Hi everyone, I've heard people say that cuttings in water root faster in darker vessels than
in clear vessels because the darker container can more closely mimic the natural environment
for the roots, which are usually not exposed to much sunlight. Also using a darker glass might
help to prevent algae from growing if the cuttings stay in water for a long time. In this video I'm
going to compare the root growth of golden pothos cuttings in a clear versus dark jar of water
over 8 weeks. If you're short on time and don't want to watch the full video, I can tell you now
that I did not see a significant difference in root growth. Now let me get into the details.
These are the jars I'm using. This is the dark jar which is not completely opaque. I wanted to
test an opaque vessel too but I didn't have one around at home. And here is the clear jar. Both
are made of glass. I tried my best to find jars of similar size but this is the closest I've got.
I am using tap water for both jars. Now I get my cuttings from the mother plant which is this
golden pothos here. The number of cuttings I could experiment with was unfortunately limited by the
size of the opening of the dark bottle which was only able to handle about three cuttings.
So I also only used three cuttings for the clear jar as well. And I know the scientists
watching this video are going to point out that this sample size is way too small. And
I agree with you, so do take the findings of this non-scientific experiment with a
grain of salt. Anyways I did make sure to get enough water so that the nodes on the cuttings
are submerged in water. Then I left both jars in a sunny window and change the water about once every
one to two weeks. At the end of the first week, I changed the water and checked on the cuttings.
I noticed no growth in any of the cuttings which I thought was reasonable because it was January,
which is winter in England, and it was cold and cloudy, which is not ideal for cuttings to root.
Around week 3 is when the root growth became more obvious.
Two of the three cuttings in the clear jar have popped out some new roots.
And as for the cuttings in the dark vessel also two out of the three
have grown some new roots, so the progress is very similar so far. By the end of week four,
the cutting in the clear glass that didn't have roots before
has finally started rooting. And the roots on the other two cuttings have also gotten longer.
The same can be said for the cuttings in the dark container. In addition to the
root growth some of the cuttings have new growth points as well, which is very exciting to see.
At the end of week six, all the roots have gotten longer except for this one cutting
from the dark jar that seems to be too preoccupied with growing a new shoot to care about the roots.
But besides that, the two jars of cuttings are doing similarly well.
We are now at the end of week eight, and again all the roots have gotten longer.
All the cuttings are healthy and growing new shoots in addition to growing roots.
I would feel comfortable transplanting all these cuttings in soil, with the exception of the one
cutting with the shorter root. That being said on average I don't think there's a big difference
between rooting the cuttings in clear versus dark vessel, which is great news for me because
I actually found it very difficult to find dark glass that would be suitable for water
propagation around my home, whereas I have many used clear glass from the kitchen.
Also again this mini experiment took place between January and March which is the winter here. So if
you're rooting your cuttings in the summer with warmer and sunnier weather, it'll probably take
you less than eight weeks to get roots this long. Let me know what kind of vessels you like to use
for water propagation, and I hope you found this video helpful. See you next time, bye!