Cuttings in Water

[Jester]

Thankyou very much guys for your input.


Regards


John

[MelaQuin]

Olives and bougs grow from a rootless trunk just placed in propagating sand and watched over to keep sand moist. I recently had a callistimon with a sufficient amount of foliage lose all but one short root and I kept that well watered in a training pot and it lost one branchlet but has zoomed ahead. Obviously something wonderful is going on under the soil. A friend has twice planted elm trunks about 3cm in potting mix and grown roots in a couple of months.

I'd be doing the cuttings in a growing medium as growing in water makes for brittle roots and you have to be very careful when potting that you don't break them.

Why not use a control system... do several cuttings in propagation mixture and several in water and see how you go.

[Jester]

Not a bad idea Melaquin

Thankyou

[Greth]

Propagation is something which lends itself to experiment so easily
Now I'm getting interested, if people are doing supersized cuttings this way, there was another thread regarding Rosemary, I know that roots easily in water, but didn't want to sacrifice my mature bushes to bonsai. I could give up a major branch to research pretty happily tho. Hmm, must go look at the prospects...

Yay, looks like someone stepped on the fine leaved one in its youth. It has the most marvellous twisty bit at the base. I like the idea of using the fine leaved one, more to scale than the common varieties. Experiments will be underway by the end of the day

[Greth]

Done. I couldnt get the whole of the twisty bits without major disruption, but still got a couple of pieces which I think will be a good start. I transferred an 'already rooted' rosemary cutting into the water as well. My reasoning is that plant roots secrete stuff into the soil deliberately or accidentally, the rooted cutting is obviously loaded with whatever hormones produce roots in rosemary. Sure many plant hormones are known, but maybe there are more yet undiscovered, propagation is not an exact science yet. If there are any contributing soil fungi etc, they are certainly present as well, and will probably survive in water.

Im not too sure if this is good science or sympathetic magic, I have a background in both! And if it works regularly, do I really care why?