Thanks guys! Lizalily and Paveggie, to answer your questions - I wintersow, so all my seeds were planted outside in containers starting in January, and sown through March., and were outside from the get-go. Due to a prolonged sickness, there was a delay in actually getting the seedlings planted out into their beds, but they were outside in containers before being planted out. My cutting beds have very good soil. I have four raised cinder-block beds with a compost/manure/soil mix, a few smaller raised beds, and two lasagna beds which were made with lots of organic materials. The soil in all of them is loose and well-draining. Paveggie, you may have hit the nail on the head. We had a very wet, cool spring, then some long stretches of very hot, humid, dry weather. I thought at first that that was the reason I was getting zinnia's in bloom at six inches tall, and that just may be it. It just seems like I had the same problem last year. I see these bouquets in the stores and the stems are all so long. My bouquets are only about ten inches high. So I guess that's just the way it is - at least for this year. So my next question is, will these plants - or the individual stems, I should say - eventually grow taller? Or am I stuck with 10-inch boquets again, lol? Thanks for responding! :) Dee

I think Jean is absolutely right about firming the soil around the cutting. I do a little pinching of the soil around the cutting to make sure there is some real contact with the soil and the cutting. That is how I learned from a very professional gardener. I don't know first hand, but I've also read what Jean is saying about roots that grow in water not being the same kind of roots that grow in soil. I don't know if it's really true, but it seems reasonable to me and so I act like it's true. Part of my reason for believing that it should be true is that one of the easiest ways to kill a plant is to overwater it so much that the roots are constantly wet. And at the same time I can put a cutting into a glass of water and it will grow roots and survive for a long time. I've had much better luck taking cuttings much earlier in the season than you. Like in June, not August. That could be a factor. And I'm wondering if your cuttings might be too long. One or two nodes under the soil and maybe one above. I've taken cuttings in the late Fall, just before a freeze and put them away under bags of dry leaves with the rest of my overwintered Hydrangeas. They didn't put on any root growth by the next Spring, but still, over the next summer they developed a very strong root system. If I were you, I'd get some rooting powder, put the cuttings in a pot and place it outside and cover it up with some leavesfor the winter. Then put them in a bright spot next Summer. But not directly exposed to the sun. Then be patient. Hay

Try many starts is my advice. I do this on accident each year and the failure rate is high. I live in the city with lots of fences. Squirrels have few predators and the hawks cannot maneuver around the fences. I have tiles and broken pottery to cover open potting soil. I also use pear tree trimmings and Lady Banks rose shots to make a basket weave around the top of my pots. I stick both ends of the cuttings into the potting soil to make big loops and go around the pot a couple of times. It is a tail thing, they don't like it. Anyway, the pears always bloom but mostly die. The Lady Banks rose usually put out shots and mostly take. I go around later and knock them off. So to begin with everything will look fine and promising but you may have trouble as the weather warms and the big stick tops start demanding nourishment. DH thinks it is a miracle and brags to our friends about my green thumb. Get off the couch and have fun in the dirt.

Quite a bit of poo-poo'ing going on here from those who haven't really tried this. I do many Coleus cuttings every fall, sometimes as few as 50, sometimes as many as 150, put in water, and left there until spring, only adding water as needed so they don't dry out. After bringing in around 100 potted plants, there's no room for pots of Coleus also (unless it's cuttings stuck in existing pots, as temporary winter companions,) just jars in windowsills. I don't change the water, or use a razor blade, or anything else unusual. Here's one shot of one small area. I have Coleus allllll over my yard, all saved. I use pieces as big as possible (stopping short of cutting into hard, woody material) to keep their numbers as low as possible, and to start spring with the biggest possible plants. Some cuttings are 2-feet tall. Steel, if you come back to this discussion, I wonder if your plants had already gotten too cold? Waiting until panic night, the first night of frost, can mean that plants have already experienced a few nights near freezing. Temps near/below 40 seem to freak Coleus out, they are much more unlikely to take root after that. My only problems have been the years when I waited too long like that. I'd been doing this for many yrs in OH, and continue to do it here in AL. Here's a crazy combo pot from last winter, with Coleus and various other plants cheating winter by jumping inside for a few months. I cut the Coleus & stuck stems into the pot, takes a few seconds. A denizen of shade for summer, a sunny window keeps Coleus looking great during winter. Potting like this is a newer method for me, within the past few yrs. Before then, it was nothing but jars of water, which is still my main method for saving the bulk of the cuttings, since I want to save so many. This pot has only about 4-5 pieces of Coleus, stuck in the pot about 2 months before this pic, (seen in ground in the above pic.) They are the same Coleus, saved over several winters as seen in this pic, from 2012, haven't bought any new ones since: A few days later, everything had been chopped up & put in jars, ready to come inside. They can be separated into more jars later, until the roots form a massive tangle. Any not separated by then get left together & planted in a clump in the spring.