Gadenin日本語Get the appDecide the shape before you cut
There are three sensible shapes for a pothos, and they need different pruning. Cutting without deciding which you want is how people end up with a plant that is neither one thing nor the other.
| Shape | Suits | The main job |
|---|---|---|
| Trailing | A shelf or a hanging pot | Thin the longest vines only |
| Climbing | A large floor pot | Fix the nodes to a pole and train upwards |
| Compact | A desk or a small shelf | Cut short to multiply the side shoots |
Cut just above a node
Every cut above a node produces at least one new vine, so pruning is also how you make a thin plant full. A plant that has never been cut is nearly always a plant with three long bare vines.
- Find the node The slightly swollen point on the vine, where a leaf and usually an aerial root emerge. Cutting between nodes leaves a stub that dies back to the node anyway.
- Cut a quarter inch above it Cut a quarter to half an inch (5 to 10 mm) above the node. Leave that much and the bud beside the node pushes out a new vine.
- Use something sharp Cut cleanly in one go. A crushed cut does not dry, and the stem can blacken back through several nodes.
- Take no more than a third Remove up to a third of the plant at once. Take much more and the balance between roots and leaves is broken, and the new shoots take longer to appear.
The white sap can irritate skin. Wash your hands afterwards, and keep the trimmings away from children and pets.
Growing it trailing
For a trailing plant, the aim is a full head near the pot with long vines below it, and the way to get that is to shorten some vines hard while leaving others long.
Cut about a third of the vines back to two or three nodes from the pot. Those shoot and fill the top. Leave the rest to trail. Rotate which ones you cut each year and it never goes bare at the crown.
Growing it climbing
Pothos climbs in the wild, and given a moss pole the leaves get substantially larger. Press the nodes and aerial roots against a damp pole and tie them loosely until they grip.
Prune a climbing plant only at the top, to control the height. Cutting the lower vines removes the section that is holding it onto the pole.
Keeping it compact
For a small plant on a desk, cut every vine back to three or four nodes two or three times a year. Each cut doubles the number of growing points, and the plant stays dense rather than reaching.
You can also push the cuttings straight back into the same pot. They root in the compost and fill the middle, which is the quickest way to turn a sparse plant into a full one.
Prune between late spring and early autumn. A cut made in winter sits without shooting and can die back.