How To Use A Tomato Cage To Turn A Pothos Plant Into A Big Statement Piece

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Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) are beautiful houseplants. Their heart-shaped, trailing leaves lend a fairytale-like look to any space. Plus, you can easily propagate pothos to get endless greenery for your home. You can fill your home with stunning houseplants without having to shell out hundreds of dollars at the garden center. That said, they're rarely the center of attention. Large houseplants that dramatically fill empty spaces in your home are the ones that draw the eye. There's just no comparing a dainty pothos to something like a powerful fiddle leaf fig with strong, central branches. Pothos stems trail and flow, but the plants don't have much going for them in terms of height — unless you give them a hand with a tomato cage.

Add a tomato cage to your pothos plant's pot and give it the structure it needs to stand tall and proud. In no time at all, it will transform from a dangly vine into a pillar of greenery. You could, of course, train your pothos to wrap its emerald-green tendrils around just about any structure, but tomato cages are particularly well-suited to the task. They're affordable, come in a range of heights, and provide plenty of horizontal hoops and vertical stakes for your pothos to grab onto and fill out. It's a great way to repurpose a tomato cage after the growing season wraps up, since most tomatoes are cultivated as annuals. However, buying one of these simple structures new won't break the bank.

To grow your pothos on a tomato cage, you can take one of two approaches — which works best depends on the size of your plant. When out shopping, you'll spot two styles of tomato cages: cages that you insert into the soil of a pot and cages that you push down over a pot. If you have a young pothos plant in a small pot, you can choose the over-the-pot option — a tomato cage that rests its legs on the ground. A 2-pack of Halatool 45-Inch Tomato Cages costs just $20.  To install the cage, simply place it over your potted pothos and wrap a few trailing stems around the stakes to encourage the plant to grow upward.

If your pothos is large or you already have a more traditional cylindrical tomato cage on hand, like this Legigo 24-Inch Plant Support Cage, you'll need to push the cage into the soil to secure it. Move all of your pothos' vining branches and foliage out of the way to avoid breaking them as you position the cage. Then, as before, wrap a few tendrils around the structure to encourage the plant to latch onto the bars. Once everything is set up, you can care for your pothos as you normally would. If the stems are not winding their way up the cage, attach them to the rings and stakes using soft ties or plant clips to encourage them to do what you want. Luckily, training a pothos is usually very easy. They naturally want to cling to a structure — that's what they do in the wild.