The Monstera is an easy plant to care for. In the tips below, you will find the ideal way of taking care for your Monstera and make it grow fast. Because the Monstera is so easy, it will certainly not die immediately if you deviate a bit from its ideal nurturing scheme. It will only grow slower and develop smaller and less fenestrated leaves. Like with all plant care blogs we write, we start by looking at the natural habitat of a plant to get its care 100% right. This guide is both applicable on the Monstera Deliciosa and Monstera Adansonii and all their variants.
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This is a sub-article of our Ultimate Monstera Guide, click here to learn everything else about Monsteras.
1. Natural habitat
The Monstera occurs naturally in warm tropical rainforests from Mexico (province of Oaxaca & Veracruz) and further south in central America to Peru and Ecuador. A young plant starts in the ground, but even before it is 20 cm large, it starts to climb up at a plant nearby to get more light. The Monstera prefers to grow near water and at altitudes up to 1500 meters.
2. Plant size
Size depends on the specific species you have and where you put it. In its natural Habitat, the Monstera Deliciosa grows up to 20 meters with leaves of up to 1 meter. Unfortunately / fortunately it does not come that far in your living room. Here it grows to a maximum of 2 to 3 meters with smaller leaves, especially if your own Monstera Deliciosa turns out to be a Monstera Deliciosa var Borsigiana. The Monstera Deliciosa var Borsigiana can just as well climb high but only has leaves up to 50 cm in size. Here too, it stays smaller in your living room. The same is true for the Monstera Adansonii with a leaf size of maximum 60cm.
The Monstera prefers a place with shade, but it can handle a bit of light. Ideally you should place your Monstera in a room with a lot of indirect light but not in direct sunlight, this will damage its leaves. Too little light in turn results in leaves with few perforations.
The best temperature for the care of a Monstera is 28 to 34 degrees Celcius, but it can grow perfectly and live up to 18 degrees Celcius. It does not grow below 10 degrees and young plants die at freezing temperatures colder than -1 ° C. Older Monsteras can handle temperatures up to -3 ° C for a short time.
A Monstera enjoys a medium to high humidity. That means at least 40% humidity. If that is not the case (often in homes) you can take extra care of your Monstera by spraying it twice a week in the morning. This resembles the rain it gets on its leaves in the rain forest.
If you regularly spray the leaves of your plant, it is wise to clean them off every month. This cleaning happens automatically in the jungle by means of heavy rain. The combination of indoor air and a lot of moisture can encourage bugs, fungi, and infections. You can do this with plain fresh water or even add a drop of dish soap.
Water your Monstera at least once a week so that the soil is well saturated; moist but not soggy. A Monstera does not grow so well when it has wet feet. The soil does not have to dry up between different waterings. If you put your finger in the soil and the soil is dry 2-5 cm deep, then it is the ideal time to add water. The plant needs less water in the winter. It may then dry out to a depth of 7-12 cm. The speed at which a Monstera grows strongly depends on the water supply.
With ordinary potting soil you can go a long way. However, if you want to make your Monstera completely happy you can add orchid bark pieces to keep the soil longer wet and vulcanic perlite to allow for better drainage of the water. If you really want to go all the way for your Monstera then you can also monitor the pH value of the soil. A slightly acidic PH value between 5.5 and 6 (maximum 7) is ideal.
If you want to do something different, you can put a Monstera plant in the water. While a Monstera can start to rot when it has wet feet when its planted in soil, this will not happen when the Monstera is in pure water because all the bacteria that live in soil and make the Monstera rot are not available in fresh water. New leaves will develop but you have to refresh the water and add drops of plant food regularly.
8. Plant food
Feed your plant two weekly during the spring and summer and monthly during the fall and winter. Use half a teaspoon of liquid food. A standard diet with 20-20-20 liquid diet (20% nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) is perfect. If you want to give your plant a maximum chance to thrive (even though that happens very little indoors), then you have to look for a 15-30-15 food with a high phosphorus content.
If you really know what you are doing, you can add extra iron once a year in the middle of the growing season (June) to stimulate growth by dissolving iron in the water.
Repot your Monstera every 1-2 years at the end of the winter. Plant it in a pot that is 5 cm larger than the previous one. First, fill a third of the new pot with new soil, then put the Monstera with its root ball on it. Continue filling around with soil. Finally, add earth to the top if necessary. Push the aerial roots into the new earth.
10.1 Aerial Roots
Many people do not like the air roots that their Monstera has and decide to cut them off. This is not a bad thing to do because loose air roots that don’t get to a water/food source have no function. However, if you want to give your plant a boost, you can lead the air roots to the pot instead of cutting them off. That way your upper leaves have an extra channel for food and water.
If you think your Monstera is large enough, you can prune a leaf just by cutting the leaf with its petiole just above the aerial root. Never remove too many leaves at once. Every pruned leaf can be used to create a new plant.
Both the Monstera Deliciosa and Adansonii can have flowers when the plant is 6-8 years old. Getting the flower and fruit is very rare for a houseplant and is a sign you are doing an incredible job. Let us know in the comments if you have one!
Monstera is a climbing plant so it needs something to climb on. Start to give your Monstera support once the plant starts growing to the sides rather than up. For the Monstera Deliciosa, that happens fairly quickly. The Monstera Adansonii is also often used hanging and therefore needs no support in that case.
Many people use a moss stick for support because the aerial roots can really stick to them to find support. Unfortunately, as long as you do not keep the moss stick constantly moist, this will not happen. And keeping the stick moist is not very smart in the indoor air because of fungi and plant infections that might occur. So you can choose any support you want, a moss stick is not necessary at all. A wooden or metal trellis like the pictures below works perfectly!
If you have just attached your Monstera to a new support, it will usually look a bit miserable. The Monstera, however, is quite muscular and rotates its leaves, so after a few weeks, it is completely oriented again.
13. Problems and how to fix them.
Everything there is to know about fixing your plant when there is something wrong.
|Slow growth||If its winter or autumn, slow or no growth is normal. Otherwise, check if you did everything else in this article to enable fast growth.|
|Yellow Leaves||If the leaves of your Monstera start to look a bit yellow, you are probably giving them too much water. Another reason may be a lack of nutrients. Give your Monstera some plant food to be sure.|
|Brown edges and tips||This probably means that the leaf is drying out. Make sure the humidity increases or spray your Monstera a bit more often. If the humidity was high enough, you may also need to transplant your plant to a larger pot.|
|No or few perforations||The better you take care of your plant and the older it gets, the more perforations its leaves will have. No or few perforations means that your Monster is missing something. This can have several causes. Investigate whether your plant has sufficient light, water, and nutrition.|