Training Caapi

[Fenris]

I have a Caapi vine that was bought recently and it has taken off really well, it has been growing about 4cm a day, the only problem is that it has outgrown the wire cone structure I put in to help it climb.

Will Caapi grow along a pergola or does it only want to climb upwards?

Should I relocate the plant to the nearest tree and let it go up that or would it be better to put some lattice up the side of the house?

I am in a rental with no intention of moving any time soon so if it gets established it will have at least another couple of years growth before anything would change.

How fast do the roots grow? I am wondering how easy it will be to re-pot after a few years, its currently in a 15 liter pot I think.

Cheers

[Benzito]

It does tend towards upwards growth, mostly, but I think it really just grows towards the sun, or light source.

I've never tried to train one, I've kind of 'helped' them grow in the right direction, but never tried to directly influence the direction of growth. So, maybe you can actually make them grow downwards for all I know, but mine tends to prefer an upwards growth habit.

[synaesthesia]

i never knew that they grew so fast ! 4cm a day!!! thats phenomenal, how come ive seen photos of people caapis after a year or two and they dont look humugnus then ?

Wow 4cm a day, thats fast as, i wish all plants could grow that fast.

[sobriquet]

4cm?

Mine grows at least 10-20cm a day and it has two main growing tips.

It's gotten to about 2.5 m long and that's from a small cutting about 2 months ago.

Here's my technique...

Once I realised it was growing so fast I repotted it into a 15L self watering pot. I put in three poles in the sides and tied a string from the base of one to the roof of the greenhouse. The growing tip is wrapped around the string and allowed to grow up.

Every week oro so it gets to the top of the string and I just unwind it from the string and wrap it around the three poles fixing it with wire ties. The tip is wrapped around the string again and the process restarts. The leaves are huge and are very happy catching light wrapped around the three poles as they are.

I'm 40% up the 1 metre poles already and expect that it will run out of room after another two months. I then plan to simply start again from the bottom wrapping between the previous runs of vine. It's the only way I could think of to train this plant which is growing far quicker than I ever expected.

The only other "problem" is I noticed today that the buds along the main vine have started to grow out also! So this one is going to really start going crazy now.

Here's a photo from the 31/10/06 ie. a month ago and I'll post up an update at some stage.

[sobriquet]

Here it is from just some minutes ago. You can see how much growth its put on in just 28 days!

It's going wild in the self watering pot and I top it up every week when I retrain it. Very low maintenance.

I've just put heaps of Dynamic Lifter into the base and water it every second time with a liquid fertiliser and seasol.

[entheonoob]

This is a little off topic but its a caapi thread. Should I have my caapi in my hothouse? People here are talking about really fast growing plants but mine seems to be slowly plodding along. I've had it for a couple of months and its only grown about 15-20cm and about 8-10 leaves.

[Tripitaka]

Hint. Think Amazon!

[entheonoob]

Haha. Very true.

[Fenris]

A bit of an update on my caapi, I moved it to a shady location along the fernce line under a neighbours tree (Eucalyptus ?I think, rough thich bark) that drops loads of branches, nuts and bark on the backyard anyway I made some attachment points from wire and attached the small bit of trellis to the tree hoping the vine would start to climb. No luck there, the vine wants nothing whatsoever to do with the tree, if anything the tree seems to be making it sick??? The ants from the tree got to work putting about 3 varieties of tiny insects on the underside of all the leaves in plague proportion. Garlic & soap doesn't seem to do much, also when the tendrils do get to the tree they mostly die at the tips.

Im thinking I should move it back to the house somehow and maybe cut it back a bit and try to start it again on some trellis on a wall or something. What about using an old hills hoist as a structure for it to expand itself?

[KlUe]

A bit of an update on my caapi, I moved it to a shady location along the fernce line under a neighbours tree (Eucalyptus ?I think, rough thich bark) that drops loads of branches, nuts and bark on the backyard anyway I made some attachment points from wire and attached the small bit of trellis to the tree hoping the vine would start to climb. No luck there, the vine wants nothing whatsoever to do with the tree, if anything the tree seems to be making it sick??? The ants from the tree got to work putting about 3 varieties of tiny insects on the underside of all the leaves in plague proportion. Garlic & soap doesn't seem to do much, also when the tendrils do get to the tree they mostly die at the tips.

Im thinking I should move it back to the house somehow and maybe cut it back a bit and try to start it again on some trellis on a wall or something. What about using an old hills hoist as a structure for it to expand itself?

Hey dude,

Have you got any access to lattice or something similar? Mine is overtaking my balcony's lattice, i'm not complaining though!

With the ants, mine have them all over (even these big mean looking ants) but don't seem to cause any harm , although they haven't brought any insects... But even so, it grows so fast I dont really worry about leaves getting eaten....

Peace

KlUe