Hoya wax plants are fantastic indoor plants with many different flower colors, sizes and many are fragrant too. While hoya plants can grow outdoors in USDA Hardiness Zones 9 to 11 they are most commonly grown indoors in indirect sunlight. Choose hoya wax plant with small, large, veined, variegated and even heart shape leaves.  Most hoyas are easy to grow and provide balls of flowers.

Giving Your Hoya Wax Plant Light and Water

Indoors:  Fine a bright spot for you Hoya an east- or west-facing window if possible to give longer hours of light. Hoyas plants prefer long hours of indirect sunlight. if your Hoya has variegated leaves then give it more light for more variegation. if you have a south facing windows then give the hoya some space from the window to avoid direct sunlight all day.  A few hours of direct light is ok but not all day long!

Hoya plants do need sunlight to bloom so you may need to adjust the location they find a happy place!

Outdoors:  Make sure the hoya does not get too much direct sunlight! They do best in about 60% light (pool screen is 90% light).  If you have an overhang that is protected from direct sunlight then that would be a good location.

Water Hoya plants when the potting soil becomes almost completely dry. Use room-temperature water that has been “aged” or left sitting in an open container for at least 24 to 36 hours. Hoya plants are tropical plants that could be stressed by cold tap water. If you can let water sit for 24 to 48 hours so the chlorine and other chemicals in tap water  dissipate.

AdeniumRose Company waters hoyas in the early morning:  The soil should allow for good drainage. Stay away from too much moss in your soil. Use plenty of perlite to allow air circulation in the soil.

Seasons: Just like other plants hoyas have a main growing season. Expect the most growth from spring through late summer.  During this time water more often. They do grow ear round if they receive proper sunlight but during winter they slow down.

Fertilize your Hoya Wax Plants to optimal Growth

Use fertilizer such as Dyna-Gro Grow once a month.  If you are having blooming problems use Dyna-Gro Bloom. AdeniumRose Company does not use time released fertilizer on Hoyas.

Pale leaf color could be caused by poor nutrients in the soil. if you see light leaves give fertilizer twice a month. Also, give the plant a bit more sunlight during this time.

Flower blooms – Do not cut off the stems after they flower or crop the vines. Hoya will produce more flowers for the same vines/stems. If you want to promote branches then crop/prune right above leaves.

special note:  AdeniumRose Company Inc. uses the same soil for hoyas as we do for Adeniums. The soil coir holds a bit o moisture while the perlite lets air in and help prevent root problems.

Recently several clients received wax plants (hoya plants) with very long vines.  One of the best ways to propagate wax plants is from a growing vine without cutting the vine first.  It’s the dip the vine in dirt method which is easy and usually 100% successful.  This method of propagate is for wax plants  you already own.  Yes, you can air layer long hoya plant vines too, however, it takes longer and you need to make sure the area stays moist.  We use three methods of propagation of hoya plants:  air layer, vine dipping and cuttings planting.  By far the best way is to use wax plant vine dipping.

The only problem with vine dipping is that you need room in the same pot as the parent plant.  Yes, you can stretch the wax plant vine into another pot, however, now you have two pots to water.

How to Propagate Wax plants From Vines

How to do it step by step:  1) Get a piece of wire about 6..8 inches long an bend into a U-shape to hold the vine in the soil or a rock with enough weight to  keep the vine in contact with the soil, 2) Select a vine section with at least 3..4″ of length beyond where you want to create the new plant.   3) Place/dip the wax plant vine in or on top of the soil in the same pot as the parent plant. Do not cut the vine! 4) Use the wire or rock to hold down the hoya plant vine and 5) wait a couple months for roots to grow.

It’s simple and easy.  Plus, its 100% successful as long as your main plant is healthy.  The actual time it takes the hoya plant to grow roots will depending upon the season and size of the parent plant.  Consider using fertilizer, such as, Dyna-Gro Gro and even use Dyna-Gro K-L-N the first month.

It’s almost spring (in South Florida it’s already spring) which is a perfect time to start planning plant propagation.  Hoya plants, also known as wax plants, are veining flowering succulent like plants which are mostly propagated through cuttings.  Unlike many succulents  hoya plants will tolerate more water and less sunlight.

In fact, most varieties of hoya plants the prefer 60-70% sunlight.  Epic Grower LLC propagates hoyas year-round due to our mild weather (the low today in my area was 71% – 2/7/2017).  Not all hoyas are easy to propagate which is way some are more costly (rare).  Rare hoyas tend to be the ones that grow slower and hard to propagate unless under the ideal conditions.

Propagation by Cuttings

If you are a beginner I would recommend starting propagating fast growing hoyas such as publicayx (red button or splash), the Australia ssp tenipes or sp pola from the ones available on the Adeniumrose company website.  Wait until your parent plant (the one you plan to get cuttings) has several vines before taking hoya cuttings.

Take hoya cuttings from the end of the vines that will yield 6″..7″ and several leaves. If you  notice some roots already on the vine so clip below them.  Once clipped wait about 20 minutes before applying any rooting hormone treatment to give time for the hoya plant sap to stop running from the cutting.  No you do not need to apply anything to the end of the cutting on the mother plant. Hoyas are resilient and the parent plant does not need any treatment when cut.

Rooting Hormone

Currently, we are using rooting hormone on all our plants. Prior to soaking the plant in the K-L-N we clip off the two lower leaves

We mix 2 table spoons of the liquid with 1 gallon of water and then let the plant soak (whole plant) in the water before planting for 30 minutes.  We tried powders but the Dyna-Gro K-L-N produced better results for us.

Now plant the hoya cutting in cactus type soil covering the cut leaf area (about 2″ of the plant). Do not water the wax plant until the next day to prevent washing off the rooting hormone. Once you start watering keep the soil slightly moist. Do not let it dry out for more than 1 day when propagating hoya plants. give the plant 5.. hours of 60 to 70% sunlight and within a few weeks the hoya plant will be well established with small roots.

We received several questions concerning the scents or fragrance of hoya plant flowers. Hoya plants produce a very wide variety of fragrances. The hoya plants flower scent strength varies depending upon your growing environment and other factors.

Collectors use terms such as chocolate, citrus, vanilla, orange, lemon and other terms to describe the scents of the wax plants. Hoya Publicayx red button has been described with a strong lemony citrus with a hint of vanilla fragrance. However, smell is a personal thing and your growing environment is a factor.

Growing Environment

The scene of the hoyas varies depending upon your growing area. Epic Grower LLC, located in NE Georgia has hot humid summers and cool/cold winters so the fragrance is never strong due to too much moisture in the air.  Its like a fir Christmas tree: when its cold and dry you smell it more than when its warm and humid.

Our publicalyx parent plants (the ones we use to propagate new plants) had tons of flower clusters earlier this year. However,  due to our very humid warm to hot climate we do not notice the hoya plants fragrance as much as somebody would in the northern areas that are either cooler or less humid. Yes, if we put our nose close to the flower we do smell a fragrance.

Nutrients Fragrance Factor

The other factor in the scent of a hoya plant beyond the growing environment is the nutrients in your soil. What nutrients are in the soil can cause some changes in the scent produced. If you have too much phosphate, iron, nitrogen and other nutrients the plant needs to grow then the scent may get strong or lighter.  I’m not an expert on nutrients and smell of plants but there are many articles on how a sent of a flower or plant changes depending what nutrients you feed it.

Do you grow wax plants – hoyas? Do you notice any scent whether strong or slight? What is your growing environment for the hoya plant?  What variety of wax plants are you growing? Please post a comment about hoya plant scent here. It simple to write a comment and it will help others.

I went back to the nursery that had the publicalyx reb button plants in 10 gallon pots and picked up three more hoyas (the last of them) that were in worse shape than the plant obtained last week. Hoya plants are very resilient so I knew we (AdeniumRose company) use the plants to propagation. I offered a lower price and they accepted because nobody else wanted the hoya plants due to the condition of the leaves. The nursery owner was asked why the leaves were ugly and they said they were not sure because they grow then like other succulents.

The nursery only sells cactus and succulent plants purchased from large wholesale growers.  At that point we help him understand that not all cactus/succulents plants grow in the same environments and explained that the hoya plants they had were getting way too much sun light causing leaf damage.

See the image of the hoya plant to the left and you will notice the leaves have sun sores, red spots and lightness.  The leaves should have a rich green color with speckles of silver on the leaves on the hoya publicalyx red button. The hoyas australis ssp tenuipes should have medium green lease. The hoya australis ssp tenuipes was in better shape than the publicalyx red button.

All three of the hoyas are in full bloom and AdeniumRose Company

is in the process of propagating the hoya plants for mid summer release. We are propagating larger sections than normal so when released client will get bigger hoya plants. Hoyas make great indoor hanging or climbing plants or/and patio plants under overhangs to protect them from too much sun light. Hoyas are more tolerant of water than typical flowering succulent plants but they still do not like sitting in water or non-porous soil.

The images were taken with a Samsung s7 phone in normal daylight setting.

The image shows the hoya plant after working on it the past week. I rescued it from a wholesale nursery that did not know how to take care of hoya plants. Many of the leaves were damaged by too much sun (red/cracked/blotches) and the it was choking itself in the container. Pubicalyx red button hoya plant grows fast and has rich purple flowers.

This hoya plant had many flowers on it but due to the sun the nursery person said the just fall off before opening (he did not know it require shade/indirect light to grow well). The plant was growing with 4 other Hoya plants in 10 gallon containers along a fence in the back of the nursery where most customers do not see it.  I travel other nurseries in South Florida to see what they are offering and grab rare plants other wholesale plant growers are offering. Not all nursery growers know how to maintain all varieties of plants. It seems when it comes to cactus and succulents not specialized nursery growers either over water them or give them the wrong amount of light or fertilizer.

When the plant was first obtained it was twice the size as in the image. When Pubicalyx red button hoya plant is very nature it sometimes sends out purple starter leaves.  One the leafs grow they turn green and have tan/white speckling on them. We have another large Pubicalyx red button hoya that is used for propagation and this one will be added to it. We expect to have a few ready next month and then in 3 months many more.

The wholesale dealer said he have a few more hoyas which I plan to rescue this weekend if they are of the rare type like this one. If I remember I will take images first so you see how distress the hoya plants are before I work on  them (Cutting away bad parts).  The dealer does not know the names of the Hoya plants or where he obtained which is way they were in the back someplace not being offered to his clients.  When you visit nurseries do not be shy walk the whole area (the workers will tell you if you are in off limits area or not).  Sometimes you will find something way in the back that you know what it is but the nursery has neglected that you can obtain for pennies on the dollar.

Some Floridians complain about never having a true winter or getting fall colors. Then we get discourage more when summer heats begins in late March (remember we are tropical South Florida) but one thing we do not complain about is growing things. The hoya plants are doing great and we expect to release another bunch of rare very hard to find Hoyas beyond the ones already listed on the AdeniumRose website in two months.

The hoyas plants were received in early January as plugs/rooted cuttings (very small plants with very few roots with 2 or 3 leaves). Just about all the hoya plants received have grown to several leaves and tripled in size.  Not all hoyas grow at the same rate and usually the rare ones are rare due to how hard they are to propagate and/or grow in various environments. All our hoyas are grown in 6″ round hanging pots using a propagation soil mixture.

In south Florida, just about all types of Hoyas can be grown from cuttings and plugs without any special growing setups. Yes, we had some failures but less than 5%  and usually that’s because the plugs/rooted cuttings were received in poor condition from the original supplier.  Some of the hoyas will not take off until the humidity kicks in around late April time frame.

Quick note about the adeniums: the last shipment of adenium desert rose plants  were received in January and they are leafing out. We expect to add them to the Adeniumrose website at the end of this month or in early April. Yes, we received in over fifty 3-in-1 adenium desert rose plants, about 30 jumbos and hundreds of standard size adenium plants. The last order of 3-in-1 plants (last year) were gone in less than 2 weeks once released so please check for updates on a regular basis.

There are well over 200 varieties of hoya plants – some very common and some very rare / hard to obtain.  AdeniumRose Company is in the process of having rare hard to obtain hoya plants contract grown to be ready to ship to us in January.  The hoya plants are being grown from small clippings in a very controlled environment to greatly improve success rate and root growth rates. Here in Southeast Florida we are propagating from cuttings with a very high success rate in a 75% natural light screened area.  Since we just about always warm in southeast Florida we are able to start hoyas from clippings just about year round without heat lamps or artificial lights.

The clippings we are using have 3..5 leaves on them and many have small roots one the vines before we take the clipping. Some varieties of hoyas do not produce roots along the vines in the air (out of soil) so the success rate of growing from those hoya plants cuttings is lower.  Once we clip a section of the parent hoya plant we wait 3 days before we soak the clipping in Dyna-Gro K-L-N for 20 minutes – we do not use powder rooting hormones.  After soaking the clipping the plant is placed in soil and then watered 24 hours later. Do not water right away. It’s better to give the plant time to absorb the K-L-N nutrients for 24 hours first.

Presently we are growing 15 different hoyas types from cuttings at our Miami facility.    Here is a list of the hoya plants we are having contract grown for us in Thailand which we should received in late January or February and then ready to list on our site around May:

hoya Pink Archboldiana
hoya rotundiflora (sp.square leaf)
hoya anulata
hoya blashernaezii
hoya caudata
hoya darwinii
hoya lucardenasiana
hoya sigillatis
hoya glabra
hoya lobbii “cream flowers”
hoya lobbii “dark red (black) flowers”
hoya neo-ebudica
hoya flagellata
hoya halconensis
hoya forbesii
hoya montana
hoya caudata sumatra
hoya alagensis
hoya erythrostemma “QSBG”
hoya sp. chicken farm
hoya sp. miari jaya 58
hoya imperialis “white flower”

If you have questions or special hoya variety request please let us know.   If we have a parent plant or obtain one we can have hoyas desired grown here in Miami or Thailand.