need advice for stephanotis vine care

[barbara b]

I've had this vine since June 06. It flowered (about 60 blooms) for me this summer indoors in my east facing mudroom. It had been trained on a metal hoop and was tangled beyond belief. Very unattractive. I carefully unwound the vines and set it into a 12" clay pot with a wooden trellis. I pruned some of the vines to make them more managable and tied them up to the trellis with stretchy nylon ties. Since winter temps have arrived, there are leaves turning yellow and dropping off the vine. No sign of pests. Just a lost leaf or two a week. The vine started a growing spurt a couple of weeks ago and is going crazy. The vine is elongating by the day and leaves are developing on it, but there is a lot of space between the leaf pairs on the vine. Seems like its stretching way too much. I need some advice on how to treat this plant during the winter. I love the sweetly fragranced blooms and hope it will perform for me again this summer. Is there a particular fertilizer to use, come spring? I want to keep it indoors all year, as we have a longlived drought going on here outdoors, and the grasshoppers will eat ANYthing green! How about the light situation in my mudroom? Whadayathink?

[jamkh]

Well your error is the pruning of the vines in autumn that created the need for the dormant buds to burst forth. Prune only in spring if pruning is needed. Now the plant has gone outside its natural cycle, you may face the problem of flowering in summer as the leaves would have become old and degraded by then.
The long internodes is an indication of reduced light intensity. Perhaps if you provide an abundance of artificial lights as they are sun loving plants and fertilize with 20-20- 20, you may force the plants to flower in early spring and can still enjoy the fine fragrance.
If this is not possible then hard prune your plant in early spring to get a new flush of dormant buds to break out and grow with more vigor with the increasing light intensity. However you would expect very much less flowering or none at all as the winter food reserves had already been expended. Good luck.

[Newt]

Hi Barbara,

A google search found this care site.
http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/tropical/stephanotis.htm

Newt