lantana

Ok....I have heard this is supposed to be easy from cuttings. However, I took some tip cuttings and not even a week later they are black. Is this the wrong time of year or am I doing something wrong?

Kim

are you keeping them in the shade? are you keeping them too wet? need more info please

the cuttings i have taken are not small ones. i usually cut a 3"long piece, apply rooting homone and put in potting soil. sometimes in the same pot just to make it fuller. dont stop trying.......

Thanks for this info - I have two I grew from seeds (the other 38 seeds rotted) so I really want to propogate these via cuttings.

Blue eyes,

I've tried and failed as well. I'm hoping to give it another try this weekend. In my case, I think that they were getting too much sun, while in an enclosed environment (a clear plastic top over the pots). This time I am going to keep them in the sun uncovered.

any kinda cuttings you do is suppose to be in the shade not the sun it will fry them

Mine almost always root. I don't use rooting hormone. Everything I have ever used it on died. I think you will have better luck if you keep it in light but no direct sun and something to enclose it with. You could try doing it in a 2 liter cut like they do for winter sowing. I have done my hard to root passion vine in those.

it is better to try to root stuff when you have the humidity also
filter sun will work but NOT direct sun

Okay, after work tomorrow, I will try a new set of cuttings in the shade with the greenhouse cover.

I'm trying the lantana again. This time I didn't use root hormone, I'm not covering, and I have it in my garage, which is light, but doesn't have direct sun. I have nine cuttings of lanatana, and nine of mexican heather. Hopefully something will take. Because the weather has been unseasonably warm (almost 80 degrees today), I still have plenty of healthy plants to experiment with.

How successful has the rooting been? I would like to try - but I am unsure of the best method.

I am just thinking that in your zones, you would almost have to have some bottom heat for success. We used to root cuttings of lantana when I worked in a greenhouse but they were really 'tip' cuttings with no wood on the and we still put them on the mist tables.

We always put 3 cuttings to an inch plug. Sometimes we all use way too much volume of soil-less mix.

What if I use a "bubbler"? You know water and an airstone?

i would love to try the 'bubbler' way but have never tried.........sounds fun to me!

I'll give it a try and report back :-)

I am having some success rooting a few other things indoors with bottom heat. I will take some lantana cuttings as well and see what happens. I have done the bubbler before, works well for some things, great for hoyas as long as the water isn't too cold. Also great for brugs. I used to keep a heat mat under the tub of water to warm it up some since I keep my house cool in the winter.

Well,. right now I have a water heater warming the water (not too warm - just right for tropical fish) and I have the air stone - so maybe I won't need a heat pad.

My lanatana did not take at all. I think that bottom heat probably would have been helpful. Even when I was doing it I kept thinking that it was cooler in the house, than the plants are used to when they are outside, and I was wondering if it would work. Next year, I will give the heat a try, along with additional light.

Lantana is not easy when it is woody. I almost have to catch in the summer where the tips are real soft. Then it is easy even outside under a tree.

I've found that lantanas are tricky to root, especially in the fall. I brought in quite a few cuttings and only one took. It's looking very healthy and will be nursed along for next summer. It's worth the trouble. I love these plants.

I think I'll take more cuttings from this one when it gets closer to spring and keep one in the house just for propagation purposes.

Isn't it funny which plants we love so much that aren't hardy in our areas. I have spent the day cutting back lantana to the ground as it grows wild here. Got so tired I came in and called it a day as far as cutting back any more lantana.

Next spring it will come back with a vengeance. I also cut all the cannas back to about 6" inches high. I will probably have to cut them back and the lantana , too, one more time before spring gets here.

What a giant mess I have made and will make tomorrow finishing up cutting back. Then I get to haul it all away!

Well, I have brought the plant inside (actually 2 plants in the same pot. Can I keep them as houseplants until next summer? What special care should I give them? so far it has lost a lot of leaves, even though it is in a corner with two huge sunny windows.

Seandor, if you're referring to lantana, yes they can be kept as houseplants. No special care, make sure they have enough water, but you can let them dry down before giving more water. If you ease them out to outdoor conditions in the spring they should do fine.

It's normal for them to lose leaves.

Oh good - I thought I would have to take cuttings - and it doesn't sound like this is a good time of year. I actually raised these from seeds - so I kinda want to keep them.

I am such an idiot - next year I will let the plants set seeds so I have some new ones to start and to share.

Seandor ~ give us your Lantana seed starting tips please?

I LOVE Lantana!!!!!

Seandor, Not that I am any great shakes at it, but I had fair luck in the dead of summer on rooting those cuttings. I started them in June and they just sat there. This is green stems, not woody ones, BTW. Then the temperatures started soaring and I thought they were dooomed. Next thing I knew, I was seeing some new top growth (my signal that they are rooting without tugging on the cuttings). Sure enough, I had rooted cuttings. I think Blue_Eyes's idea of the heat mat has a lot of merit for this time of year. It was 95 degrees with the longest days of the year when they rooted at my place.

As far as the seed goes, I'm not Seandor, but until she chimes in, I can tell you what I did. I got some seeds in a trade and the pack said to soak them for 24 hours, so I did. In warm water that I kept changing every few hours because I can be compulsive sometimes. Right about that time, I got my jug of H2O2, Hydrogen Peroxide, and I might have put a teaspoon of that in the water -- you know how it is when you get something new , and you just want to USE it? In any case, they had been wrinkled seeds in the package, then after a 24 hour warm water soak, they sort of plumped up and got a little bit bigger in diameter. I do not know if the seeds had the berry part still on them or not. I didn't know enough about them to even think about the possibility. I grew them under lights in the basement, got 100% germination, then hardened them off, planted them, they bloomed and I collected seed. Couldn't be any easier (but it could be faster -- I started them way early in Feb and it wasn't too early for a May set out. They bloomed in mid July as really short plants - and kept blooming until frost.)

Lantana as houseplants bring in white fly like crazy. Or something white that flies or jumps around. Since I went organic a year or so ago, I would never bring them inside, but this year I had a variety I particularly liked, so I put the pot in the compost pile. Not sure if they'll live or not, but it was worth a try. (The pot was a fake terra cotta colored plastic. The plant I liked so well was a somewhat pale butter yellow, the exact color of a sulphur butterfly, and it was UPRIGHT, not rangy. The butterflies adored it, even though it was right on the patio not 2 feet from where I sit and look out in the garden. The butterflies were practically in my face.

Suzy

Suzy ~ thanks for the info. I have shared seed with DGrs and always wondered how difficult it was to start from seed. Mine don't seem to sprout if they fall on the ground. Perhaps the birds beat them to it. I have a late summer ~ fall blooming orange that I love. It is sparse on seeds. I was hoping for some to share this fall but we had a freeze. Not sure the seed matured enough.

podster, I am down in south Texas where we might get one or two freezes in Jan or Feb. About two weeks ago we got a pretty good freeze. It was enough to burn the lantana and my jatrophas which I had not sheltered!

I don't know what that means about our winter. This is never happened since I lived here to have that early of a freeze.

Isn't the weather strange! Here, our 1st frost was late and we have been enduring 80s for the past few days. This too shall pass ~ lol. I know the Lantana will come back from roots as mine does but am not familiar with Jatropha ~ will it be all right?

Well, it will be alright because they are very big. The top 6 or 8" are just brown. I can't decide whether to go ahead and cut them back and bring them on to the front porch now.

They are hard to find (the big ones, especially the pink ones)

I wouldn't cut them back now--that can stimulate new growth that'll just get burned even easier by the next frost. Plus depending on the shape of the plant, the frostbitten parts can still provide some protection for the rest of the plant, and if you cut that part off, then some leaves that otherwise would have had some protection will now be fully exposed to the elements. When plants get frost damage, it's always best to leave them alone until spring, then cut off any dead parts.

That is a lovely bloom, is it fragrant? Did you get your front porch wrapped? I think I wouldn't risk it. I would trim it back and drag them in... Very pretty!

True on the Lantana, I leave dead foliage on it till spring when I see new growth. No experience with Jatropha. Is it hardy? or tender?

Wow! seeing the height listed in the plant files http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/136099/ how tall is your plant?

Jatrophas are pretty tender, I wouldn't trust them outdoors for the winter anywhere colder than zone 9.

They are about 5' above the pot line. I understand what Ecrane is suggesting and I know she is right.

However, I love them so much that I am going to make room on the front porch for them. It is wrapped in 6 millimeter (whatever the measurement is for thickness on poly) plastic. Then I just crack the doors on either end depending on what the weather is.

Jatrophas are tender like lantana except that if you put jatrophas in the ground down here, they don't come back from the roots nearly as easily as lantana does. My brother's jatrophas are in the ground and he doesn't get bloom until the end of July.

The lantana was just so gross looking I took a chance and finished whacking it back to the ground today.

What I did to start latana seeds - started with 40 - could never get them warm enough (Our Old House is about 60 degrees in the winter).

I did soak them, etc. but 38 seeds went moldy after about 2 months. Only 2 germinated - so you see why I am not eager to start from seed again.lol

If heat was a problem, you could try buying heat mats and put those under your flats or trays. I generally keep my thermostat in the house at 62 during the winter, but with heat mats I'm able to get my seeds to germinate (most of the stuff I grow are tropicals that need heat to germinate)

A seed mat is on the list for Santa!