Pothos care, minus the nonsense
Nearly ten years of houseplants, a few dead Pothos in the early days, and a growing suspicion that most Pothos advice online is just copied from other Pothos advice online.
Something’s wrong and you’d like it fixed now
Pick whichever one sounds most like your situation.
Just brought one home, no idea what I’m doing
Everything to do when you bring your first Pothos home
No feeding, no misting, no repotting. Just what to actually do on day one.
Everything, sorted properly
Eight topics. Start with the big one in each, or go straight to whatever’s gone wrong.
Watering
The thing most people get wrong, in both directions.
Light
Where it lives matters more than anything else you do.
Soil
What to plant it in, and whether it needs soil at all.
Pots
Size, material, drainage. Mostly it just needs a hole in the bottom.
Climate
Humidity, temperature, and why the spray bottle isn’t helping.
Pests
What’s eating it, and how to deal with it without gassing the house.
Growth
Bare stems, short vines, and how to end up with a fuller plant.
Propagation
One plant becomes several. Cheapest habit in the house.
Things the internet keeps telling you that aren’t true
Every one of these gets repeated constantly by people who have not tested it.
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Misting raises humidity. For about four minutes, then it doesn’t.
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Pothos are low light plants. They survive it. They don’t grow in it.
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Root bound means emergency repotting. Pothos put up with it for a long time.
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Gravel improves drainage. It does the opposite.
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Tap water will kill it. If you can drink it, your Pothos can too.
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A bathroom is perfect. Humid for ten minutes a day, dark the rest.
Who’s telling you this
I’m Caroline. Nearly a decade of houseplants and enough dead ones to know which advice holds up.
North Yorkshire, south facing house, about 60% humidity on its own, which is one of several reasons I don’t own a humidifier. One highly variegated Pothos called Happy Leaf lives in a terrarium. The rest live in plastic nursery pots inside nice cachepots, because that’s what actually works.
Everything on this site has been tried on real plants in a real house, not paraphrased from someone else’s blog post.
