AV Babies- Need Help Separating From Mom

i love doing this

JIM

Jim, we know how much you love plants!!! For sure!!!!

i just got through chopping up my salmon sunset,took a few crowns and set them and repotted the main crown and put down gobs of leaves, with luck ill be swimming in ss soon

JIM

I have let most of my streps get too big...........i would have to chop the leaves off to even ship them. Oh well, I can just start propagating more.......(LOL)

I opened this old thread because the oddest thing has happened to some of my babies. Up until now all my babies were very easy to separate and it was clear how many their were. Now I have some that are all muddled together and I can't see one from another. Several of them have 5 or 6 leaves but they are so packed and wrapped around each other I couldn't get them off!

Is time all that is needed?

I have a similar problem, except that my babies are growing behind the parent leaf and are up against the edge of the cup I have them in. I took a picture to show and the only reason I even know the babies where there is that my makeshift greenhouse fell off the table I had it on and a couple of the parent leaf (or leaves since I do not know which leaf or leaves have produced the babies).

On this particular plant they stuck together like glue and the babies will not come off easily. It's the strangest thing. I've separated a lot of babies over the winter and none are like this. They are twisted together and do not come off the mom leaf easily which is very strange to me.

Interesting.. I checked on AVSA's website and unfortunately there isn't anything there on their dividing a leaf clump - http://www.avsa.org/Rooting&Dividing.htm

The only thing I can even begin to say is to separate them as best as possible without breaking too many roots. Which sounds like something you may end up having to do in order to separate them.

Is there anyway you can take a picture of the how they are co-mingled so as to give others who may have a better suggestion and idea of what you're working with ?



Of course I'm wondering if I'm going to have to separate mine before I can acclimate them to a lower humidity climate due to where the babies decided to grow ?

This message was edited May 5, 2010 1:12 AM

It's like they are fused together. On all the other babies it was easy once the dirt was removed to see where the baby was lightly attached to the mom. On these it's like they were fused at the bottom and the leaves are all entertwined so you can't take one out without it affecting another. What a strange thing. I tried to take pictures of it but it's all blurry and you can't tell anything from it.

I'm sorry to hear that the pictures aren't coming out to give a better idea of how the roots are intertwined. That is strange to hear that the roots seem to be fused together. I've been doing some looking around on other sites and found this little tidbit that may be of help to you the person is saying that if the babies get tangled to gently pull them apart, making sure each has a few roots to itself. Even if they are joined by a stem, you can cut them apart. Any open tissue will root below the soil line.

The little guy on the right looks a bit leggy from natural age/leaf drop. I would take a sharp knife and scrape away a bit of outer tissue from just below the first set of leaves to just above the Root line. Then replant deeper-up to the point you just scraped. It will lay flat and wont get top heavy as it grows.

I'll keep searching and post if I find anything more :)

annacanna - one thing to try in separating the babies . . . after you swirl them around in the water to remove some of the starting medium, take a pair of tweezers, squeeze, and put the tweezers between the babies. Once you start to release the tension on the tweezers, that will help pry the babies apart.

SilverTurgis - when you stick your mama leaves, are you cutting the leaf straight, or at an angle?

Syrumani,

The mama leaves weren't cut they were pinched off the mother plant. I left about an inch of stem on each leaf and didn't cut the top of the leaf at all. I didn't end up cutting any part of the leaf itself, the leaf was broken when my makeshift "greenhouse" fell off my plant table outside. When that happened I unwrapped everything (aka took the plasic wrap off the top of the plastic tub) to make sure everything was okay. That is when I discovered the babies growing behind the momma leaves and also ended up with part of the momma leaf being broken due to the fall off the table. I then took each momma leaf and place them in the center of a new cup so that no matter which way the pups/babies decide to grow they won't end up against the side of the cup like the other babies/pups.

The bigger babies I've been able to separate 1 of them from the clump but have not been able to separate the others and don't think I'll be able to unless I physically cut them apart or break them off of each other. They are still being domed to make sure they stay moist for now, but I have been acclimating them to the lower humidity of the area I live. However, I don't think it will be hard to do since the humidity in East Central Florida (near the Space Center) is fairly high right now. We've been dealing with really high humidity lately, which is normal for where I live.

Here's a picture I Took of how the babies were growing when I discovered them after the fall discovered that the momma leaf had broke.

One thing I would suggest, then, on future leaf starts . . . instead of pinching the end of the stem, take a razor or sharp knife, and cut the end of the stem at a 45 degree(ish) angle. That way, when you stick your leaf in the medium at an angle, the babies should come up in the front of the leaf, where the angle is cut.

Syrumani,

I also think that possibly having 3 leaves in 1 cup probably wasn't a good idea either, but at this is my very first successful propagation attempt. My first two attempts were total failures because all I did was place the leaves long stem and all into some soil, watered them and hoped for the best.

I know better now, so next time I'll be sure to just do 1 leaf (2 max) next time.


Katie

You know what, Katie? I know someone who overcrowds his leaf starting cups . . . I'm talking a dozen or so in a 4" pot . . . I don't go to the extreme like he does, but it does work for him. I like the 1-3 leaves per cup myself . . .

Nichole