Ive had this Monstera for almost 7yrs. He is my one and only and my pride and joy. He started as just two small leaves and I got him for $4 at Trader Joe's. I have only repot him once and propogated a few small leaves to give as gifts.
He is huge and has grown sideways out of the pot. Im unsure what to do to fix this. Im afraid eventually the leaves will get too heavy and snap. Im also so scared to mess up and ruin him.
This last summer I got 4 Monstera fruit. Im also unsure do I leave them on, what do I do with them?
Im open to any and all suggestions.
by Responsible_Tooth_98
3 Comments
if it’s fruiting it’s happy, nice! you can save the fruit to eat, but store them in a bag & wait until the outer bits fall off to ensure it’s ripe. you can chop and propagate the plant at each node and repot the main piece with a moss pole for support so that it doesn’t fall over 👍🏾
Amazing growth from a $4 plant!!! 😍
If you were to just repot or propagate now, your fruit could abort.
To not disturb the fruit and avoid snapping the stem, I would just add a second pot (just like the one you have) to the right, under the top growth. This is what my local plant nurseries do: Put those aerial roots in, then fill pot with soil and water it. The aerial roots will eventually branch out to soil roots and then once that’s established or your fruits are ready to harvest, then you can cut and split that in half from the old pot. Later, once you harvest your fruit, you can go back to your new pot and repot it so it grows upright and place a sturdy garden trellis or wood plank as a support behind it. This seems to be growing outside and I know a lot of people that just let it grow sideways and crawl, instead of climb. Grow how you’d life. You’ve clearly taken amazing care of this.
Look up Monstera deliciosa fruit. It’s known as the **fruit salad plant** – tastes like a blend of pineapple, mango, and banana. Your fruit should be ready to pick this summer. It can take up to a year to be ready. It will be plumper and the scales won’t be as tight and you’ll be able to smell a sweet scent. You want to pick at this stage before it ripens too much so the bugs don’t get to it first. You need to make sure after picking, that the scales fall off naturally and then you can eat the fruit segments underneath (only where the scales have come off). You can speed up the process by letting it ripen in a brown paper bag. It’s a very long and slow process.
🚫CRITICAL to wait for the scales to fall off to show ripened fruit, otherwise the calcium oxalate crystals will feel like it’s burning/cutting up your throat. If you don’t want to eat it, you can gift it to friends/family or sell. Locally I’ve seen it on fbmp for $40 but Miami fruit sells it for like $100 each fruit.
Sorry this is quite long. lol. Hope to get updates on your fully ripened fruit and what you decide to do! 💚
I wouldn’t propagate but once it’s done with the fruits (otherwise you could loose them) I’d repot and mount it to a support pole and basically change direction from crawling to climbing. You could also keep it crawling and repot in a rectangular pot.