Wow! This thread has a long life. I don't know if anyone is still interested but I thought I would post anyway. I used to have lots of luck rooting coleus in water but now there are so many chemicals in it that if the water doesn't sit for a day the plants start turning black right away. Most of you refer to the length of the cutting and so I have to tell you it is the number of leaf nodes that is important. You can have a very long cutting and if there are no nodes in the water or soil there will be no roots. The rooting hormones usually have a fungicide in them. The auxons (growth chemicals) are stimulated by the rooting hormone so you increase your chances of sucess. When I give propagation classes I recommend the use of a microwave to sterlize the soil. Vermiculite and perlite are both excellent as starting medium because they don't get waterlogged as easily as peat based starting soil.Twenty-five years ago coleus was considered a shade plant. The new hybrids with the brighter colors will take a lot more sun. Since they are hybrids, collecting seed is not usually sucessful in getting a plant with the same characteristics as the parent plant. That's why when you buy the seed you get a mix from a particular strain. I hope this has been helpful :) -Sandy

Thanks for the response! I've actually been doing my own research since I posted and came to the same conclusion as you. Since the pitch pines drop their needles anyway, I'm just not going to rake that section of garden, and will even pile the pine needles up around the cuttings and see how they do. Hopefully they'll survive, if not I can always try in the spring. Good luck to you too!

Hey, echinaceamania--gee. Those must have been healthy cuttings. I just tried my 1st cutting from my plant. It was about 6" long, with leaves at the top, placed in a small vial of water. With the whole thing set on top of the 'fridge, so it'd get some constant heat. and all that placed in a plastic bag, to retain moisture. I misted the cutting every couple of days. Results: total failure. Top leaves dried out to "crinkly" consistency. Stem, produced zero roots. Lucky you. I'll try your method with another cutting and see what happens. Did you weight the cutting down so it was under the water? Within the next few days I'm going take cuttings from everything that even looks like it might work, put it in some rooting compound and then into a perlite mix. --I'm wondering if I should just forget it and try to find (I think the name is) August Beauty (or something like that) on eBay and start over. --It's a bit funny. I went to a large greenhouse/nursery here and asked about gardenias. They had one. It was essentially a bare twig. My dying ones were 100% better than the one they had in their greenhouse. If these new cuttings don't take, I'll have no choice, but to try to order some new ones. How come I can grow an orange tree, orchids, star jasmine, Madagascar jasmine, Plumeria, inside, here in Utah, but no luck with the gardenias? Oh well, I guess that's just the nature of the plant. --wish I had soil and moisture as my uncle, back home in Louisiana, where he has gardenias as foundation plants. They are always in bloom and gorgeous.

If it repeats, in general it doesn't seem to need dormancy. Those go outside until hard frost, then come back in under the lights. Once bloomers, particularly ones that have a tendency to run, seem to object to that treatment, and can develop quite interesting looking leaves by spring. They will eventually straighten out once in the ground, but are a bit happier in the garage with the potted chinas. The big thing to remember is that the smaller pots dry out a lot faster than the honking big ones the permanent pot plants are in, and seem to need monthly moisture checks. The garage does freeze, but stays above about 25°F.