Purple Passion Fruit & Flowers | Cutting | Propagation | Genetically Identical Plants

Hi, I'm Charles Malki, biologist and plant expert with Ivory Organics 3-in-1 Tree Guard Paint, and today we're going to be working on cuttings. Cuttings of these beautiful passion fruit flowers that will ultimately turn into these amazing purple passion fruits. And the passion fruit is actually one of the main ingredients that goes into actually making fruit punch, and my children love this fruit, and I'm hoping you and your family will love it. And if you're in a growing zone that allows you to actually grow passion fruit, it adds a beautiful tropical look to your garden with these beautiful purple flowers. And again, depending on the variety, they can also be red. I've seen yellow and orange, but this here is the purple passion, and we love and have been enjoying these fruits for almost a decade here in our family. Let me show you how you can actually propagate and make more of these fruits to enjoy, and we're actually going to make about 30 to 50 cuttings that we're going to be sharing at our next garden club meeting that we're having here in Los Angeles. Come and follow me. So we're going to be making cuttings off of this purple passion fruit. We're going to be making about 30 to 50 cuttings that will then be shared at our next garden club meeting here in Los Angeles, California. Come and zoom in at this flower and take a look at how beautiful this flower is. Take a look at that. Quite unique. A beautiful addition on top of that, you get these amazing fruits to later enjoy in about the next 30 to 60 days. This plant as well, if you take a look at a video that we did here for our ice cream banana plant, which is still growing as you can see, still on its way up, still hasn't gone into bloom, and here we are in the month of August. But you'll notice that this purple passion fruit at the end of May, so we're talking about about nine to ten weeks ago, was only in this zone over here and has since in the last seven to actually between nine and ten weeks has grown about 15 feet that way on its trellis. So keep in mind this plant grows well on a trellis, on a fence, on, you know, give it a place to actually run because it'll grow anywhere from 15 to 30 feet in one growing season. Let's get started. The first step here is to actually select some branches to actually use for your cuttings. What I'm doing is actually trying to control the plant. Any vines that are growing in the wrong direction or are no longer manageable are the branches I'm going to be using to propagate the plant. So we're going to start off just selecting some of these branches here. So I'm just going to cut that and throw that below this branch. This branch is running in the wrong direction. The advantage of actually making your passion fruits from cutting and not growing them from seed is that we're going to end up with a genetically identical plant to this amazing tasting plant. By actually planting the seeds, you actually end up with a whole bunch of different variations. They may be superior. We've got all these branches to work with. We've got to act quickly. We've got to get them planted. We've got to get them hydrated. We've got to put them in the right zone so that they don't burn out in this summer heat. What we're going to do first is we've got to identify how to prepare the cutting. What we're going to do here, so what we're going to do here is we've got to identify where to actually make the cut. If we take a look here, I had pruned this branch as close as I can to the node that I left behind on the tree. But this here is going to have typically no root growth and no shoot growth. So we're going to want to cut that at an angle about a quarter inch away from the next node. We can remove the vine and we're going to use this lower node as the rooting zone. So we can remove the leaf and remove this flower that's actually spent. It didn't turn into a fruit. You can see that there's already a shoot trying to come out of here. We can leave that behind. The next thing we're going to do is go to the next zone, which is right here. We can see that there's another leaf. This here is the node. We're going to cut right above it. We're then going to cut this leaf in half. That actually reduces the amount of desiccation, amount of dehydration from the leaf, while the plant actually gets rooted and established. The next thing we do is score a small section of the plant like so, as the roots will typically form from the part that's been damaged near the node that's under the ground. So we've prepared this. I'm going to do one more real quickly. Again, we're going to come up to the next node, cut at an angle about a quarter inch away from the node, remove the leaf. This one, I'm going to cut this leaf in half like so, as we did before. This time, I'm going to actually have two nodes that are going to be above the ground, just for creating a longer cutting. Again, we'll cut that at an angle. We've now prepared this cutting, and now we just score it like so. The next thing we're going to do now is prepare the soil. We've got this cutting here, and this cutting here. What we're going to do next is we're going to prepare the soil. To prepare the soil, I've got these two vermiculite, which says improves moisture and nutrient retention, aids in faster seed germination, and prevents soil compaction and increases aeration. This is what vermiculite looks like. This is an excellent seed cover for your finest seeds, such as lettuce, and for beets, and for radishes, and your smallest seeds. This is an awesome top cover to be using. Then there's perlite. Perlite says improves drainage and aeration, helps prevent soil compaction, promotes strong root development, and excellent for starting cuttings. That's exactly what we're doing here today. This is what perlite looks like. It looks like snow. This here pretty much repels water, whereas vermiculite actually absorbs water. What we're going to do here is we're just going to take a bucket and basically try to get equal parts of both vermiculite and perlite. We'll do that again with the vermiculite, another scoop of perlite, and then we're just going to mix that together. This here is our mixture. Then we're just going to take a plastic cup like so. What I'm going to do here is actually just cut a couple of holes at the bottom. This will allow water to get through the cup if we're watering from up above, but it's also going to allow the plant to actually absorb water through the bottom. You're going to see what I'm talking about in just a minute. Then we're just going to fill that up with our soil mixture like so. We're then going to come over here and we're going to basically fill our tray up with water. We're going to fill up this entire tray with plants by the time we're done. This is just the beginning. We've got this here. We can even add a little bit of water to the top, but in the future we're going to be doing all of our watering from this point down. I'm hoping you can capture that if you want to come in a little closer with the video. I'm going to show you what I'm going to be adding here now. This is called Super Thrive. Let me show you what this is beneficial for. Super Thrive, it basically says, used for transplanting and for maintaining of all horticultural and agricultural needs, helps in root development, which is what we need, reduces transplant shock, which is what we need, and builds plant vigor and a landscape is best friend. We're using this in conjunction with a couple other products to make sure that we actually have successful grass. I'm just going to put a couple of drops right there in the water. That'll then be absorbed from the base of the plant. We just mix that up a little bit and that'll actually be absorbed right through the bottom. You can actually already see this happening. If you take a look at the cup, you can actually see the water is actually coming in through the bottom. The bottom part is a little bit wetter than the top. We're going to put that back in here. Next step, we're going to take our rooting powder hormone and just take this is the scored end and the bottom end, which we're hoping to root. We're just going to dip that in there. What this does is actually increases root development as well as inhibits any rot and mold from actually happening to the cutting. We're going to take that and just insert that here into our vermiculite perlite soil. Our last step is we're going to take this. This is Ivory Organics. It's a three-in-one tree guard paint. It says just add water and natural tree trunk and branch barrier protection against damaging sunburn and insects and rodents for uses on our roses and fruit and nut trees, ornamental trees and shrubs. We've done videos explaining how it's beneficial for protecting the tree trunks and branches. Today, we're going to use it as a sunblock, sun shield, protecting the plant. What we're going to do is just take our water bottle over here and just basically add about a teaspoon or two of this mixture. White is what's preferred for this to actually get the maximum amount of protection from sunburn and also to prevent, again, dehydration. Then we're just going to spray the leaf like so. If you take a look here, you can actually see that it's basically got a white sunblock on here. That'll actually protect the plant from actually burning out and drying out as it gets rooted. Now, we're just going to continue the process until we actually filled in this entire tray. We have here actually another cutting that we started a few weeks ago. If we pull this out here, you can actually see what it ultimately will turn into. You can see the roots that have actually developed off the cutting that we made. Now, we're just going to take that and transplant it into a larger container once you're done. We're going to put it in here. We're going to add, again, some perlite and vermiculite. What I'm going to do for this mixture once it's actually graduated to having roots is adding a product like this, which is sphagnum peat moss. This retains moisture and nutrients. It actually breaks down and continues feeding the plant. It's a good addition to the soil. We just basically add that in here. We'll mix it up and it'll actually give the plants a better chance and get them better established now that it's getting some organic material, which is the peat moss. These other two items will not break down over time. We're basically going to do that and then we can water this down. Within the next week or two, this will be ready to go into somebody else's garden. A couple more cuttings together. Let me show you here. We've got here the shoot. My favorite cuttings are actually right near the tip or the apical portion of the stem. We're going to remove the excess vines and remove that vine. You can actually see that right here is a little flower. We don't want it to flower. All of its energy and resources are going to go towards growth and roots. We're going to remove this flower as well. Remove that stem. We're then going to cut right below the node of the plant. We're going to remove the lower leaf as that's going to be underground. We're going to score just a small part of the stem. We're then going to take these leaves and cut them in half to reduce dehydration of the plant. These are too small to actually cut, so we'll just leave them alone. Then we take our rooting powder, tap that in there, take our cup, fill it up with some vermiculite and perlite. Then we're just going to add some water a little bit on the surface just to hold it in place. It then absorbs the rest of the water from below. We put that in our tray. Let me show you one more stem over here. This is going to be our last cutting that we're going to do here today. You can see again the bloom. This one I actually accidentally cut. I tried to keep the fruits and the flowers behind. This came down with one of my cuttings. Again, we're going to have to remove the flower as we want the energy to go towards root growth. This here is the node that's going to end up rooting as there's no nodes below it. We're going to cut this entire leaf, flower and vine section. Then cut about a quarter inch below, score the section so that it can absorb water. Also, this will be an excellent spot for root formation. Then we're going to take these leaves and cut them in half. Again, the goal is to minimize dehydration of the plant. Remove that vine that wrapped around it again. By actually having two nodes, this node is going to be below ground level, this node is going to be above, and this node is going to be above. Again, we're going to cut this leaf in half. There's a little flower that's forming over here. We're going to remove the flower. By actually having two nodes above ground level, we've increased the chances of growth above the ground by twice as much. Most of my cuttings back here have actually got two nodes above soil level. Then here, we'll take our cup again. Again, be sure to make sure you notch those cuts into the bottom of the cup as I've done so. I'll do a couple more just to demonstrate. You can see that there's some cuts to allow water to pass through and also to be absorbed in. Perlite vermiculite mix. We take our rooting hormone. We're going to dip the base of the cutting like so. It's got that white powder on there. Insert it. Water it just a bit as it's going to get the rest of the water from the tray. Now we've just made 22 cuttings. We've got 22 genetically identical purple passion fruit vines that will be introduced a couple in our garden. The rest of these will be donated to the local garden club. Let me show you our next step. After we made these cuttings, again, to shield it and preserve it from these hot summer days, you can see that I've actually sprayed it with the Ivory Organics 3-in-1 Tree Guard paint. We've put a couple teaspoons of that in our water bottle over here. We're just going to shake that one more time. You can see how it's got these white drops on it from at the beginning of during the cutting. This now is dried. Now we're going to coat the rest of these that are not protected. We're just going to spray those real quick. That's done. If you take a look, you can actually see they're now all covered with this organic sunblock paint for plants. We're now going to set this down in a place that only receives morning sunlight. Then the rest of the day, it's going to remain cool. Every morning, it'll be something that'll immediately warm them up and give them plenty of light. What we're going to do is set them down right over here carefully. This was the spot we selected. It gets some really good morning sunlight and then filtered light the rest of the day. What we're going to do is make sure, if you come in a little bit closer, I want to show you what's happened to these individual plants as we brought them down. As you can see, they actually got removing as we positioned them. I'm wiggling them here. We want to make sure the soil, which is the vermiculite-perlite mixture, is actually in good contact with each of these stems. We're going to go around and make sure that each of them are actually secure in position so that they can be in contact with the soil and the moisture and begin rooting as early as today. Within the next 7 to 14 days, we should actually have root development on all of these. Within the next 3 to 5 weeks, we can actually then upgrade them into a larger container as we did at the beginning of the video. Let me show you that again. We can basically graduate them to these larger containers, which will support and then gift them to other families to enjoy these fruits in their gardens as well. So, we've just sprayed these plants with the Ivory Organics 3-in-1 Tree Guard Paint. They're now protected. If you zoom in a little closer, you can notice most of these leaves have now dried up and they've got those white dried organic sunblock on them for plants. Now, I'm just going to share a couple more tips in regards to what to do to now start maintaining these plants over the next 7, 14, 21 days as they go into root. What I want to share with you is, for watering these plants, if you zoom in a little closer, you can see the tray over here. The vermiculite in the first day is going to end up absorbing most of this water, but as you're going to need to continue watering these plants, you can actually just come from the side and just make sure there's always about a quarter to a half an inch of water in this tray. Because of all the holes that we've punctured at the bottom of these cups, they're going to absorb the water through the base. It's actually going to encourage the plants to actually root and to get down towards that water as well. So, we're going to water this way from the side and then additionally, if you can and you've got the time, I'd say at least once or twice a day, put this on a mist function or if you've got a spray bottle, you can do the same and just cool off the plants like that, just real quick. That actually will hydrate the leaves a little further and help the plants from drying out. So, by next year, 22 people, these 22 plants will be enjoying these beautiful passion fruit flowers and enjoying making fruit punch right here in your backyard. If you've enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and most importantly, subscribe down below so you'll be connected to all the other Ivory Organics 3-in-1 Tree Garden Paint videos. Thanks again for watching and happy gardening!