I have a large number of cuttings presently rooting or rooted, and I am beginning to pot them up.
Can I put them in a low light area and let them rest until spring? Or should I try to keep them in light until they are well established? When do I start feeding them with the 20-20-20 fertilizer? How much?
rooted and growing in pots; now what?
Hi gloriag!! Good question! I don't have a clue, this will be my first year with GH brugs and I'd like to know too....
personally I'd at this time keep them in as much light as I can and I'd have already been feeding them.. perhaps a little of something special in the water.. but I'm sure you'll hear other versions of good care
Gordon
Yes, I am in the same spot. I recently put mine in gallon pots. Dont want them to grow tooo much before spring though.
I don't think they will be rooted well enough to allow them to go dormant. If it were me, I'd keep them in light. I don't feed mine until about the first part of Feb. because I don't want them to get spindly. This is just my method. Like Gordon said, there will probably be other ways to grow them inside during the winter months.
I agree with Shirley. I always keep my rooted cuttings in bright light. If I fertilize them , I give them just a drop of fertilizer in the watering can. I don't start fertlizing them heaviy until Spring.
Let me tell you something that might be an 'old gardner's tale'. I was telling my pal, 87, who has been gardening all her life, that when I try to root stuff that some of the cuttings turn to mush. She told me that when she runs into a plant that should root easily, but turns to mush, she makes sure that the bottom of the rooting is off the floor of the container it's being rooted in. I asked her what she used to keep them off the bottom and she said, usually cellophane that she balls up or crinkles up and adds to the water with the rootings, making sure that none of the rootings are trapped, where they can't get water all around the rooting end. She also said that she puts a little rooting hormone in the rooting water.
One more thing she told me: If she is going to leave an iffy plant in the ground to winter, she allows that plant to go through the first frost or two or three (assuming they are not HARD frosts, or doesn't stay below 32 degrees for too many hours) and then she winterizes them, taking cuttings below any damage they might have received and, or cutting back the whole plants which she brings inside. Then, she says, she feels comfortable leaving such cuttings/plants on her covered porch, where it gets colder than the main part of her house, and she's obviously had excellent luck. On the part of the iffy plants she leaves in the ground, she lets them frost burn pretty good, then dumps heavy mulch on them. I'm going to try everything she told me...
Ok, I'm new too. What size pots should we be putting them in at this point? Jeanette
I keep mine in the cheapest gallon size pots I can find. I used to start them in four inch pots and then transplant to larger ones, but I eliminated that step when I found out what a mess it was to transplant all those cuttings in the house during the winter. Even in gallon pots, by late winter, they have to be watered every other day and some of them every day.