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Lustful Horizontally Rooted Cuttings

14 years ago

The pics below are of my Los Lunas Fig, but these were rooted in long 3ft long 6 inch wide Plant Spa Pots. I forgot to add a scale, but the root ball part is around 1.5 feet long, and around a 6" wide.

Moral of the story is that I had extra cuttings that were molding the refer, I just put down 3" of potting soil, laid down the cuttings, and covered with another 2" of potting soil. The Plant Spa Pots have a screen on the bottom that holds the water and doesnt let any water perch or keep the soil to wet.

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Comments (11)

loslunasfarms
Original Author
14 years ago
Here are some better pics for scale.
wildforager
14 years ago
Ah ha! Jose eats Oroweat Multi-grain bread!

lol,
Little John
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My Queen of the night epi lives on top of the refrigerator during the winter and it always blooms after I bring it in and put it up there. I guess I will be getting to try the log method thanks to my slow mail service here. I got some cuttings that were wrapped in damp paper and the whole thing sealed inside a clear plastic sleeve. My regular mail lady was out so I think they sat at the post office for a couple of days and when I opened the package nearly all of them had actual roots not just nubbies from top to bottom! So what do you all think. Log method or pot as usual and the roots above the soil will die and be ok? Maybe this could be a new rooting method. Seal up cutting halfway down with wet paper then seal the clear plastic bag around it as high as you want roots and put in a dark hot garage for several day, lol. Help me people, lol.
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Harsh winters in the California foothills are really not that bad. Mostly 40's and 30's with some mid 20's thrown in. Lots of rain, though. I covered my cuttings with blankets and plastic but I did this after they were wet , so, not being able to dry out, they stayed wet and cold and that is the kiss of death to fig tree cuttings. This year, I am building a large shed to winter my young trees and cuttings in.
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>> Does your heat pad have a temp regulator? No. I'm actually using a drugstore heat pad intended for lower back pain and such. I put a blanket between the pad and the plants because even on the lowest temp setting it was too hot. I had experimented with the blanket thickness for days before the cuttings arrived, so that the temp is not higher than the lower-80's. But now that the ambient temp happens to be higher, so is the temp on top of the heating pad - to the point where I turned it off for now. Definitely need to monitor this setup often. >> The light above,depending on what kind it is can also jack up the temp inside to container. I use T5 bulbs. Two 54W bulbs are 30 inches above the bottom of the pots (not too close), and the lights do not produce a lot of heat in any case, so I think I am good there. >> The cuttings should get some air flow There are small holes in the plastic cover on the rubbermaid container, and I plan on opening and venting the cover every day for a few minutes to a few hours. Or shall I keep the cover peeled an inch or two? So far I was going to go by the smell inside. It smells humid but not musty right now - musty stale smell would be a sign to reduce humidity a bit. Over the last couple of days humidity has been between high-80's to a high of 99% and the temp has been 73 low / 81 high. Actually, I think this humidity may be too high now that I look at the numbers. What do you think? Vine Master, thank you for the reply! Considering there is not a lot of activity here, I emailed Joni these questions directly. She called me back minutes later - I am really impressed with the transaction, with her service, with the cuttings themselves, of course and with her ROOTING (haha pun intended) for my success. For the benefit of everybody with similar questions, I am going to summarize the advice she gave me in my own words. The long vines can be cut up into 2-3-4 node pieces and stuck into the pot in order to fill out the pot sooner, she says - I like that and will do that, I think. She says make each cutting so that there are at least a couple of leaves on each, as in absence of roots the plant can only take in water through leaves. Longer leafless stems can be cut off and discarded, especially if they have no nodes on them. I think my leafless stems do though, so I'll probably keep them. She does not recommend cutting off the leaves on the bottom node, as roots can grow from the stem below the lowest node. She does not recommend planting any cuttings horizontally in my case. She says she might recommend doing that if a cutting arrives in a bad shape, but that is not my case. Burying stems horizontally will increase the likelihood of some rooting somewhere on the stem, but it's not necessary in my case, according to her.
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Update on my root cuttings: So far, I have two sprouts that have germinated from the root cuttings I made of a section of Common Milkweed root. It looks like root cuttings can quickly produce new plants from existing Common Milkweed roots. I didn't know if new growth would occur this fall, next spring or never. Below is a section of the root I used. It was about the size of a #2 pencil. The RED ARROWS indicate the nubbins that I guessed might become new above ground shoots. The root is on a piece of paper towel. I trimmed the root into sections, leaving at least one nubbin per section and planted in two planters on Sept 28. Below is the first little plant that came up a few days ago and the second one has only just broken the soil surface. Many of you may know all of this but I'm rather new to root cuttings so thought it might be interesting to new gardeners. I've no idea if the little plants will provide a larger plant more quickly than simply germinating by seed. I think I will keep one of the planters in my cool greenhouse this winter, leaving the other outside and compare the two next spring. Mary
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thisisme
14 years ago
loslunasfarms I just love, love, love the roots this method produces. Kudos!
satellitehead
14 years ago
it looks like the top of the soil is slightly wet, damp enough to keep fungus gnats excited. do you ever have problems with them using this setup?
loslunasfarms
Original Author
14 years ago
In this case the pot was kept outside out of direct sun but during our hot summers. I didnt over water at all, the pot wont really let you, the bottom over flows, and the potting mix is very drainy.
satellitehead
14 years ago
Cool. I have found that I can almost entirely alleviate fungus gnat by bottom-watering. If the soil is NOT wet on top, they prefer not to lay their eggs there. So I have resorted to bottom-watering everything. This is perfect for mixes that have lots of chunky perlite and pine bark, but seems to cause water retention with anything with Sphagnum moss. My mix looks similar to what you have there, but I probably have about 30-40% more perlite and small bark chips and handles bottom-water really well, but with all that fine content in the pictures, I thought it might hold a lot of water.

I have also found that watering by filling up the saucer every 4-5 days on my 2gal-4gal figs seems to work really well. I always see setups like the one you're showing in the Sky magazine on Delta airplanes.

I've always wanted to buy one for herb and lettuce gardening. I would have never thought to use for cuttings. Thanks for sharing this!
loslunasfarms
Original Author
14 years ago
I found them at Walmart on clearance for like 4 bucks for a 6" wide x 6" deep x 3ft long pot.

Before, I bought them at home depot for $15 bucks each. I bought out Walmart when they were on clearance.
jimmieldavis
14 years ago
Jose,

Nice roots!

Will please talk a little bit more about what you did and what you started with? Specifically, the relationship between the Image#1 of the 'Scion Spa' and Image#2 of 'Roots-R-Us'. For example, can you describe the cuttings (size and branches particularly) that you originally placed into the spa?

Thanks,
JD
loslunasfarms
Original Author
14 years ago
Well, here goes, but Im terrible at writing directions.

1. Get a well draining potting soil mix and line the bottom of the plant spa with ~3" of potting soil. Image 1 is a setup I used, but not the exact one for the roots below, but close enough.

2. The cuttings I used were a bit thicker ~0.5" and they were ones that I was cleaning out of my refer (they were in the refer for about 8 mo). I pretty much lay them down on their sides, lining up the entire bottom.

3. Cover the lain down cuttings with ~2" of well draining potting soil. Picture 1 shows them with the tips sticking out. For the roots shown, I covered the ENTIRE cutting with potting soil.

4. Water the cuttings with a low intensity water wand. Mine gives a spring spray. If you add to much water you can compress soil really bad and it is very messy.

Thats it.
jimmieldavis
14 years ago
Thanks Jose.

This is what I wanted to know: "...Picture 1 shows them with the tips sticking out. For the roots shown, I covered the ENTIRE cutting with potting soil."

JD
danab_z9_la
14 years ago
hhhhmmmmmm..........there are those nice MONSTER ROOTS again.

Thanks for posting Jose. Good stuff........

Dan

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