WOW in being excited but HMMM in confusion.
Well I'm not certain what the date was that I put 4 very short green brug cuts in the bubbling bucket along with a couple passies, a couple hibiscus and 3 coleus. I believe it was last monday or tuesday night. I have an odd observation. 1 of the brugs has 4-5 lil white roots almost 1/4 inch long but has lost the most foliage out of the 4. It still has4 leaves, the largest being less than 2 inches long. Now 2 of the other 3 have several large leaves on them and they look as f they could still be on the plant(they look that perky). Those 2 have the least amount of bumps on them. the only 1 I haven't described yet falls into the middle. It has several leaves but 1/2 of them are fairly wilty but the submerged stem has more bumps on it than the other 2 that have yet to root. I'm thinking the less foliage on the cutting, the less energy the plant spends on maintaining the leaves and sends more energy to the rooting part of it.
None of these cuts are longer than six inches and 2 or 3 are severly curled back upwards towards the surface. It's been my experience that the less light he rooting area sees, the faster/better the roots come along and that is fiurther backed up by the 1 cut that has roots. Its stem is strait and shoots down to the dark area of my solution they're soaking in. I'm using 1 cap full of Maxicrop per
1 gallon of water and around 10 drops of superthrive. I'm using a small paint pail for a bucket that is maybe a tad bigger than 1 gallon. The maxicrop makes this solution very dark, you can't see the bottom of the pail and its only 8 inches deep. It remains to be seen if that really has anything to do with it. I just know when we used this same principle with some other annuals in a home made aeroponic "cloner", we made sure to make the containor as light proof as possible. The only difference in that experiment and this is the aerocloner had a lid(it was a shallow rubbermade containor) with holes in the top that the cuts stuck thru. We used a high volume air pump and huge airstone and left the tips above the water level in the containor. the bubbles were so thick that they constantly splashed the cuttings with a super fine mist which is why we called it aerocloner.
Thismeans I have 1 brug with roots in 6 days if I remember right and 1 coleus has roots and that has been 4 days tops! Now I think its time to get another bucket or 2 and make this a tad more scientific. I'll use the same solution in all 3 buckets. I'll stick both woody and green cuts in all 3. 1 pale will have all light blocked from the root zone, 1 will be down exactly as we're doing it now and...LOLOL I forget what/why I as doing the 3rd pale.
I meant to start this experiment with cuttings in my oasis cubes and rooting hormone too but that didn't pan out. I hope I'm not embarrased when I read this post in the morning
OH YA! The 3rd pale will have its cuttings either dipped in rooting gel or soaked overnight in a heavy rooting solution before going into the bucket.
BTW I also switched from the regular blue airstone to ceramic microbubbler airstones that produce much more bubbles and they're super fine in size The pump is large enough that the bubbles break the surface of the water and mist the bottom side of most of the leaves on the cuts too. I've noticed that those keep their foliage more lush and I spray them daily with a mist bottle and use the same solution I'm rooting in. It makes the leaves that have gone wilty on me to perk back up FAST.
Tomorrow I plan on removing the bigger leaves from 1 or 2 of the remaining cuts and see what happens too.
Any other ideas? Any suggestions for the future and did anyone else happen to start new cuts?
Goodnight all and keep it green;)
JD
This message was edited Mar 14, 2005 11:17 AM
Bubbler's? Can some1 show me? A simple cloning/rooting gizmo
Good job JD! That piece I sliced off never wilted and now turns to the light. (I've been playing with it by moving to the end of the light fixture or on the table completely out from under )
Guess I'll see roots at the bottom before long. Now I'm eyeing other suckers and getting a new blade ready.
Hot Doggies, good going, JD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope you got some sleep, take very good, cautious care of yourself! Sounds like your bubbler is off to a super start. Fun, aren't they??!! I must have missed the part about keeping them dark, I put mine in the GH, but they started rooting almost immediately too.
JD, you will be the first to know - yesterday when I got outta the car and headed in, I strolled by Dr. S, who did not do well, at all, last growing season - so, I thought someone had tricked me and put a stalk of celery by her - NOT so, Dr. S was waving to tell me she made it through the winter!! Then, I went straight to VP, who does not like to be cold - I had to dig deep, but she is alive, I'm just thrilled. Tiara, Rosamond, Pink Beauty, Pink Favorite, and, I really think all of them will make it. Then, we had a 15 minute freeze last night, but they are a-okay. Can you say EXCITED, I'm strolling on air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sherry that is amazing those plant's lived thru the winter! I wonder did you have a mild winter? It got down to 28 here last night and the days are averaging 45 now. Man I can't wait to move most of these plants outside! I can barely get into my closet and I'm now backed away from the window shades almost 6ft now!LOL It is such a jungle here.
I had planned on going to my kiddo's highschool to work on several plants I have up there and take cuttings there too since the humidity in their sunroom is very high. I just realized the kids are out on spring break! It maybe a couple weeks before I can touch all my other/bigger plants that I need to cut on desperately. Hopefully her Bio teacher will meet me up there 1 day this week and let me do some work.
This will be the first spring that I get to start outdoor's with large Brugs and passiflora's. All the past years due to lack of space, I've had to start over from cuts I took the fall before. This year I have several different Passie's that were huge when I took them up there several months ago. The last time I saw them(2 mos ago) they were all ready to be potted up and just so lush and big. I have my 1st Charles Grimaldi that was a big bush when taken up there, it's now atleast 6 ft in diameter and even taller than that. I'm hoping it has some large basal shoots that I can let grow out like tree'sand I'll cut off the larger, bushy arms to make very big bush's to put everywhere. C.G. is my favorite brug so far as it grows so fast for me and will be blooming as soon as it gets outrside. I recieved it as cutting from Clare late last winter(probably around this date) and by July 4th it was already covered in blooms. We have an annual 4th of July party at my house where all of our families, old and new nieghbor's plus their friends all come over for a feast and we have a great view of the cities fireworks display then we come back to my place where we have to literally WORK to get all the fireworks people bring over shot off. It never fails that me, my lil Bro and Dad are either fearless, pyromaniacs, or just plain dumb and end up shooting off everything that the people bring over. 1 of our old nieghbor's spends several hundred's on huge display's and never lights a single one, he just keeps handing them to me holloering "try this 1 try this 1!".
But to get back on track...That CG sat proudly up on the deck and was in full bloom and literally stopped everyone cold and steals the show. It makes me look like such a master gardener as nobody around here knows what they are. LOL I felt bad for my wife as most of her flower beds are in there early stages and nowhere near filled out and covers most the yard. But my 1 CG and a few Passiflora's that are the minority steal the show!LOLOL
This summer should be much more astonishing as I have 10 fold the brug's started and already bigger than last years. Let the garden tours begin!
Well I'm going to take/start some more cuttings in different ways for more experimenting. I'm going to buy some "Rapid rooter's" this week for passi cuts and others. I hear wonderful things about these little rooting plugs. I'll keep you all posted.
JD
Well I finally got a camera up and going so I can share the results of rooting new green tips vs. old woody stumps. The woody 2 that I put in the bubbler approximately 2 weeks ago barely have bumps on them but the green shoots with new foliage are all rooted enough to plant. I'll take more pictures when I have time.
The other cutting in these pictures is a Passiflora Lavender lady where i used a razor blade to scrape away the outter most layer of "skin" to get to the inner level or meristem I think is what its called. This method is called stem or root scarification and as you can see, the roots grew out of the 2 areas I scraped. I don't see this being needed for brugs but I'm going to try it on older woody stemmed brugs maybe.
I also found out that when your rooting brugs in a bubbling bucket, you only want a couple inches of stem under water or in my case a maxicrop/Superthrive/water solution. The other cuts that I didn't support and several inches of stem went under water didn't root nearly as much as the others. I think it's due too having too much surface area on the stem trying to root rather than just a couple inches submerged under water. Just my lil observation and opinion. I'll be taking more cuts to try and support these ideas ASAP.
Take a look.
Please excuse my lack of spelling and grammar, I'm to tired to edit now;)
This picture was an attempt to show the area of the stem I scraped the stem. I find it kind of odd that the bottom nodes didn't root like usual. I scraped down there too in 1 spot. Beats me but I've never had passiflora's root in water ever. I've always had to use every trick in the book and it was still slow and time consuming.
Some of my cuttings were six foot tall this year. Last year I tried the bubbler, and didn't have to change the water. This year I drilled holes app 3 in from the bottom, and with two air pumps had 5 buckets going. Nearly all have been transferred to soil, and are doing wonderfully. The many that I left inground are mostly returning; those cuttings that I buried rooted as well; those buried under mulch I haven't dug yet, but leaves have sprouted through the top. With over 300 to find places for already, it could be awhile before I check to see what those under the mulch have actually done.
Now thats a sizeable collection!
Lol! That's for sure....Even with 3 acres and hundreds of sq ft of watered beds, I don't know where I'm going to put them all!
And then there are new seedlings, and those under the mulch... agggggghhh!!!!!
Are you coming to the Fla swap in Alabama just 10 days away?
Hint, hint. lol
yes, and that is probably where those cuttings under the mulch will find homes!
Careful JD, this method (bubble buckets) can work almost too well!!
I have had great luck and fun with my bubbler, it is a winner for me. All my cuttings, with exception of one, have nice white roots. One, has dingy colored roots, and I don't have a clue why. Should I remove it, and, or dispose of it?? This is my first winter with a bubbler, so all of this is first time for me. I can take a photo of the rooting if necessary. TIA!!!!
Sherry, this is a really interesting thread and I am going to save it in my plant files but it isn't the one I am looking for. Thanks, Jeanette