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Are you interested to know why are your Pothos leggy?
A pothos with lovely vines flowing down, covering as much ground as they can reach. They have marbled, variegated, or yellowish-tinged leaves set against beautiful green foliage.
Leggy growth is a common characteristic of vining plants like a pothos. Providing a pothos with appropriate light, an acceptable watering regiment, occasional pruning, and proper fertilization is important.
Extensive legginess of your pothos can be a result of not enough light which can be fixed by providing your pothos with more light.
When these fundamental requirements, which are essential for producing bushier pothos, are not met, the plant will respond by producing a leggier specimens.
Any time you want, you can give them a bushy appearance. It is never too late, which leads us to the topic of how we might recreate long-legged vines to produce leaves and stems that are fuller, larger, and more abundant.
Identifying the causes needs to be the primary step, as this will make it much simpler for you to choose the appropriate treatment.
Let’s jump right into the reasons for a leggy pothos, potential treatments, and other aspects of this issue.
Why is My Pothos Leggy?
A distance of one to two feet can be found between the leaves of leggy pothos plant.
A lack of energy and nutrients in the soil causes pothos to become lanky, look uneven, and spindly. This prevents the plant from supporting existing growth and encouraging new growth.
The most likely explanation is that there is insufficient light, which is why the vines of pothos are growing in the direction of the light source. Pothos do not get lanky very quickly.
Therefore they must have had difficulty adjusting to the conditions they were provided.
Indoor pothos is more subdued than these plants, which can grow to be huge and bushy outside. First, you must ensure that your pothos receives the appropriate amount of care if it is spindly and tall rather than bushy.
Insufficient exposure to sunlight causes pothos to develop lanky vines that reach for the light, causing the plant to become leggy. It is a method for continuing to expand without wasting any additional energy.
Stop giving excessive food to your leggy pothos if you are one of those people who keep houseplants and are trying to hasten the growth of their pothos so that they have more huge and bushy foliage.
An excessive fertilizer will cause pothos to grow more quickly, making the plants tall and fragile.
Ways to Fix a Leggy Pothos
What should you do if your Pothos just has a vine growing on it instead of leaves? Pothos are dependable plant cultivators that do well in various environmental settings.
If you provide them with sufficient water and nutrients, they will swiftly take control of the indoor environment and defeat any diseases or pests that try to attack them.
However, your pothos could develop legginess if it does not receive enough light. Your pothos’ leaves will burn if left out in the sun for a prolonged amount of time.
They can also suffer if exposed to long periods of low light. Providing a modest amount of indirect light is essential to achieve bushier pothos. Keep your pothos at least a foot away from the window.
Lack of Light:
A lack of light most commonly causes legginess in a pothos. They’ll stretch their tendrils out to find more light if they don’t get any.
Pothos is a climber in the wild, scurrying up trees and other structures in search of light and nutrients.
These plants can soar through the darkness thanks to their long, slender stems. Your indoor Pothos’ long vines are trying to locate a sunny area to spread their leaves.
It won’t waste time developing new leaves until it finds a site with appropriate lighting.
Solution:
The Pothos should be relocated to a more visible region of your growing space. The Golden Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) can grow under standard fluorescent lighting.
They don’t need a lot of light; a moderate amount of diffuse light is sufficient. The Pothos needs more light due to its variegation in leaf color.
Excessive Fertilizer:
With enough fertilizer, a Pothos will take advantage to increase their sphere of influence in the garden.
In place of forming leaves, they will send out long shoots that search for sites to root before they do so. If your Pothos is well-lit, excessive fertilizer may be to blame.
Solution:
First and foremost, cease fertilizing. Pothos thrive on minimal resources. Hardy plants can thrive in soils that lack nutrients, making them ideal for gardens. It’s preferable to let this one play out if your Pothos is generally healthy.
Temperature:
Adaptable to high humidity and heat, the pothos plant is native to the tropics and is adaptable to high humidity and heat.
Moreover, plants like Pothos will thrive during a heatwave, spurring them to put out long vines. If everything else is perfect, you might consider getting your temperature taken. Overheating is a common problem with Pothos.
Solution:
The Pothos should be moved to an area of your garden that is more protected from the sun.
You should also avoid placing it near radiators or other heating devices.
Make sure the plant has access to plenty of light wherever it goes, as light and heat go hand in hand.
How Do I Make My Pothos Bushier?
Pruning pothos regularly will encourage them to grow larger and prevent them from becoming spindly. Once a month, apply a high-quality fertilizer to your pothos to help them grow more quickly.
Staking pothos will help it produce larger leaves. Pruning the plant and providing appropriate nutrients, light, and water are the greatest ways to make pothos fuller.
Leaving the plant to grow and spread on its own, it will grow long tendrils with sparse foliage as it seeks the most sunlight. Here are steps on how to make Pothos bushier:
Prune Pothos Effectively:
Other items that are never clipped tend to thin over time to avoid a spindly appearance. When you notice your pothos becoming lanky, trim them to encourage them to grow fuller and faster.
However, pruning with the correct tools and methods encourages branching, resulting in larger leaves and a fuller plant.
Tools like shears (I use the Felco F-2 Manual Pruner) and gardening gloves may come in handy during this project.
If the stems on your Pothos are growing downward, you should remove them to stimulate branching from the top.
Apply a Balanced Fertilizer:
Even while pothos doesn’t require much food, if they become weak and lean, you may want to investigate the possibility of vitamin insufficiency.
Make it grow fuller by using a 20-20-20 fertilizer once a month. To encourage pothos to grow faster, use a water-soluble fertilizer like Miracle Gro and apply just the right amount.
If you fertilize your golden pothos, the new leaf will grow more quickly. For pothos still in their original pot, this technique is particularly beneficial.
When sprayed at least once a month, compost and other natural fertilizer options can significantly increase pothos leaf growth, resulting in a bushier appearance.
Stake your pothos:
Plants that trail is often supported by staking, much like vines that snake around higher trees in the rainforest.
There are various ways to stake your Pothos, such as utilizing a bamboo cane, moss pole, or even trellis.
However, how does staking my pothos plants help them develop fuller? Staking causes twisting plants to produce larger leaves closer together, which is why it is important to use stakes.
Staking is a slow, long-term remedy, so do it early when the plant is still young.
A well-fed plant, such as a pothos, can grow top-heavy. The vines may require a little help from us to support their weight. As a last resort, you can stake your pothos if it isn’t growing as much as you’d want.
Provide Enough Light:
A lack of exposure to sunshine primarily causes leggy appearance. As a result, the leaf nodes of plants produced in poorly-lit locations will be more widely spaced than those cultivated in well-lit areas.
Moving the houseplant to a location with adequate light, such as next to a window, is the most straightforward way to encourage it to flourish. Indoors, pothos prefers dappled light; but, in the garden, they do well in partial or full shadow.
How to Prune a Leggy Pothos?
Pothos can be pruned in two ways: either by hand or by machine.
- The first step is to promote differentiation. It is common for vines to sprout many branches if a node is snipped at the root of the plant. Regardless of the length of the branch, you can perform this.
- The removal of excess length is another method of pruning. This is the finest solution if your vines have become a touch out of control.
- The method is the same for either of them, but having a clear idea of what you want to achieve can help you determine how to proceed.
- Cutting immediately below a node is the best way to remove unwanted branches.
- To promote bushy growth, cut near the crown to produce numerous shorter stems from which new leaves will emerge.
- A long vine can be cut to the desired length with scissors.
- Afterward, take a step back to assess the design’s overall composition. When you’re up close and personal with the trimming, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.
How to Stop a Pothos Getting Leggy in The Future?
Pruning pothos with regularly is an easy approach to keep them from becoming lanky. Pothos’ long-legged vines can be simply trimmed without following any particular procedure.
Get rid of all of the excessive stems. Cut from the point where the growth gets smaller, if possible. Pruning will encourage new growth by boosting the soil’s energy supply, allowing it to sustain additional vegetation.
Pruning above the nodes can also be done with some care. The more you slash, the better. To replant your cuttings, just root them in water and place them back in the pot from where they were taken.
That will make your pothos look fuller and stop them from becoming leggy. There are three main ways to help a plant to look less leggy:
- Stake them up
- Cut them back
- Give them more light
If your plant continues to grow but doesn’t produce a lot of leaves, it’s referred to as “leggy.” To describe a plant as “spindly” is the same as to describe it as “leggy.”
Stake Them Up:
Using a moss pole, a trellis, or even a bamboo cane, you can mimic the conditions under which a plant would produce larger leaves. By providing it with a “tree” to climb, you might encourage it to grow larger leaves closer together to reach the light.
This is a viable idea, but it’s not a quick fix. Introduce a stake early on if you don’t like the look of lanky plants and don’t want the trailing aspect to lead to bigger, fuller growth in the future.
Cut Them Back:
To have fuller plants, this is a long-term strategy; if you’re looking for a quick fix, continue reading.
You won’t have a pothos leggy plant anymore if you trim the leggy growth, but the plant can focus its energy on growing larger leaves rather than maintaining the leggy growth that isn’t getting enough light.
Or, Cut back a plant to make it fuller, I know that sounds strange, but it works.
Give Them More Light:
Plants not getting enough light are the primary cause of their leggy growth. There is a strong correlation between the amount of light a plant receives and its height.
