I just broke off an 8 inch tip of one of my plants. Ugh!!! What do I do now???
Ouch....
Ouch, but that's okay because you can make another plant! Put the cutting somewhere cool and dry and let the end heal over for a few days to a week. You can dip it in some powdered rooting hormone now if you have it and then let it callous and heal over. Then, stick it in a one-gallon pot of potting soil and put it on a heat source like a heating pad or in your greenhouse, if you have one, or in the house by a sunny window. When you plant it, you will be planting the bottom two inches with soil. Make sure you use very well-draining soil. Water sparingly or not at all until you see leaves forming at the top, which probably won't happen until spring. You could also try water-rooting by putting the cutting in a jar of water inside with the bottom two inches in water. You would do this after the end is calloused and healed. Here's a link about rooting cuttings: http://www.plumeria101.com/cuttings101.html Don't worry because now you will have a new plant!
This message was edited Dec 18, 2005 10:58 AM
Here is a picture of some cuttings that I water-rooted recently. Some cuttings are stubborn and won't root like this, but these cuttings did fairly well. After I took this picture, I potted them each in one-gallon containers.
What happens to the main plant where I broke off the tip? Does that just heal over?
Yes, it heals over and branches will grow just below and sometimes from the cut area. After a while, you may not be able to tell that there is a cut there. Here's an example below. Sometimes you get one branch, but most times, you get many.
