Re: Oleander cuttings

Wim van Putten wrote:
> 
> Dear Damian
> You can root oleander in water, but in general it is never a good idee to
> root cuttings in water, because special waterroots are formed and when you
> transfer the rooted cuttings into the soil, new normal roots have to be
> formed. The means the whole rooting proces is much slower.
> The best is to use special rooting soil, (available in 40 liter bags in
> Holland), which consists of a mixture of pure peat and sand. This mixture is
> nearly sterile, has no nutrients and this avoids rotting/wilting. Normal
> pottingsoil contains manure or compost, which induces rotting/wilting very
> easy.

Hi
I have had great success with a very simple medium recommended by a
lecturer at my local Polytech -  pure untreated sawdust (Pinus sawdust
is the one which I can obtain easily). 
It works equally well if fresh or partly broken down, but is obviously
likely to be more sterile if fresh. However, so far, in more than two
years I haven't had any trouble with cuttings rotting.

This sounds as though it would not have enough air or drainage, but
curiously most cuttings love it and root very easily.

I have also just heard of ground pumice as a rooting medium, and as this
is very freely available in my country I think I will try a combination
of these two materials to see if it is any improvement on straight
sawdust for more difficult subjects.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, 
New Zealand (astride the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
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