Hoya Care Through the Year: What to Do Each Season

The year at a glance

A hoya has two distinct halves to its year, and the mistake most people make is running it the same way all twelve months. The warm half is for growth, feeding and any work you want to do to the plant. The cool half is a deliberate rest, and it is not neglect: the cool dry spell is what sets buds for the following season.

The one rule that applies in every season: never cut off a flower spur. The bare stub left after the flowers drop produces the next umbel from the same point, year after year.

Spring: get the work done early

As the light strengthens and the room warms, growth restarts and the plant can recover from disturbance. Everything that stresses it belongs here: repotting if the plant really needs it, taking cuttings, and winding the new runners onto their support while they are still soft enough to bend.

Start feeding only once you can see new growth, not on a date. A hoya fed while it is still resting simply accumulates salts in the mix. Increase the watering gradually too, rather than switching from a winter interval to a summer one in a single week.

Summer: flowering, and hands off

This is when the buds form and open. The moment you see a bud cluster, stop moving the plant and stop turning the pot, because a change in the angle of the light makes it drop the whole cluster. Keep the watering even through the bud period, neither bone dry nor wet.

Move the plant back from unshaded glass or add a sheer curtain, because midday summer sun combined with the heat trapped at the window bleaches the leaves. If it is outside, keep it under an overhang so that a week of rain does not keep the pot saturated.

Check the leaf axils and the flower spurs for mealybugs every time you water. Warm weather is when they multiply fastest, and the spurs are the worst place to find them because you cannot clean roughly there.

Autumn: wind it down before it gets cold

Stop feeding by the middle of autumn. Anything left in the mix when growth stops sits there through winter and burns the roots. At the same time start stretching the watering interval so the plant is already on a reduced regime by the time the cold arrives.

Bring any plant that has summered outdoors back in while nights are still around 60F (15C), not once they are dropping towards 50F (10C). Wash the leaf undersides and the base of the pot before it comes in, or you will import pests to every plant on the shelf.

1. Move it to the cool room Find a bright spot that will sit around 55 to 60F (13 to 16C) through the winter. Bright matters as much as cool: a cold dark corner weakens the plant instead of resting it.
2. Do not tidy the plant up Autumn is when people trim the long bare runners and cut off the spent spurs. Both remove next year's flowers. Leave the plant exactly as it is.
3. Deal with pests now Treat any mealybug or scale before the plant goes into its rest. A pest population going into winter on a plant you are no longer inspecting weekly gets out of hand by spring.

Winter: the rest that earns the flowers

Six to eight weeks at 55 to 60F (13 to 16C) with very little water is the single most effective thing you can do to make a mature hoya flower. Water perhaps every three or four weeks, just enough that the leaves do not shrivel, and never let the mix stay wet.

Do not feed, do not repot, do not take cuttings and do not prune. The plant is not doing anything and neither should you. Keep it off cold glass overnight and out of the direct draft of a heater during the day, and check the leaves for cold damage after any hard night.

Keep a simple record of how cold the resting room got and when the first buds appeared the following season. Two winters of notes will tell you whether your rest is cool enough, which is the question everyone with a non-flowering hoya is really asking.