Are there any of you pros or semi pros out there that would be willing to do a cuttings tutorial for us newbies?? Here's what I'm after....I would love to see how you take a nice long cutting (or even a short one) and then where you would cut it and then see it all cut up and then see how you would pot it up to root it??? I need pictures, I'm a visual leaner! LOL
I've played around and I have rooted cuttings more than once but I think there is a better way because today I received some rooted cuttings that I had ordered from a greenhouse and they were done completely differently than how I have done them. No! I'm not telling you how I have done it! I don't want any laughing!! :))
So I'm asking please, will one of you take a cutting and take pictures step by step with how you do it, or if several of you wanted to show us how you would do it that would be awesome!!
I know I'm not the only one out there that wants to see this, right??
The round robin is heading my way in about a months time and I really want to do the best I can with anything I may be privileged to swap out for! So who wants to go first with this tutorial?? It would be much appreciated!!
~Brenda
Hoya Cuttings Tutorial???
One of my plans is to do some drawings for a 'rooting tutorial' on the plane tomorrow. Hope it helps.
Christine on www.myhoyas.com has one of the best illustrations. One has to have some imagination and perhaps not use the same 'mini hothouse' she uses...but the basics are the same....
HTH
Here is a perfect tutorial, helped me a lot.....
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/726979/
Brenda,
I think there are many, many ways to do it, and you will have to pick the one that seems right to you. Many of the most successful growers on this forum seem to use water in colored bottles mixed with a little rooting compound. I can't quite bring myself to use this method, because I like to chop my cuttings all up into 3-4 inch pieces, dip into rooting hormone (I'm currently using Olivia's) and insert into 4" pots filled with a very porous mix that contains at least 50% perlite. I wet the mix with dynagrow KLN rooting concentrate at a mix of a teaspoon per gallon. I then put the pots on eggcrate in a permanest tray with water in the bottom and insert the tray into a grow-light stand that has a tent to help contain the humidity and keeps the temperature at a constant 80 degrees. The reason I chop them up is to get a really full plant as opposed to a long vine. Knock on wood; so far this method has been 100% successful for me, but what works for me may not work for you.
Doug
Thank you all for chiming in! The link from My Hoyas and also the link showing how Carol roots things are ones I had seen and Doug your explanation is excellent. I do understand these steps.
I guess I didn't make what I'm wanting to see clear enough though. I called it a "cuttings" tutorial because I want to see the long cuttings cut up into smaller cuttings........Several of you have mentioned taking a long cutting and chopping it up into as many pieces as you can, just as Doug mentions.....and that is what I want to see! A long cutting and where you would cut it and then how much of it you would put down!
Now I'm going to have to tell on myself after all :)) I had read and learned very little when I received my co-op order and most of them I left long and rooted straight into potting mix just as Christina illustrated, but with no dome. I've had two different plants of my H finlaysonii bud and bloom that I did that way so I did something right! Of course Carol had generously sent some with peduncles already on them, I'm not that good!! LOL
BUT on the two cuttings I did cut up into several pieces I thought that a leaf node had to be under the potting medium. Putting a leaf node or two under is easy with a long piece....but on the few cuttings that I had cut up into many pieces I ended up with two leaves on each section and then I cut one leaf off of that piece I have left and then make sure that the cut node is under or in the medium, even if that medium was water. Now as your all shaking your heads and laughing .....you can see that it would hurt to lose those leaves!! And it makes for awkward placement of the cuttings with one leaf poking up from each cutting while I try and keep the other side with the cut node under the mix, they tip over etc...........I told you you would laugh!!!
So yesterday I receive a rooted cutting with two leaves above the potting medium and I removed it from the medium to put into my own mix and there was nothing but a short stick in the dirt, no nodes?? The piece had been cut short with only two leaves left and then the stem underneath was put in the medium and there were roots (not very many for a "well rooted" cutting but that's another issue!) That is when I realized I must be going about this all wrong and I did not have to cut all the pretty leaves off that I have in the past!! :(
I should have asked my questions at the beginning but now here I am, can someone cut a longer cutting into shorter pieces showing what is left on each piece and then how much of it you will put into the medium you will use to root it. I'll even send you a long cutting (nothing great just a no id I found at the grocery store...) so you can practice on it and take pictures for me!!
Ok, now that I've shown myself to be a complete dunce :)))) is my question clearer?
~Brenda
Brenda,
You could not be clearer, and raise some very good questions and points. I too like you thought that you needed to cut off one or two leaves to get the node under the potting medium, and that is how I did the first of many cuttings. I like you now do not believe that is really necessary, and some of the people who root in water have roots coming out of the stem-end only and not the node. I have started to push a cut stem only into the medium, and just push it down to the node with leaves on it, and it seems to be working well. I did this with an H. polystachya that I just received from David Liddle and left the leaves up a half inch above the medium, because the leaves were too big and awkward to push down to the soil level, and now roots are shooting out from just below the nodes down into the medium. Hopefully some people who have more experience will chime in. I think that dmichael roots many of his cuttings similarly to the way that I do.
Doug
Aha! I'm happy to know I wasn't way off in left field with my thoughts of the node under the medium theory, thanks Doug!
Now I guess I'll take a long cutting off that no id hoya and cut it into a bunch of pieces and try just the stem end in a few of the above mentioned ways and see what happens! I just bought one of those little sets of shelves with the clear plastic zippered cover that goes over it, a mini green house! Now to get it set up, that should help me see results faster this time around.
~Brenda
This sounds like another great oportunity for one of your photo diaries Brenda similar to your thread on the Australis seedpods. This should be a great experiment with the potential to help many of us novice or near novice Hoya growers.
Doug
I'll make sure I get my camera out Doug, but first I have to finish this six pack of Rolling Rock so I can have the green bottles like Sara's for that part of my experiment!! LOL
I'm also gathering up some flat river rock type stones as that method looked very interesting to me too.....my new no id is going to be put to good use soon!
Oh, and I need to put the little green house together too!
~Brenda
Oh what a great thread, Brenda! Just in time for me, too! :o) What I'm most interested to see, though, is the post you make after you finish that six pack!! LOL
I'll be watching for your tutorial. :o) Great links and info already posted here, too. Thanks to all for that!
Heading to bed without touching on that one Rain......except to say that Rolling Rock is a nice smooth pale ale! :))))))
~Brenda
Honestly you guys, I only use the green bottles because I think that they are "prettier" than the brown ones... Now - if there was any drink that came in cobalt blue long neck bottles, that would win hands down!! DH would be switching over, even if it was called cotton candy ale! HA!
I really don't think that color matters. The only reason I am so fond of beer bottles, is that they hold the long, heavy stems in place really well, so that I am not constantly finding my cutting tipped out of the water, and I can pack a whole bunch of them into a fairly small space. They are also a good size to set on window sills, I have had cuttings begin growing on a window sill, even before roots had formed, without having rampaging algae growing in the water.
Just my opinions, as we all know, not everything works for everybody, but sometimes it is kind of fun to try.
S
Cotton Candy Ale!! LOL DH did request a different beer but I told him he'd be helping to polish of this kind first and he didn't balk! :))) Two down, four to go! LOL
Well now I need to find the time to go hunting for a thread I read that did say that green glass was the best color for starting roots....I think it was before I found DG so it would have been on Garden Web and a lady had several colors of old bottles and she said that without fail she got roots faster in green glass over any other color! So that was the real reason for wanting to copy you Sara, you had found the perfect source for green glass!! LOL
It will be the weekend before I can get to the various ways I would like to try some cuttings, I'm on grandma daycare duty for now!
~Brenda
Brenda, I don't know if this helps or not or if it is more remedial than what you need ( the last thing I want to do is insult your intelligence ) Obviously this is just one long piece made into two cuttings, but you get the idea. You can also leave the cuttings longer, with two or three sets of leaves, but alot of people say smaller is better, with less foliage for the new root system to have to support.
I have rooted many cuttings without the under-the-soil node, but it helps to have it. It is especially easy on plants that have alot of the little root nubs already on the stems. Regardless of whether there is a node or not, there are alot of root hormones at the leaf nodes, so when putting a cutting into the soil, I will usually plant it deep enough so that the first set of leaves is just above soil level. I find you get alot of roots from that area.
Sara, actually there are cobalt blue beer bottles. I think it was 4 or 5 years ago that I went to a party and there was a case of beer in beautiful blue bottles. Although I tried to be discreet as I grabbed up empty beer bottles, I did get some odd looks as I was rifling through the recycling bin. Luckily, my friends know I am just a little on the crazy side,
Brenda, I think you have gotten some great answers here! Dougs' method sounds ideal. The key is not so much how you cut them, but, that you provide a warm and humid environment with air circulation. I suggest you start with at least 2 node cuttings and remove at least one leaf at the node you place under the soil. If you don't have one, get a seedling heat mat as the constant warmth will make a big difference this time of year.
As others have said, you just have to find what works best for you and resist the urge to tug on the cuttings to see if they are rooted. Also, if you use a humidity dome, make sure to acclimate them slowly to the drier environment of your home.
Mel
Thank you for that excellent illustration Bhavana! I've never progressed past stick people so I'm impressed with that lovely cutting drawing :)) What your showing me there is pretty much exactly what I've done with a couple of bigger cuttings.
But I am real stingy with cuttings I take from my grandmothers hoya and that is where the one node cuttings and then removing one of the leaves and balancing the remaining leaf with a stem on each side problem came in for me. It did work well though and I've started a couple that way that look like nice full little plants now. Then as I stated I received a hoya with just two leaves above the soil and just stem with roots underneath and I thought I'd missed something some where!
Your right Mel, I have gotten the perfect advice with this thread and just what I was looking for! I do have a heat mat that I haven't used before and the new mini greenhouse so I should be set. I'm going to try Doug's method but then also play around a bit with just some stem and also with the green beer bottles my husband and son so graciously helped me empty out :)) and maybe a couple of other things just for fun.
What's amazing to me is how tough and resilient these plants are because I've done some very not by the books stuff in the past year and it has still worked and I've been able to share some plants! But I'd prefer faster and more guaranteed results and now I'm on the right road!!
Thanks All, Brenda
It sounds like you are ready to do some serious rooting now!
On those one node cuttings, I use small rocks or gravel to hold them down until they root. Somehow, it seems to also help the rooting as one will often find roots right under the rock. If the stem is small, it is darn near impossible to get it to stay in that bottle!
Glad to know your Husband and Son are willing to choke down that beer so you can have the bottles! I know that must have been a real sacrafice for them! LOL. The little Bud Light bottles are also pretty handy. They have a shorter neck and take up a little less room. It s also a great idea to put the bottles on the heat mat to keep the water warm. You will get much faster results this time of year.
Talking about rooting, I remember reading something about bringing a piece of "stick" back to life. does anyone remember what link it was? I'm down to a very sad stick and worried I'm going to have to give up on my plant!
I think it was Sara / green971 talking about the stick she was trying to save....maybe she'll come on here and refresh our memories...
~Brenda