Project Propagate: Week 2

About US
Grow Food
Services
- About
- Portfolio
- Maintenance
- Price List
- Options
Contact
Brochure
Testimonials
How It Works

13 May 2011 3 Comments

It’s the end of the second week of my series on rooting cuttings. Things are not looking quite as optimistic as last week.

For one thing – watering with standing water underneath the flats is like taking on a mosquito breeding program. I think i’d be better off dumping the trays occasionally and refilling them instead of letting the water stand at all times. That might help with fungal issues as well. We finally got some rain yesterday, and the mist made little puddles on the plastic wrap that fell onto some of the plants: some squished plants were casualties. And then there’s the sage.

None too happy.
It looks good in my much dryer set up, however. Which makes sense – mature sage doesn’t like a ton of water, why would baby sagelets like it? Note to self when rooting sage: less moisture is better.There is some new growth coming up on some of the moldy plants – so i’m hopeful for at least a few surviving specimens on top of my personal stash.

How about roots? The rosemary is still showing zero signs of foots, but the softer stemmed herbs like lemon balm seem to be rooting well. I don’t feel good pulling out too many plants to check, but this specimen is looking nice.

The salvias don’t seem to be taking well. Many of their leaves have been lost, and the stems don’t appear to be putting out any roots at all.

What am i doing wrong? Too moist? Not enough fertilizer? Too many blooms in with the stems?
How is your cutting project progressing?

3 Comments »

Jay said:

You might have better luck trying to root cuttings in sand. 2″ clay pots are perfect. Similar trays are good if they drain. Thyme, rosemary, sage and sweet marigold, for example, will all root in water, if you want and then you can see when they start to root.

I prefer the clay and river sand. When I see roots peeking out the drainage hole, I know I’m ready for larger pots. I never feed when I’m rooting cuttings. If you do, there’s less incentive for the cutting to send out roots.

Lemon balm, I firmly believe, will root if you just wave it at the garden. If you don’t contain it, it will be everywhere sooner than you want.

Good luck.

# 15 May 2011 at 12:14 PM

Ramonchu said:

First off, it’s been way too hot to really do much cloning in the garden, at least that’s what I’ve found. Even the into-the-ground-transplanting I’ve been doing of plants that had overgrown their small pots over the spring has been only fairly successful. Like all plantings, hot, dry summer months, made all the more unfavorable by the hot humid then hot dry then torrential rain days we’ve been having, just don’t reward projects like yours. Even in your carport to-go boxes the conditions simply aren’t awesome. Hell, I couldn’t even get a handful of lavender to take last week, and that’s my go to transplanter.

That said, you hit the nail on the head with a few of your observations. Woodier stalked plants, like sages and rosemary, take a long time to root in soil. I have tried soaking these plants to varied success, but have definitely learned to not let the plants go more than 3-5 days submerged. Which gets to your second observation, too much moisture is often the downfall of cutting transplant. Most of these plants are drought tolerant, and giving them too much water at an especially susceptible point in time simply shocks them to death.

One tip I would suggest from immediately looking at your photos is to cut down on the amount of large leafy growth your leaving on your cuttings. A master gardener back in California explained this to me. When a cutting has lots of growth to maintain above ground, it puts most its energy into maintaining that growth, instead of sending out roots. Trim back the large, leafy growth and leave only the young, verdant growth usually found near the tips of the cutting, as this is most likely the only growth that will survive anyhow.

Finally, expect cuttings to take some time to not only root themselves but to show any growth at all. It took nearly an entire fall season for a batch of native California plants to go from clipped cuttings to rooted transplants to ground plantings to showing any signs of growth. Though once they did they thrived and proved to be extremely rewarding.

Good luck with all this and keep us updated.

# 20 May 2011 at 8:53 PM

admin said:

Thanks for the great advice Ramonchu!

I think our recent cloud cover has been quite advantageous to our project, and things are going well. It is true about the heat – we have to take extra precautions to ensure that plants put in the ground this time of year get established. Shade cloth and frequent watering help tremendously.

We indeed will remove foliage next time. We were focusing on the container options and forgot. These concrete mixing containers turned out to be super flexible and quite convenient. Glad you enjoy propagating as much as we do!

# 26 May 2011 at 11:53 AM