Propagation Month, Day 14: Rooting a Fig Scion

I've heard some people say that rooting fig scions is incredibly easy. But as with many other things that I've heard are incredibly easy to do, I seem to be having a hard time with this.

I started about two weeks ago with a Desert King fig scion that I'd gotten at the California Rare Fruit Growers' scion exchange in January. I'd kept the scion wrapped in a moist paper towel in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator. When I took it out of the fridge, there were a couple of buds just starting to turn green, so it was apparently beginning to break dormancy.

One suggestion I'd read on the Internet said to soak the scion in a dilute rooting hormone dip for 24 hours and then pot it up. I did that, although I thought it might be better to pot it just in perlite and keep it in a plastic bottle to keep the humidity in. It seems to have kept too much humidity in, however, because it was starting to get a little furry and there were still no roots forming. It's still alive, though, because the buds are green and growing.

Today I took it out, wiped it down with hydrogen peroxide to kill the fungus, and repotted it in a 50/50 mix of perlite and potting soil. I also rubbed it down again with some rooting hormone, although this time I used a gel form that should stick a bit better. Tomorrow it goes out in the greenhouse for its last chance to put on some roots.

Propagation Month, Day 13: Direct-Seeding Zinnias and Baby's Breath

Sometimes the direct approach is the best.

After I moved the hostas out of this small corner bed last week, something was needed to fill in the empty spots, preferably something fast-growing since the irises won't last much longer. These lime-green zinnias called 'Envy' interspersed with some baby's breath seemed like a good combo.

Now that the temperature is warming up, sowing the seeds directly in the ground is a good option, and it couldn't be simpler: sprinkle, press, and water. The zinnias should start to appear in a week or so.

Propagation Month, Day 12: Dividing Acorus

I've been doing a lot of cleaning up and repotting plants over the last couple days and that included tackling a job I'd been dreading--cleaning up and moving the container where I keep a small fountain and a couple of water plants--a variegated acorus and an equisetum (horsetail). I've been procrastinating about it because I feared the plants would be a) mucky and b) seriously overgrowing their pots. They were.

First there was the icky job of emptying the container, bleaching it out and re-locating it to the deck where it will be easier to enjoy. The equisetum was fairly easy to get out of its pot, but there was hardly any soil left--just roots and muck. I used the jet spray of the hose to clean the roots as best I could and then re-potted it.

But the acorus was another story. It had so outgrown its pot that I had to cut off about six inches of roots that had grown out the drainage holes and even then I couldn't pull the pot off. I finally had to cut it off. You can see in this photo what a solid tangle the roots had become. I tried using the jet spray again to loosen the roots, but in the end I had to use a shovel to split the mass up into four sections, and then use my pruners to cut off the bottom half of the roots. I potted up all four sections and put the smallest one back in the fountain. The other three I'll offer to a friend who has a good-sized pond. I gave mine a haircut, so it looks a bit stunted right now, but it should fill out with a lot of new growth soon, now that it has some fresh soil for nourishment.

Propagation Month, Day 11: Sowing Petunia Seeds

After a full day working out in the garden doing spring clean-up, I decided to keep tonight's propagation project simple. I sowed two small flats of petunia seeds, using a mix of potting soil and perlite (about a 2:1 mix). Petunia seeds are so tiny! All you can do is sprinkle them carefully on the top of the soil, press them in (but don't cover them with more soil) and hope that you haven't sowed them too thickly. They need light to germinate so tomorrow they'll go out in the greenhouse.

Propagation Month, Day 10: Pre-Soaking Roma Beans

Beans are supposed to be easy. Really easy. But for some reason, I always seem to have a hard time with Roma beans. A few weeks ago I planted several beans in a container and kept it watered well. Nothing. The beans were still there a week later, but nothing was germinating. So I decided to pre-soak them in a wet paper towel, thinking it would only take a day or two for them to germinate that way. Instead, it took several days for just a few of them to germinate. I planted them in the same container as the previous beans, but only one so far has actually sprouted leaves. I had to keep soaking the rest of the beans for about ten days to get all of them to germinate.

I finally planted out the last of them today. I really don't know what the problem has been. The beans are a couple years old, but I thought beans stayed viable for longer than that. It's also possible that the potting soil I have in the container is too fast-draining and the beans haven't gotten enough consistent moisture to get going. I'm not sure, but they have definitely not been the no-brainer they're supposed to be. I'm not giving up, however. Roma beans are too delicious to not keep trying.

Propagation Month, Day 9: Rooting Begonia Leaves

I haven't tried this before. Begonias are supposedly quite easy to root from leaf cuttings, so here goes.

I took a leaf from a white begonia (not sure what kind) and made some cuts along the veins on the underside of the leaf with a sterile blade.


I then pinned the leaf (cut side down) onto a pot of moistened 50/50 perlite/potting soil mix and sealed it into a ziploc bag.

If all goes as it should, roots should form at the cuts with new little plantlets, and the old leaf should just decay away. Sounds too simple to be true. We'll see...

Propagation Month, Day 8: Gel-Rooting Cuttings

While shopping for some seeds at the terrific nursery section at Longs Drugs in Oakland, I came across packages of something called Gel 2 Root, little sealed cups of a patented rooting gel manufactured by Supa Plants in the U.K. I've never seen these before, but I had to give them a try. I got a box of two cups for $3.99; they also came in boxes of six for $12.99.

They couldn't make the process simpler. You prepare your cuttings the way you normally would, although there's no need to use any rooting hormone because there is hormone in the rooting gel. You poke a small hole for each stem in the foil lid and slide each cutting into the gel. Then put it in bright indirect light and wait for the roots to grow. You can see the roots growing through the clear plastic cup. (I also took the additional step of sealing each cup with cuttings into a ziploc bag, just to help the leaves retain more moisture.)

You don't need to water them--all the water and nutrients they need are in the gel. When the roots have grown sufficiently, you cut the foil lid open further to pull out the cuttings and transplant them. If a cutting doesn't root, you can replace it with a new cutting. (So says the label at any rate; I'm wondering if there would be any bacteria left behind by the old cutting that would contaminate the new one.)

I tried these tonight with salvia and catmint cuttings, both of which should root fairly easily. If these cups root cuttings faster and more efficiently than perlite or other rooting media, they might be worthwhile, at least for certain plants. But at two bucks a cup, that could get pricey if you have a lot of cuttings to root. Also, the package says they will not work with most acid-loving plants so that means azaleas and such need to be rooted the old-fashioned way. I'm really curious to see how well these work.