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

I have also done vegetative cuttings much the same way yiorges does them. I have also done them by root cuttings, which gives me the highest % of take but it is much more difficult and you need to destroy one plant...but you can get alot more. I would assume you are a home owner trying to propagate this plant. If so, vegetative cuttings might be a little difficult due to the fact that you don't really have a mist system. You can try your method. Try scoring the bottom of the stem then you can put a little powder on the wound, then put a rock on top of the stem so the bottom of the stem is making good contact with soil. Then keep it watered. Another way I have done it is take a stem (not one that appears woody but not a soft green one either...like a stem that is light brown - last years growth) and lightly score the stem all around. Apply some rooting hormone powder. Then take a ball of soil...about the size of a baseball and moisten it. Next take the ball of soil and put it around the wound you just created and hold it in your hand. Then take tin foil and wrap the soil ball with tin foil and pinch it around the stem above and below the soil ball so it will stay there. Then you can poke holes in the foil. Keep the soil moist and by fall time you should have some roots. Next spring comes you can take the foil off and there should be roots all throughout that soil ball. Cut the stem off and plant the soil ball and you will have a new plant! This has worked for me just need to make sure that soil stays moist.

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.

Light is not needed unless leaves are present. Do keep a close eye out for new growth though, because when foliage emerges, it will need light! Many types of plants will produce foliage in a relatively short time once planted in warmer conditions, so your storage in the dark probably won't last long.