea quamoclit,  is yet another plant that can give a lot of confidence to those like me who are new to apartment gardening. This is one of the first plants that I planted about 6 weeks ago. I am fascinated to see that it is growing beautifully and with tremendous speed. This is definitely one of the fastest growing annuals. I was fortunate in the fact that there had been steady rains for the past 4 weeks. Not really sure if that and the humidity helped this plant to grow to such lengths. Now I see plenty of buds and can hardly wait for them all to flower. 

Saplings or Seeds?

While I have heard that these vines grow easily from seeds too, I have yet to experiment on that. I am going to let my flowers seed and try that. But they can sure grow easily from saplings. You can get these saplings in any nursery. I got just one sapling and planted it along with a tropical oregano plant – mine is the variegated variety. Since I am balcony gardening, I choose horizontal plant containers (you can see that in the image) and plant three or four varieties of plants in the same container. I usually choose a bushy plant (the tropical oregano), a climber (the cypress vine) and a hanging plant.

This is mainly to make maximum use of the available space and give the apartment garden a fuller look.

Potting Soil and Fertilizer for the Cypress Vine

The Cypress Vine grows easily in any good soil. I used a mixture of compost, coco peat and clay soil as the potting mix. After two weeks, I added NPK fertilizer -1 table spoon in 1 liter of water. I water them only when the soil gets dry. I didn’t have to do a lot of watering since there had been rains. 

Where to Plant the Cypress Vine

Since these are easy climbers, I suggest you use a corner of your balcony to ensure that you help the plant trail along the corners. Since they have the tendency to cling on to any support to creep, it is sensible to plant them in such a way that they don’t attach themselves to your other plants. If you don’t have railing in your balcony like I have, you can actually use twines or threads to guide their growth. 

This is a blog by Farhan that shows the Cypress Vine actually growing up to 20 feet in height. http://farhansgarden.blog.com/2012/08/20/cypress-vine/

These plants are planted in the ground. But you can do something similar to your potted Cypress Vines too. Happy planting!

Pothos Plant or Money Plant – Purify Your Indoors

This is by far the easiest plant to grow and with its moniker ‘Money Plant’, I guess it is really one of the first choices to get started with. Now these leafy vines can be grown easily in containers. While left free to grow in the woods these plants can actually reach a height of up to 40 feet in the jungles of the tropics. In containers they can grow up to 8 feet if given enough support and care. 

It is the leaves of the pothos plants that make them attractive. These plants are available in many nurseries, but since many houses have them too – it is good to take a good cutting from any of your friends’ or acquaintances' homes to pot them in your containers. When these plants start growing you can provide them support with moss sticks or let them trail along merrily on your balcony walls. You can also place hooks on the walls to give them support or let them trail along the window railings.

Potting Pothos to Give it a Bushier Look

The pothos plants are also very popular indoor plants. They are known to purify the air indoors. Since they don’t need too much of sunlight, they can be easily be grown indoors. You can make them grow bushier in pots by simply planting several cuttings in the pots. A medium sized container can hold up to 8 cuttings easily. The best way to do this is to make a cutting just under a node. You can make several such cuttings and place them so that the nodes are in water. Most of the nodes will begin to produce roots in a few days. Once the roots are strong enough (about 1 to 2 inches in length) you can start potting them. Make sure that the potting medium is well draining. I usually place some gravel at the bottom of the pot. You don’t need to water them every day. Over watering these plants can cause rotting of the roots. 

While pothos plants are pretty much happy to simply grow profusely in a good potting mix of compost and soil, if you want to give them a prod for more foliage, you can use an all-purpose fertilizer fortnightly.