Propagating Plant Cuttings

Hey Bebe! Hey what's up garden friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? I hope you're doing well. I'm great. Sitting out here with some cuttings and decided to do a little propagation video. With the winter months approaching and all the indoor gardening stuff going on, a lot of people are starting to utilize their gardening time for things like propagating and just things you can do indoors. I'm not indoors just yet. I'm filming this in advance. I'm going to talk about this as if I was doing it in the house. Pardon the messy table. This was a very last minute decision to do this video but I figured since I was working on the propagations on these cuttings I should talk about it because I get asked about it and the only times I've really done propagations they've been tucked away into vlogs and I've been trying my best to start getting some shorter videos out when they're subject related and not just random vloggy vlog type materials. So what I have here are some cuttings from my black varnish pseudoranthemum which is a beautiful plant with absolutely gorgeous foliage. I had to make some cuts on the plant because it was getting long and leggy and figured should go ahead and get those rooted. Why not? So what I have here okay really really really just drug that giant ball out from under the table and for whatever reason only wants to play with it right next to the tripod. But when taking cuttings from really most plants most plants that I like to propagate things like well the pseudoranthemum here you can see that the crotons begonias the way I do my cuttings very very simple I don't like to over complicate it and it's not going to be the same for every plant but for the majority of plants I do propagations with such as this pseudoranthemum, crotons, begonias, even hibiscus I would do this way, dracaena that really there's a lot of them. Most plants with stems on them not necessarily woody shrubbery that's going to be a little bit different but for most house plants this will do. What I've done here is I've taken I think there's four cuttings in here they have about three and a half to four inches of stem on them with two leaves and that's it. With a plant like the pseudoranthemum I like to make sure that they go directly into water because they're going to be more sensitive to bubbles getting inside of those stems. Same thing with a lot of begonias they're going to be like that as well. I got these into a glass of water relatively quickly making sure that they can have a nice soak and then right here I have a pot of potting mix. This is a spoma potting soil so some people do like to make sure they're using a fairly sterile medium for rooting cuttings for good reasons. Sometimes if a potting mix has too many organics and lots of manure and those sorts of things then it can lead to problems with rots and infections and things you just don't want to have to deal with with a cutting so going sterile not a bad idea. The spoma potting mix I just particularly like this potting mix because it holds on to moisture really well yet it's still airy and it has the microtone in it which is just some mycorrhizae. It has stuff in it that's supposed to help encourage them to get going get rooted. If I had a rooting hormone I would go ahead and use that but I don't and it's not fully necessary for this sort of plant. These take root very easily. The thing that makes this plant a little bit different when it comes to propagation are these gigantic leaves that each one of these sticks has on it. It's going to be very difficult to maintain moisture in these leaves and health in these leaves sorry the puppies bounce since there's no roots there it's going to be difficult for the plant for just that little little opening down there to maintain the moisture that's necessary to get these leaves going. Generally I like to make sure that my cuttings are no longer than six inches at the max usually about four inches is ample that's all you need and that they all have one to two sets of leaves on them. These all have one set so a pair of leaves on each stem. Leaves this large are just going to be really difficult to keep hydrated you can see that they're already wilting and this has been sitting in water for a while now so with something like this I'll take the leaf and give that a cut at least 50% of the way if not 75% of the way so that's all you're left with and that's still a pretty dang big leaf. Some people don't like doing things this way I've just found it necessary for a moisture loving plant. I could go even smaller than this I would say as long as there's at least I don't know an inch and a half of leaf right there then it should be fine the main thing is that there's still some live plant tissue left in there for photosynthesis that's important right they need to be able to get energy to put their roots down and do their plant thing. Then once that cut has been made I will pull my cutting out if it's a tuberous type plant like this is then usually I'll make another cut at an angle of course with something that's been cleaned poke a hole in there with my finger and take the end of that cutting and get that down in there slightly pack that moist soil around the base of that stem so there's that I'm gonna go ahead and get the others prepped up and put in here and can move on to the next step. There they are they've all been cut they're all in there you can see the one where I didn't cut the leaf as extremely it's having more trouble standing up that's another reason that I like to make those cuts. Cutting the leaves there's debate some people say don't do it for me it just depends on the plant in the situation with these it's necessary the issue is that it increases surface area for infections and bad things to get into the plant and cause some problems so that is certainly something to keep in mind and I thought I was making very clean cuts perhaps it's because the way I had them folded it's fine they'll be okay these are fairly sturdy plants to propagate then water them in immediately more efficiently than this I'm just using my glass that's what I have sitting here I'll be sure to give it more water when I get it moved off the table getting that water in there helps get air pockets out move the soil around and pack it in just one more time very gently around the base of those stems sometimes it's not a bad idea to take some wax just some warm wax and seal off the end of the cutting or you can use cinnamon powder dabbing that on there it's a natural desiccant it'll help dry out that tip and help close that off again to help prevent infection and moisture loss from the plant I don't have either of those things laying around but it wouldn't be a bad idea to do so if I were doing this propagation during summertime it's nice and humid where I live I would just stick this someplace where it's going to get some morning light some filtered light and I'd be done with it just making sure that it always stays moist never let it dry out but that's basically it indoors is different it's what we're talking about here I have a bamboo skewer right now I'm just using my finger to get an estimate of how high I want that to be I want it to be I don't know about an inch above that foliage there or actually I think I'm just going to cut this in half I'm just going to poke those down into that soil just adding some support so that I can take this plastic bag here and gently slide that over the top hopefully without doing any damage to those cuttings very carefully then that's going to act as a little humidity enclosure those skewers are in there to help keep the top from falling down on top of the plant it's really important to keep that humidity up when trying to get things rooted especially a plant that's a moisture lover like the pseudoranthemums they do not like to dry out and now that they've been cut and cut and moved around and everything that it's really important to make sure that moisture stays in here because there's a plastic bag around this that's going to affect the type of lighting that I'm going to give the plant the bag will stay on here anywhere from four to eight weeks actually I'm going to take it off because it's hard to film with that's there but now you've seen it so you get it right yeah about four to eight weeks until I start to see some signs of growth on the plants just some little nubs or something coming out from inside of those stems then that's when I would go ahead and start to think about taking that bag off of the top of course have to pull it back at least lift it and scoot it to give the pot some water right because again moisture is very important here with rooting cuttings don't want to let those dry out at all not until they've established themselves and as I was getting ready to say using a bag if it's a plant that likes full sun remember it's just been cut so full sun is going to be harder on the plant so generally I dial the lighting back to a degree and then to remember that these bags are going to somewhat intensify and magnify light somewhat also so that's something to watch out for it's a mixed bag with cuttings when it comes to lighting right because they need that light to photosynthesize and get things moving get those roots coming out but they also don't have the root system to support a ton of light pushing them to growing and to needing to take up water when they can't because they don't have the roots so as a general rule of thumb I generally just say bright indirect light is fine usually not a problem with that it keeps the light directly off the bag to help keep it from getting too incredibly hot in here direct light these bags it's going to get very toasty in here and some warmth is good for getting things rooted up but they don't need to be like 100 degrees or however however hot they would get with a bag wrapped around them in the direct sun even if it's through a window you get pretty toasty in there and oftentimes when I'm using a bag over the top of something for propagation usually I can tell when the plant needs water by when the condensation starts to slow on the side of the bag I'm noticing that during the morning or evening hours that there isn't any moisture on the inside of the bag that's usually a good indicator that it's time to water the plant but generally also you can just lift it and tell or scoot the plastic up and just pop your finger down in there see if it feels dry that's all there is to it propagation's fun I love taking cuttings from things I don't do it all that often just because the space is limited with the number of plants that I have this seemed like a good idea to talk about it since people have asked about it and since I'm doing it and the camera is already out here so there it is really simple and easy personally I prefer to root things directly into a soil over just using water but it depends on the plant like pothos I'll use water no problem and pothos I'll root anyway because they're like the easiest things to get going right just comes down to a matter of preferences whether you prefer to use a propagation method that involves some sort of growing medium or to use water for me I actually find water to be a little bit more upkeep than just making sure that some water gets into this pot probably every seven to ten days once you have those cuttings down in there and you get that plastic bag over them really just sit back and wait make sure they don't dry out that's all there is to it so there it is that's how I propagate cuttings not all cuttings but a lot of them this is this will do the trick for a lot of plants and I'm going to wrap it up comment down below say hi tips tricks suggestions what are some ways you like to propagate anything you'd like to add helps everybody learn there's like an odd amount of wind blowing through here the palm tree blew over so I think it's time to go inside keep up with the vlogs this will probably be around more than likely and it's possible that when it comes time to move the plants inside I might be like yeah I don't need it but I have the other one that has cuttings in it as well so that's how you'll stay up to date with all of that here's what those look like about six to eight weeks later they've just been hanging out in the garage it's pretty cool in here I don't have the heaters running yet it's only in the 50s and 60s in this space so they're rather small indoors ideally if it were like mid-70s somewhere in there they'd probably be triple the size but they're doing okay they're still hanging on got some new growth on them not looking too bad yeah I hope everybody's doing well having a great day and a great life everything's just going beautifully for you and of course as always and most importantly everybody keep on growing bye