Hey, what’s up, garden friends? It’s me, your host. In this article I shared the ultimate way to care for your indoor plant ivy from my real experience and I also follow these steps myself. So, start reading the article with love. To talk about the ivy, english ivy, to be more specific.
Hedera helix, a really fun, super common houseplant and perennial plant found in the garden.
I was like, how have I never talked about this in an article before?
First of all, I’m gonna go over basic care with the english ivy, and then towards the end of the article, I’ll go over some troubleshooting.I really enjoy that I have an English ivy at home and I know how to take care of it
The basics of ivy you need to know
Hedera helix, the english ivy, comes in a huge assortment of leaf shapes, color patterns.Growth habits are similar.Amongst most of them, the mint colibri, or I have always thought this one was just called the mint.So maybe that’s just the angel exotics who wanted to call it the mint calibri.I don’t know.But this one has always been one of my favorites because I really enjoy the variegation, partially because there’s a lot of variation in the variegation.
Some of the leaves are much more typical, just green and white. The ones that are kind of my favorite are the ones that have all the different shades of gray and green and white and creams in there.
Just pretty. Mint colibri has a very, very, very typical ivy leaf shape to it. There are a lot of varieties, as I mentioned before, some with extremely narrow leaves, some with big, kind of large bulbous y type of leaves. Is that the way to say it? More paddle shaped leaves? Hair’s pretty much the same all the way around, with one exception, and I’ll get to that.
One of the reasons ivy is so common and so often found in the home is that it’s very easy to take care of.
It’s not a demanding plant at all. They don’t need warm temperatures, they don’t need a lot of light, they don’t need a lot of water, and they’re very forgiving. Forgiving is a characteristic I like to have in houseplants, particularly in plants I’m giving to people who maybe don’t exactly have the green thumb outdoors. A lot of the varieties are hardy. Zones four through nine, a very broad growing range. Even though they’re not really particular about their soil, a rich, loamy soil does tend to give the best growth with these guys. So finding hacks on how to get the best growth out of these guys isn’t normally an issue, because the english ivy just grows like insanity indoors and out.
Effects of sunlight on English Ivy
They can go from part shade to full sun.Full sun, though, is where things are a little bit different.
If you have variegated varieties, the leaves that have a lot of white in them, in their variegation, are going to be much more prone to scorch in the hot, blazing afternoon sun.
That’s for in the house and outside.This is a vining plant, and there will be variation depending on light, just as with any plant, mostly just a greater distance between leaves as they’re on this stem , based on how much light there is. Just a few hours of sun’s really all they need.
And it doesn’t need to be direct sun either. And it doesn’t need to be direct sun either.
A room that has a decent amount of sun in it for a few hours a day, that’ll do it. Then it doesn’t need to be directly on them. Always have to be careful with houseplants having the light directly on them, just because that going through the glass and everything makes it can scorch the leaves. Some morning sun would be fine, but they don’t need a ton. These aren’t exactly a super dark loving plant either, so they do need to be in a room that’s fairly brightly lit.
Soil,fertilizer & water on ivy, perfectly
It’s not a plant, kind of like a hibiscus or something, where if you bring it in the house and it’s not getting intense sun throughout the majority of the day, it’s just gonna wilt down on you.
They’re a very medium plant.Low to medium water needs, low to medium light needs.The more in the medium area for light is better. And medium fertilizer.I really never fertilize my ivy very much.As far as watering is concerned, they don’t need very much of it.
It’s actually really important, especially in the house, to make sure that these dry out in between waterings, at least the top inch or so of soil. That’s only because in the house, there tends to be less airflow and so they can be a little bit more prone to root rot and just leaves drop in general from being over watered. This is one of those plants where less is a little bit more. So definitely make sure that the top of the soil is dried out before watering. If you are a diligent, wonderful houseplant keeper fertilizing, go ahead and do it. A monthly application of an all purpose fertilizer is fine.
Something that’s high in nitrogen during the winter when they’re indoors, the typical indoor conditions don’t really necessarily make them want to grow super, super fast, so you don’t really need to worry about fertilizing them. But outdoors, is there an active growth and just growing like crazy? You could fertilize them every week if you wanted to. Until something like salt is formed You want to keep things flush through the soil. If the ivy is planted outdoors, it will take over wherever you put it. Be prepared for that to just be done. It can spread over the entire area. It’ll go as a ground cover and it will climb up anything that it comes in contact with that it can climb up.
The final topic for you
And it’s not the easiest thing to remove once it’s in the ground and established, it takes a while to really clear this stuff out and a lot of, a lot of work. It can even be damaging to homes where people let this grow up. The sides of their house look absolutely beautiful when that’s done, but really, if you want to get that off of the house, it can be problematic sometimes.
