Pothos N’Joy: 7 Essential Plant Care Tips
Of the many types of pothos, I’ve personally grown and cared for over the years, the pothos N joy or n’joy (Epipremnum aureum ‘n’joy’) is one of my favorites to grow. If you follow the essential care tips I’ve listed in this article, you’ll almost certainly end up with a happy and thriving pothos n’joy of your own.
The essential care tips for the n’joy pothos include watering it when the top inch of soil dries out, providing indirect or dappled light, using a well-draining potting mix, keeping temps at 65°F or higher, inducing high humidity, fertilizing during the warmer months, and repot prior to your Pothos N’Joy becoming rootbound.
Caring for the lovely n’joy pothos needn’t be a challenge when you can follow along with these helpful care tips. There’s so much great info to come, so make sure you check it out!
Pothos N Joy: 7 Crucial Care Tips
1. Water When the Top Inch of Soil Dries Out
If you’ve grown other pothos varieties before, then you’ll recall how they’re very non-demanding when it comes to how much water they receive.
Well, fortunately, it’s much the same story for the pothos N Joy.
A lighter hand on the watering can is always better than a heavier hand. Allow the soil to dry out fully at least one inch down from the top.
At that point, you can replenish the N Joy’s water supply.
How frequently will you end up watering this variegated pothos then? That’s not quite as easy to say, as it depends on the season and your climate.
In warmer weather, the water will absorb faster in this pothos’ pot, necessitating more frequent watering. When the temperatures grow cold, you’ll water very sparingly all winter.
I’d recommend using the fingertip test as your guide. All you have to do is insert one clean finger into the soil to feel how dry it is an inch deep.
The pothos N Joy is very susceptible to root rot, a fungal disease caused by overwatering.
Root rot can easily turn deadly if enough of the plant’s roots die. The good news here is that I’ve already written an in-depth article on how to handle a pothos suffering from root rot, How to Save a Pothos from Root Rot.
An overwatered N Joy is also going to attract more pests such as mealybugs, thrips, and fungus gnats, so too much water on your pothos is going to lead to more than just one issue you want to avoid.
2. Provide Bright, Indirect Light
The variegated leaves of the pothos N Joy might make you wonder what kind of lighting is best for this plant.
It’s simple enough – bright, indirect light.
If you’re not sure with what bright indirect light is, it’s light that passes through a medium such as a curtain before reaching your plant.
When you’re caring for variegated plants, such as the n’joy pothos, supplying them with the correct amount of light becomes more consequential.
The goal you’re trying to achieve with the light is to provide an amount of light so that the variegated plant is bathed in just enough bright light to maintain its stunning creamy white stripes yet not so much that it can burn.
When it comes to which window might be best for your indoor n’joy pothos, an easterly-facing window for the N Joy is perfect.
In the morning, the most sunlight streams through, but the light stays cool and weak the entire time.
Northerly-facing windows produce similar light and thus are also a good option for keeping up on your N Joy’s lighting.
I would avoid westerly-facing and southerly-facing windows, as the light that emerges through them is strongest in the afternoon and might be too direct.
Indirect light, by the way, is never dim or dark.
In the absence of light, the N Joy will lose its variegation.
This is especially soul-crushing, as once any indoor plant’s variegation fades, you can never get it back.
Even if your pothos is otherwise healthy, it will stay green for its entire life.
3. Use a Well-Draining Potting Mix and a Pot With Drainage Holes
Keeping the N Joy healthy is all about providing the essentials, including the right type of potting mix.
The mix can be a standard plant potting mix but ensure it’s well-draining. You’ll recall that the N Joy is not a big fan of standing water, so that water needs a place to go.
The pot you select for this variegated pothos should encourage water drainage as well.
The pot or container you grow your n’joy in should have drainage holes in the bottom of it to allow for excess water to escape the soil. In addition, I’d suggest using a glazed ceramic or clay pot, because they’re both good at absorbing water if you choose to bottom-water your plants.
Many indoor gardeners growing the N Joy, including myself, use soil amendments to help ensure our pothos plants have the best chance to grow and thrive indoors, so I recommend that for your pothos as well.
Peat moss and perlite are the most popular options. Let me talk about both in a little more detail.
Starting with peat moss, this moss is richly abundant and highly absorbent. It’s a great ingredient in compost and can be used on its own as well.
Since peat moss is so absorbent, it will suck up any excess moisture in the N Joy’s pot, ensuring the plant’s roots never become soggy and at risk of root rot.
Additionally, peat moss softens up the structure of the soil.
This can prevent compaction, which is a natural occurrence where the soil becomes hard and presses down on itself, trapping air and water so neither can move.
Perlite is a type of volcanic glass that can store significant amounts of water. Like peat moss, the perlite will absorb water in your N Joy pothos’ pot to keep conditions drier.
It too will aerate the soil so the N Joy is healthy.
4. Maintain Temperatures of at Least 65 Degrees Fahrenheit
The pothos as a whole is a rather cold-loving plant.
By day, the temperatures of the N Joy shouldn’t drop any lower than 65 degrees.
That’s plenty cold and probably chillier than you’d like it in your home or office during most times of the year besides maybe spring.
I don’t see any reason why you’d want your home colder, but just in case you do, the n’joy can tolerate temperatures no colder than 55 degrees.
The pothos cannot withstand freezing temperatures. Even before it reaches that point, if cold shock sets in, your N Joy might experience permanent leaf yellowing, leaf drop, or even death.
In case your n’joy does experience shock or stress and it’s leaves turn yellow, I highly recommend reading my related article titled: Pothos Leaves Turning Yellow? (Causes & What to Do About It)
How hot is too hot for the N Joy? This pothos is fine in temperatures up to 90 degrees.
Even at 95 degrees, the N Joy is still fine, but don’t let it get too much hotter or your plant can wilt, sag, and turn crispy.
5. Induce High Humidity
Considering how tolerant of temperatures the N Joy is, it makes sense that this creamy, pretty pothos would be a high-humidity lover as well.
The N Joy prefers higher-than-average humidity of at least 60 percent. If you can crank the humidity up to 90 percent, that’s even better.
You will need some sort of humidity option for the N Joy considering that the average relative humidity in a building like a home or office doesn’t exceed 50 percent.
One solution is to grow your N Joy in the bathroom. Your bathroom must have a window, ideally an easterly or northerly-facing one that receives bright, indirect light.
Both the temperatures and the humidity in the bathroom will be great for this pothos, and your plant is likely to live out its time happily.
If your bathroom is too small for an indoor plant or if it lacks windows, then you can always buy a humidifier.
Group together like plants that enjoy humidity and turn on the humidifier for several hours per day.
That part of your indoor garden will get just the right humidity it needs without the rest of your garden wilting in the moisture.
6. Fertilize Monthly During the Active Growing Season
Technically, if you wanted to grow an N Joy pothos sans fertilizer, you absolutely could.
That said, if yours is growing slowly or you simply want to bolster its growth, then fertilizer is a-okay.
The time to begin fertilizing the N Joy is when it becomes active, which is in the spring. Fertilize it throughout the summer too.
You only need to fertilize this appealing plant once a month. Use a general houseplant fertilizer or a liquid fertilizer.
The fertilizer should have a balanced mix of the three main plant macronutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
7. Repot Before the Plant Becomes Rootbound
If you’ve followed all the facets of its care routine to this point, then you should be rewarded with a healthy, happy pothos N Joy.
The N Joy is admittedly not the fastest pothos grower, at least not initially, but once it gets underway, then it can grow its trailing vines indoors with gusto.
You’ll naturally wonder when you should upgrade the N Joy’s pot to a bigger one.
This pothos can easily become rootbound, which is quite a problem, so ideally, before then. You’ll want to repot at least every year.
Like the trailing vines of the N Joy will expand wherever there is room, the roots deep in the soil do the same.
However, the roots don’t have nearly as much freedom to trail as the vines, as the roots are limited by the confines of the pot. They begin to enwrap around themselves, creating hopeless tangles.
The roots can also get very stuck to the sides of the pot, which makes dislodging the N Joy a headache.
If you don’t let your N Joy stay in any pot for longer than a year, then while it may get a little rootbound, it shouldn’t be to such an extreme degree as that!
