I have never been wildly successful rooting H. bella - altho I can grow them with no problem!!! The big H. bella I had needed potting up and I made tons of cuts in the greenhouse. Every so often I had to go thru the pots and pull out rotted cuttings (I would start out with about 10 cuts in the pot!) and they just languished!!!
I had great luck rooting H. hypolasia and a new H. caudata outside in the shade...so I put the H. bellas out there and they took off!!! It has been cooler at night, which they love...but the airflow is what, I think, made the difference!!!
Happy Camper here....
A 'bella' experiment worked!!!
Congratulations! I don't know about you, but it always kind of hurts my feelings when a cutting doesn't make it :-)
Sharon
Dianne sent me a ton of H. bella variegata cuttings. I've had the worst luck rooting them. I've had them almsot a month now and not one has rooted yet. And like you Carol i've had to keep going through and pulling out the rotted ones.
I've finally gotten an all green bella that i am having a bit better luck growing. Like H. caudata i've tried bella a few times as well and had terrible luck getting it to grow. The new bella that i have seems to like where i have it growing at in the gh so i'll just leave it be and let it do its thing!!
dmichael
Carol, any suggestions on getting h. calycina to root? This is from the latest David Liddle co-op and it just isnt rooting. It isn't dead yet but.... I had it in water for the first month, cut the tip off again and put it in dirt and now it I just pulled it out (spilled dirt all over the carpet!) and nothing. I just now cut the tip AGAIN and put it back in water. I did have one leaf fall off but I think that's from hitting it. other than that it looks like a healthy cutting.
Thank you,
Dawn
Dawn, my Calycina wasn't doing well, so I cut it back and chopped it into four cuttings. I rooted it by planting it in a 3" pot in my regular hoya potting mix, watered it well and put the pot in a plastic bag. I opened the bag every day or two, spritzed with water, blew air back into the bag and sealed it up again. It only took a few weeks for not only roots but new growth too. After a month, I slowly, over about a week, opened the bag a little bit more each day. I find it really likes a daily misting - the fuzzy leaves are almost like a sponge. Hope that helps.
Christine
edited to add: but I am totally useless with bellas....sigh....
C.
This message was edited Nov 20, 2006 8:55 PM
hmmm, you think me leaving it in water while away for the holidays will be ok then? When I get back I'll repot it and put it in plastic bag and begin a mistig ritual.
Thanks!
Dawn
I have always had a problem with hoyas like H. calycina, H. imperialis and ALL of the Eriostemmas with regards to too much water...so I question whether water rooting is really good. My conditions are a bit different with such high humidity... I have to try to keep these kinds of hoyas in a very fast draining (lots of perlite) type of medium or they tend to rot.
Man! I just can't get it right! grrr OK, then tonight, I will take it out of the water, put it in a mix of mostly perlite and put a bag over it. Since I'm going out of town Thursday, the bag should help with the humidity and not let it dry out right?. I wish I could tell my inlaws I need to come back Friday (instead of Sunday) to take care of my plants but they wouldn't understand.
I would leave the bag open just a bit so it doesn't get too humid in there!!! You could always take the baggie with you and keep it warm!!! And keep an eye on it!
Carol
Problem solved, it's going on a road trip!
Thanks Carol! :D
I have had one heck of a time getting H. pimenteliana to root. That is another one that Dianne sent me bundles of and I am now down to about 4 cuttings. I tried the in dirt I tried them in water i tried the in the cloning machine and not one has rooted yet.
I have an internal heater in the cloning machine which keeps the water temp around 83.5F,there is a grow light over the entire setup but still nothing.
I didnt have any problems at all getting my H. calycina from DL to root. In fact it was one of the very first out of 28 different cuttings,to root.
dmichael
H. pimenteliana is a good rooter for me - and I keep the new cuts in dimmer light and they seem to like it better. My heatmats go on at 73deg. just for the new kids...when they are rooted they go out in the big bad world which sometimes gets down into the lower 60s.
dmichael, what (method)did you do to get calcyina to root?
pdoyle, that particular batch of DL cuttings arrived in April of this year. The weather was just right for rooting anything!! I find it a bit difficult to root even the easiest of plants such as brugmansia this time of year.
When those hoya cuttings arrived I just made a fesh cut to the already caloused over original cut that David had made and just dusted them with rooting hormone and stuck each individual cutting into its own 4" pot. I go form 4" pot to 6" basket then to a max of an 8" basket for a mature plant.
I mix my own soil for my hoyas. It starts out as a 40 qrt bag of very good potting mix that I buy from a local nursery. To that I add 8 qrts perlite and 16 qrts of orchid mix.
Out of the 28 varieties that I had on that order, more than half of them rooted within the first week,including calycina.
I tried not too very long ago to make cuttings of my hoya magnifica which closely resembles calycina in appearence and had no luck at all getting it to root.
The above methods that I talked about ARE NOT the gospel for growing hoyas. Those methods work very well for me in my area under my growing conditions and may or may not work for you or others.
dmichael
Thanks, just looking at all my options.
Thanks again
Dawn
I just received a nice shipment of cuttings from the Netherlands. I have those in a 20 gallon aquarium with overhead lighting and a heat pad underneath them. The aquarium is covered with the original tank cover to help maintain the humidity. Got my fingers crossed that they all survive!!
Good luck with whatever method you use in trying to get your calycina rooted. It's funny how someof us have very good luck rooting a certain hoya and some of us cant root it for H@#$---I bet I cut those H. pimenteliana cuttings into a thousand pieces and not one has rooted!!!
dmichael
dm - have you tried just throwing them all in a ziplock bag, closing it up and seeing if they root?
NO! but its kinda late for those pimenteliana cuttings anyway they are pretty much history!!
I hadnt thought about trying that method but may just give it a shot! Do you just throw them in with no damp paper towel or anything in the bag?
dmichael
Yep...throw them in with a mist of some ST and release the moisture if it gets too soggy.
David, remind me in the spring and I will send you some more pimenteliana. Have you tried putting them in a plastic bag with spagnum moss around them? Awanda is doing pretty much all of her cuttings this way and has had great success.
Tami,
I have used spaghnum moss before to root hoyas in. Using the same aquarium setup that I have now. I layered the damp moss on the bottom of the tank and just placed the cuttings in it and they rooted in no time.
It was during warm weather though and they rooted a lot easier than they do now that it is cold outside.
I went to walmart earlier to see if I could find some superthrive and had zero luck. I went to 3 stores and not one had it.
dmichael
I stopped using ST and use Hormex for everything I used ST for AND as a rooting hormone. Hormex is exactly the same formula as ST, less expensive and it has an added something so it can be used as a rooting dip too. I buy it by the gallon....I water my rooting cuttings with it and my new transplants with potting up.
I used to use spagnum moss for rooting...I wrapped the cuttings' end to root in it, and popped it in a seedling tray to keep it upright. The seedling tray was in a tray of water...and it rooted in no time. If I didn't take the spagnum moss off of the roots before potting up, often the roots would rot...but that is because (I think) my air is generally fairly humid anyway. Taking the moss off the roots often tore the roots off...so I gave up that idea. I know that when I was at David Liddles' they wrapped the roots in spagnum, put them in potting medium and rooted them in a mist chamber. Their weather at the time was not humid...so this worked for them too.
So much depends on the environment.