Re: Propagation

At 11:55 AM 8/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:

In a message dated 8/25/02 11:08:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
flowers@simplegiftsfarm.com writes:

<< Having contributed this bit of unwarranted wisdom, I can tell you from
long
 practical experience that you can simply take any rooted cutting from a
 water glass and pot it immediately into soil if there are adequate numbers
 of roots present to support the top growth.  There is no need for long term
 muddification or any other precaution. >>

I have not found this to be true.
This is why gardening is so much like horse--racing. What I've found to work in my greenhouses and nursery don't work for others. You gotta love it. :-)



A plant rooted in a solid mix will not have the growth disturbed when potting
as the root ball will be intact.
Again, we differ. While I would never consider water-rooting in practical nursery work (too cumbersome, too labour intensive etc. - I did run some experiments to see what the effects would be in for home gardeners. To repeat from my earlier post - if you provide optimum conditions for growth, the plant will respond optimally and the difference in growth rate between a water-rooted and soil-rooted plant will be minimal. At least they were in my experiments (and yes, impatiens were one of them) :-)

To the extent that you reduce the optimum conditions then the soil rooted plant will have an advantage. There are so many variables here - from the soil you use to the water and light levels that it is difficult to standardize and this is why we likely have horticultural differences of opinion. :-)

That being said - a well-rooted cutting in a decent soil is indeed going to suffer less stress than a poorly rooted cutting being transplanted. That is why all imho, all cuttings should be potted up into pots and grown on until new growth is observed and not directly planted into the garden to thrive on their own. The soil in these pots is critical for success - real garden soil should *never* be used in small pots for this purpose otherwise cuttings will definitely stall out.

The biology of this is debated quite a lot.  I think that I said before that
professional propagators do not use water grown cutting.
We couldn't afford to. In the nursery that I know work at, we're propagating literally millions of herbaceous perennial cuttings every year and have quite specialized facilities for it.

For
several season they were experimenting with a water retaining material called
Oasis.  That comes in small wedges and gave a fully rooted plant (they buy
cutttings) when "finished" went into a pot of probably some kind of promix.
Since the Oasis never dries out, or seems like it never does, the geraniums
grown this way will occasionally die from inability to drain as pelargoniums
require.
Oasis is simply the florists foam that cut flowers often come in. Yes, it does dry out but its advantage is that it holds its aeration much better than a small cube of soil. Even artificial soil that has been formulated for use in small propagation plugs can compact and the cuttings rot as a result. (Note that there is a wide range of blends of artificial soil depending on the intended use) Oasis in my experiments was excellent for some herbaceous material that didn't like excessive misting (or any misting) but generally is more expensive than normal plug mixes.

Pelargoniums being propagated in oasis are more likely to die from blackstem or other fungal rot than from an "inabilibity to drain". In fact, Oasis being a foam does not lose its internal structure under the pressure of propagation watering and its water retention ability is a constant due to this internal structure. Soils, on the other hand, become compacted under some watering regimes, their composition and pots sizes. Fungus becomes established because of a wide range of other factors including temperature, light levels, aeration, etc etc. A grower can keep the oasis too wet in some environmental conditions but that's the fault of the grower, not the oasis product.

Water rooted cuttings are great for homeowners without specialized facilities for propagation. Reduce the stress on them for best growth. The rest is a horse-race. :-)

Doug

Doug Green
Author of the award winning "Gardening Wisdom"
See gardening articles at http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com

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