From cutting to counter: how a pothos is grown

Most plants we sell begin in our two acres of shade houses on Kanakapura Road, and pothos is one of the easiest to follow from start to finish. Here is how Lakshmamma and the other gardeners raise one.

It starts with a cutting from one of our mother plants, which live in a separate shade house and are never sold. Each cutting has two or three leaves and at least one node, the small brown bump where roots will grow. The gardeners cut about 400 at a time, early in the morning while the vines are full of water.

The cuttings go into trays of moist cocopeat under 50% shade net, misted twice a day. In two to three weeks, white roots appear from the nodes. At four weeks, three or four rooted cuttings are planted together in a 4 inch pot with our own potting mix of red soil, cocopeat, compost and a little sand, so the finished plant looks full.

For the next eight weeks, the pots sit on raised benches, watered by hand when the top of the soil dries, and fed once every three weeks with a diluted organic liquid feed. The gardeners turn the pots every week so the vines grow evenly, and remove any yellow leaves. At about twelve weeks the plant has trailing vines of 20 to 30 cm and goes to the Sarjapur Road shop. Before it reaches you, it is checked for pests, repotted if you have chosen a decorative pot, and watered the morning it leaves.