Hoya Incrassata: A Care Guide For The Plant With Bundles of Bloom

Hoya incrassata of the Apocynaceae family produces the most spectacular flower blooms ever. Even a single stalk can have up to 80 flowers clustered around each other.

It is a must-have plant to have in your collection. This guide is to help you navigate your way around this rare and gorgeous hoya genus plant.

What Is Hoya Incrassata?

Hoya incrassata is a spectacular variety of Hoya, called the wax plant, since it’s waxy with thick leaves. Its main attraction is its inflorescence which can contain as many as 80 flowers per umbel. Various cultivars have created, Hoya incrassata Aalbomarginata, Hoya incrassata variegata Moonshadow, and Hoya Incrassata Golden Ball.

Hoya Incrassata Care

Buy or make potting soil that is rich and well-draining. This plant loves humidity at 70 percent or more, but lower levels are tolerated fine too. Don’t forget to fertilize regularly during the months of active growth. Want to learn more in detail? We have the entire Hoya guide covered below.

Water Requirements 

This hoya plant needs frequent watering using reverse osmosis filtered or distilled water. The salts and minerals from tap water tend to crystallize and accumulate in the soil and leaves over time.

Some more things you need to know regarding watering are as follows. You will need to water this Hoya two times weekly in the summer. In the winter, there will be a greater time interval between watering as the soil takes longer to dry out. 

The key here is to check if the soil has become completely dry all the way through. Although the Hoya leaves store water, this plant still likes regular watering.

You must make sure your soil has dried before watering each time. This will save you from inadvertently overwatering it. There are a few vetted ways you can check the moisture levels of your soil in under five minutes.

Buy this tool called a moisture meter and insert it within the soil. It will tell you a reading within 60 seconds. You must obtain a reading of three or lower to water this plant’s soil.

A less sophisticated approach would be to insert your finger into the soil up to the knuckles. You will sense if the soil is dry two to three inches deep. Alternatively, insert a stick into the soil near the pot’s rim. Don’t push too hard because there is some risk of damaging the plant’s roots.

Light Requirements 

This hoya houseplant will tolerate direct sunlight pretty easily; however, for it to bloom and decrease the risk of sunburns, it’s best to provide only partial sunlight. You can grow it outdoors all year except when the temperature becomes too hot or too cold.

Inside the house, you need to determine which window in the house receives which type of light.

You better keep the Hoya pots as near these windows as possible.

• The southern side window receives the brightest light via direct rays. This is the most effective light for this Hoya. Still, we recommend you cover the window with a curtain during the noon hours of the hottest summer days.
• The northern-facing window is not adequate for your plant. It receives indirect light that is often too mild. How about you install some artificial lights for plants to make up for this lack of adequate light.
• A window towards the east receives direct light only during the early morning. The indirect light for the rest of the day is strong enough to allow Hoya to produce enough food and energy.
• The last window is the western-facing one. This, too, receives mostly indirect light that is intense enough for this plant. If the direct light for two to three hours in the evening is too much, then a lightweight curtain would help.

Soil Requirements 

You want soil that drains most of the water out right away. At the same time, it needs to have enough nutritious ingredients to feed the growing plant. Make sure your potting soil has the following key ingredients, or you can add them yourself if lacking. The ideal soils for this plant would be as listed below:

• Perlite comes in the form of balls that create spaces within the soil. This naturally increases the porosity, air circulation, and soil drainage. This is the key ingredient for ideal soil.
• Peat is the organic constituent of your soil and contributes to water retention without water logging. Since it is a non-sustainable resource, many people are now opting for homemade compost. 
• You can also add chunky pieces of bark to the soil to prevent it from clumping together. Another popular substitute for bark pieces is coconut husk or coco coir.
• Organic ingredients like peat, coco coir, and bark break down over time. You will need to replenish the soil with them every year.

Temperature Requirements 

65 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit is this plant’s moderately warm temperature range. It can neither tolerate cold drafts of air nor extremely cold winters. Once it undergoes cold shock, it will undergo an alarming leaf drop and go into dormancy. You will find it very difficult to get it to start growing afterward.

Keep in mind to properly protect your hoyas by move your plant indoors at the start of winter just to be on the safe side. Even during summer, if the nighttime temperature falls too low, it’s best to keep them inside. While inside the house too, keep the windows close at night.

Ask yourself, are you keeping this plant in a room cooled by an air conditioner? We’re not sure if this is such a good idea, in any case. How about you move it to the kitchen or the laundry room?

Don’t place its pot right beneath an air vent or conditioner. Naturally, there will be some temperature difference when you move a Hoya from outside to inside or vice versa. Your plant will take some time to adjust, and there is nothing to worry about in this case.

Humidity Requirements 

Incrassata is quite adaptable to a wide range of humidity from moderate to large. However, if you want a healthy plant with its glorious blooms, 70 to 80 percent humidity levels are a must. 

Since these levels are higher than you naturally find in your homes and offices, below are three artificial methods to keep your plant happy. You can buy pebbles trays easily from a garden supply store. They come in all sorts of shapes and designs. You can also make your own DIY tray using household items.

All you need is a shallow tray and some large-sized pebbles. Water fills the tray and evaporates over the day, increasing humidity around the plant. The pebbles ensure that the bottom of the plant doesn’t actually touch the water. Otherwise, your soil will reverse absorb this water and become muddy.

Misting is another method of improving humidity by lightly sprinkling the waxy leaves of your Hoya. If you can spare enough time to mist your plant two to three times a week, this is the right option.

Just take care to use clean water for sprinkling. Use a very small amount of water from a reasonable distance. Don’t mist during the evening as the water droplets need time and heat to evaporate.

Furthermore, a humidifier is a lifesaver for the busy ones among you. It especially comes in handy in office and corporate settings. Please put it in the room with your Hoyas and set it to 70 percent humidity.

Most new humidifiers are automatic and will shut down when the desired percentage is reached. They will then restart when the air starts drying again. Humidifiers come in various price brackets, depending on their specks. Choose one that suits your budget and living space the most.

Fertilizing Requirements 

In order to get your Hoya incrassata flowers to bloom, you will need to feed your plant. This is especially important during the growing and blooming period lasting throughout spring, summer, and fall.

A slow-release fertilizer comes mostly in the form of pellets. You can bury two or three of them in the soil a couple of inches deep. They slowly dissolve as you water the soil and release their elements thereby. Burying these formulations in the soil at the start of spring will last you for the rest of the bloom.

Most rapid-release formulations of fertilizers come in liquid form that you can pour on the soil. This makes them a bit dangerous too. You need to always dilute their strength by adding more water.

Keep in mind to pour them towards the soil away from the plant’s stem. As mentioned earlier, such fertilizers must be fed to the plant every month during the bloom. Every month, deep water your plant with copious quantities of water. This is to flush away toxins and salts that inevitably collect within the soil due to regular fertilizer use.

Pruning Requirements

Your plant needs more from you than just watering and feeding. Busy plant owners often ignore grooming for lack of time. We bring you some easy-to-follow grooming tips to keep your plant in shape.

• Keep a keen eye out for old, yellowing, or brown leaves and keep pruning them off.
• The same goes for flowers once the blooming period is over. This practice is called deadheading and benefits the next year’s yield.
• Pruning random branches off with sterilized scissors encourages more growth.
• Keep your plant clean and dust-free. A dirty and unpruned plant is a favorite home for pests like aphids and scales.
• Don’t neglect cleaning your gardening tool before use on each plant. Good plant hygiene habits surely do go a long way.

 

Propagation

Propagation is when you use parts of an adult plant to give rise to a new one. Hoya is mostly propagated using either its stem or seeds. Early spring is the most suitable time to carry out any of these methods because this is when the plant’s growth is at its maximum.

– Stem Cuttings

It would help if you took a healthy and young stem to propagate a new Hoya. A five to six inches long stem cut right under a leaf node would suffice. Make sure to use sharp pruning shears and make an oblique cut. The rest of the steps of this process are given ahead.

1. The cutting should be dried out first. Wrap it in a paper napkin and put it someplace dry and dark for one to two days.
2. When it has dried, dip two inches of this cutting from the cut in rooting hormone.
3. Now, prepare your ideal potting soil in a small pot. Place the cutting right in the middle of it with the cut end going down. More than half the cutting needs to be under the soil.
4. Take your pot to a place with filtered bright or mild direct light. To provide high humidity levels to the pot, you can wrap transparent plastic over it. Do allow the cutting a few hours of breathing space every day by removing this sheet.

– Propagation In Water

You can put your cutting in a transparent jar of water until it sprouts new roots and shoots. This way, you can see the progress with your own eyes.

Ofcourse, the water you will use has to be filtered water. It will need to be changed every week to keep the plant going.

Place the jar in a warm, bright room and wait until new growth emerges. When the new roots become around two inches long, you can transfer this mini plant to a pot.

– Growing Hoya Plants From Seeds

Seed propagation is rather difficult and takes a longer time comparatively. You will also have to put in the effort to obtain the best quality seeds you can find.

1. Take a seedling tray and lay a nutritious medium like sphagnum moss over it. 
2. This medium needs to be slightly damp but not too runny. You should squeeze out the extra water from it beforehand.
3. Plant the seeds in a row within the tray one by one. There should be a respectable distance between each seed, in any case.
4. Keep the tray covered with a transparent sheet and under bright direct light.
5. Soon, quite a number of these seeds will germinate and grow shoots up from the medium.
6. Allow these tiny plantlets to grow a bit, after which you can move them to their respective pots.

Problems 

Incrassata, like sister plants Hoya kerrii and Hoya rotundiflora, is a problem-free plant. It might suffer from occasional pest attacks, leaf drops, or the plant not flowering on time. In order to learn how to solve these problems, jump down below.

– Thrips

Thrips are very common among Hoya species, especially those kept indoors. These are very small winged insects, barely 1/25th of an inch long. They can lurk all over the plant, especially under the cluster of leaves.

They are sap-feeders and puncture your plant to feed on the milky white sap of this plant. If you look closely using a magnifying glass, you will be able to see these marks on the leaves.

After a couple of months, the affected leaves will begin to show symptoms. Yellow or brown spots will develop on the leaves. They will assume a blotched appearance with curled edges.

Getting rid of insects seems impossible, but it is far easier if you know how to do it. If you wish to know more about getting thrips out of your plant, continue reading ahead.

• Take your pot under a sink and run water through it. Keep scrubbing the plant with a toothbrush. This will eliminate most of the adult thrips right away.
• Buy some neem oil and then dip a cotton roll with it. Use this cotton roll to wipe the leaves and apply neem oil on them. 
• Neem oil is a natural anti-fungal that poses no risk to your plant’s well-being. It must be continually reapplied every week for at least two months to eradicate the infestation.

– Not Flowering

It can be not very pleasant when your Hoya refuses to flower. This can be due to several reasons. You first need to know that Hoyas take at least two whole years before they start to flower.

Other potential causes of lack of Hoya incrassata variegata flowers can be overwatering the plant, not giving it enough sunlight, or over-fertilizing. Too much nitrogen in the plant will suppress flowering quickly.

If your plant is a young one or a recently purchased one, you need to be patient. See where the plant is being kept and whether it is getting enough sunlight or not. One indication of this is that the leaves turn darker than normal.

If the cause is overfertilizing, your plant will produce the most luxurious leaves but no flowers. You should flush the soil to get rid of residual fertilizer from it. It would be best if you also stopped fertilizing for a while. Then stick to a proper schedule and not overdo it.

Lastly, overwatering soon leads to the death of the plant. If you are doing this, stop immediately and move the plant under direct light. This would speed up the evaporation process.

– Leaf Drop

Your plant dropping leaves one after one can be pretty alarming. The number one reason why this happens is when the plant suffers from lower temperatures than it can tolerate. For Incrassata, this temperature is below 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Your plant starts shedding leaves to conserve its energy in order to survive.

When this starts happening, move the plant inside the house. Within the house as well, keep away from cold air drafts from vents. Your plant will take some time, but it will recover eventually. 

One lesser-known reason for leaf drop is a less than ideal humidity level. Dry air sucks the moisture from the leaves, causing them to curl around the edges and fall off. Misting regularly and using a humidifier or a pebble tray are the easiest solutions to this problem.

FAQ

Does Hoya Incrassata like to be wet or dry?

Hoya Incrassata prefers slightly dry conditions rather than being constantly wet.

Can I mist my Hoya Incrassata leaves?

Misting Hoya Incrassata leaves occasionally can promote healthy growth.

Will Hoya Incrassata thrive in plastic pots?

Hoya Incrassata can thrive in plastic pots, but ensure proper drainage to prevent waterlogged soil.

Conclusion 

Congratulations on making it this far. Before we let you go, we must recapitulate the most important points.

• Keep Hoya Incrassata eclipse plant under bright direct or slightly filtered light.
• This plant likes to be watered often, but you must let the soil dry out first.
• Propagation of this plant is best carried out by taking stem cuttings in both water and soil as a medium.
• Feeding this plant is important, but overfertilization will suppress the growth and bloom of flowers.

You are now ready to go and buy a pot of this Hoya species and care for it all by yourself. Trust us, trust us, this is precisely the plant that your house and office need.