Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Cutting not getting any roots??? Help!, 1 by Clare_CA

Clare_CA wrote:
Hi Kdkral, you are quite right that the Plumeria101 does say to use pea gravel on top! Yikes! I do not recommend it at all because you can't see when the soil is dry and needs watering and because people have reported burns on their plumerias from it! Now that I think about it, more than one of these reports are from growers in Arizona. You guys have a fiercely hot sun there, don't you? I would nix the pea gravel and use a stake instead if you need to keep the plumie upright until it is rooted. You are also right that the green wood is more subject to sunburn than the hard wood. Your neighbor knows that roots come from the cambium, but scraping is not a good idea, in my opinion, because you can damage the cambium and cause rot. Roots naturally come from the swollen cambium at the very bottom of the cutting, not from the sides. The bottom should be calloused over before it is planted for rooting purposes. Here are some cuttings that were water-rooted below. It shows the start of roots.