Tropicals & Tender Perennials: My Little Plumeria Propagation Set Up, 0 by davidwv

davidwv wrote:
From the wonderful advice provided by Clare and others, I think I just may be successful in rooting my first ever Plumeria cuttings.

Knowing that they like it Hot, Hot, Hot in order to root and then go on to thrive, I came up with this little propagation area for them. It is just outside of my back door, with a GFI electrical outlet right there above the concrete slab. It is a southern facing slab of concrete, but in my neck of the woods it is still quite cool at night right now. And we are having a lot of cool rain also.

But my cuttings and seedlings are toasty warm in their propagation area. To increase the temperature of the concrete I put down some black plastic to help absorb what little solar heat we getting right now. And to keep them from getting water logged, I made a tent of clear plastic over them, this also helps create a greenhouse effect.

I was trying to heat the soil in the pots with just a regular old seedling heat mat. But it was just not getting the temperatures up to where they needed to be, so I added a heating pad (the kind used for back sprains) to the set up. Now I have the soil at the end of the cuttings warmed to a nice 85 degrees. They must be liking it, the seedlings are starting to put out new leaves.

Here in this first picture it shows what the area looks like with the clear plastic over the seedlings and cuttings. The next picture will show the heating pad and seedling heat mat underneath the clear plastic.

The two cuttings with the inflo's are Slaugther Pink, the others are Celadine.