There is a special form of houseplant envy when you see a gorgeous Monstera Deliciosa in a fancy hotel or perhaps a popular Pinterest pin or Instagram post with beautiful, big leaves the size of a dinner plate and impossibly intricate holes (also known as fenestrations) that look like artwork.
Then you look at your own monstera sitting in the corner with smaller green leaves and what seems like slower growth.
When I first started growing my Monstera (which was one of my first houseplants), I made lots of common mistakes and fell for the low-light propaganda. I thought the largely aimless-looking aerial roots were messy and trimmed them back.
If you’re asking, “Why is my Monstera not growing?”, it’s because the plant is in an in-between state, and it doesn’t have the botanical cues to grow into a mature plant. Here is the startagey that I have used time and time again to perk up a stalled monstera and stimulate it to grow the famous fenestrations (holey) leaves that we all know and love.
1. Why Specifically is My Monstera Not Growing?
Before we can unlock our monstera’s potential, we have to find out what stalling the growth…
The misleading low light advice…
I decided to order the list in order of most likely to stall growth in that order. With this being said, the number 1 factor is undoubtedly low light. Monstera are always marketed as low-light plants, but this isn’t really true.
They are native to tropical forests, where they are in a race to grow upwards quickly, climbing trees to get to as bright a spot as possible (without direct sunlight, as this scorches the leaves)
The Test: If the space on the monstera’s stem between the leaves (known as the internodes botanically) is getting longer, yet the leaves are actually getting smaller in size, then your plant is just surviving. It is using its limited resources from the sun to grow leggy, looking for more sunlight rather than growing larger, more glorious leaves.
Are the roots pot-bound?
I once had a healthy-looking Monstera that hadn’t grown a new leaf during the growing season, when usually I’d expect several. When I took it out of the pot, I found a solid mass of roots. There was actually more root than soil, meaning they couldn’t effectively draw up enough nutrients and water, stalling the growth.
The Winter Dormancy Hack
Most people assume their monstera needs to rest in winter, whereas in their native environment, they don’t have such a pronounced seasonal dormancy. In my experience and from my experiments, I found that if you keep the room warm and actually provide the monstera with a growth light, then the monstera can grow new leaves all year round.
This is the trick that growers use when you see those gloriously big Monstera!
2. How to Make Your Monstera Plant Grow Faster and Bigger
To get those enormous leaves we all crave, you have to give monstera reason to grow and provide it with the energy and resources to do so.
The Potting Mix Secrets
Generic houseplant potting soil that you buy for your peace lily is actually not what the Monstera wants. These are hemi-epiphytic plants(they grow in the ground on the forest floor and then climb upwards, developing roots as they go to draw up moisture and nutrients locally).
My Signature 1:1:1 monstera potting soil Mix: I’ve experimented with every ratio you can imagine, and this is the one that replciates thr conditions of its native environment best and triggers the fastest growth: 1 part potting soil, 1 part pine bark chippings (from and orchid mix), and 1 part perlite (or pumice).
Why pine bark you ask? The Pine bark is actually the secret ingredient because it mimics the treek bark of the trees Monsteras climb in the wild.
The larger particle size means that the roots are not sitting in a desne potting medium. More pine bark means greater space forr oxygen with meaans the roots can respire and function properly to allow the plant to grow better.
The Light technique
If you want more of the classic fenestrations (the holes), you need a greater light intensity than we typically see indoors. I found that my Monstera could start producing double-fenestrations (holes within holes), which looked incredible when I moved them to an area where they received around 2 hours of direct, yet very soft morning sun, from the hours of 9am to 11am followed by very bright indirect light for the rest of the day (you don’t want afternoon sun as it’ll scorchh the leaves.
I would, however, caution this approach in seriously hot areas like Southern California, as I found the sun to be much more intense, so it requires some experimentation. If you don’t have an area for morning sun and don’t want to risk burning your monstera, then I recommend a, $30 full-spectrum LED grow light as the best investment you’ll ever make in terms of stimulating bigger leaves with a greater number of fenestrations.
3. My Secret to More Holes (Fenestration Botany)
Why does a Monstera have holes in the first plant? Well, from a botanical standpoint, it’s actually a survival strategy.
- Wind Resistance! Think of the tropical storms, those massive leaves would act like a great big leafy sail and potentially pull the plant over. The holes, of course, let the wind pass through them.
- Light Filtering! The holes actually let sunlight pass through to the lower, older leaves, as an act of altruism, so the whole plant can stay alive and thrive.
The Growth Hack for more fenestrations: Your Monstera will only invest in a fenestrated leaf if it has the energy and the resources at its disposal. Think of the solid green leaf as a cheaper-to-run leaf and a fenestrated leaf as a more expensive leaf. If your plant is only producing solid leaves, it is resource-poor. To make it “rich,” you must increase the light and the nutrition.
Therefore, I use a liquid houseplant fertilizer from my garden centre from any popular brand (I just get whichever is on offer as I found they are all the same), but lately I have been experimenting with liquid seaweed, like famous English gardener Monty Don! I’ll update this article when I get the results of the experiment.
4. The Moss Pole Trick: (Negative Thigmotropism)
This is the most important “Expert Insight” I can give you that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Monstera have a biological trait that is called in botany, Negative Thigmotropism (or skototropism).
The Science: As young plants, they grow away from light as a way to find the dark shadow of a tree trunk. Once they find that tree trunk, they actually need to feel physical pressure against its stem. Here’s how we can harness this for our own benefit…
The Fix: If your Monstera is flopping over in an unruly manner and even growing horizontally, then I can tell you it won’t produce the giant leaves you are looking for. If it feels unstable, so to speak, it actually stays in a more juvenile state rather than maturing. As soon as you secure your monstera to a sturdy moss or coconut coir pole, as I have, the monstera senses the support and sends a hormonal sign to the canopy to announce that “We are on a tree! Start the maturity process!”
Here’s the Crucial Tip: You need to identify the Back of your monstera (where the aerial roots emerge from), and this is what you place against the pole, whereas if you put the pole on the front of the plant (where the leaves emerge), this is going to slow the growth.
5. The Aerial Root Watering Trick…
This is a viral hack I saw circulating my gardening-related feeds on social media! So I put it to the test, and it actually works. As I am sure you have seen, our Monstera grows long, brown aerial roots to grab onto trees in the environment. Some people just tuck them into the potting soil, which is okay, but if you want a Monstera to grow, then try this…
Take one of the long, dangly aerial roots and place its end into a jar of clean water or a small vessel of water mixed with a little seaweed feed, and what happens? The aerial roots can draw up a lot of water and oxygen directly into the main stem, which is a huge advantage. In my experiments, the leaves that were closest to the water-root from the aerial root actually grew 20% faster and 15% larger than the others (I measured these with a tape measure, which wasn’t an exact science, but either way I can confirm the leaves were bigger and they grew faster than usual).
6. Troubleshooting Reference Table…
| Symptom | The Botanical Reason | My Real-World Fix |
| New leaves are smaller than old ones | Drastic Light Starvation | Move closer to a window or add a grow light. |
| Yellowing lower leaves + soft stems | Root Rot / Suffocation | Repot into 1:1:1 Aroid Master Mix. |
| Leaf “stuck” in the sheath | Low Humidity | Gently mist the emerging leaf or use a humidifier. |
| No new growth for 6+ months | Root-bound / Nutrient Gap | Check roots; repot 2-inches larger; start diluted feeding. |
My Final Thoughts from an experienced grower
A Monstera isn’t just a plant, but social media has turned it more into a biological architectural project in well-decorated, stylish rooms! If you put it in a dark corner, it’ll survive but not thrive. However, if you give your monstera vertical support, more oxygen at the roots with pine bark, and enough light-energy to generate the fenestrations, it will reward you with a mini jungle in your room.
So stop waiting for the plant to grow and change the environment, and watch it grow and thrive with lots of fenestrations that we all deserve.