hi again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and today I want to talk to
you about the application of rooting hormone . In all the time that
I've been propagating plants both personally here on my farm and also
professionally i've been asked a lot of questions on
this topic the main ones boil down to does it work? is it worth it? is it safe?
and isn't there something else that i could use instead of it?
now i can tell by the tone of the question on that last one
that you're coming to this video looking for an answer that's different than the
one that i'm going to give you because basically my answer is yes it does work
yes it is worth it it's safe i did the research on that one
and also there is really nothing else that quite matches rooting hormone in
the way that you would apply it and how it will work now before we get
too deep in the topic i need to explain that last statement
and to do that i need to show you a little bit about why cuttings succeed
and why they fail stick around for this first bit here
trust me you will come around to understanding why i say what i say about
this if you have managed the basic methods of
stem cuttings your success or failure will almost
always come down to managing the growing environment in this it's all about
balance if on the one hand your growing
environment is too cool too wet too dark or there's too little
air movement then your cuttings will tend to rot
quite quickly if on the other hand it's too warm too
dry too bright or there's too much air
movement then your cuttings will dry out if you keep your cuttings in that middle
zone for enough time to develop new roots then you win and
there are plenty of ways to take these conditions under greater control
including using timed mist humidity domes heating mats
artificial lights or even electric fans for a little gentle air movement
after the cuttings are stuck the natural rooting hormones begin accumulating
downwards from the stems and leaves into the bottom nodes when enough
hormones have accumulated callus and then roots develop but even
if your conditions are just right the clock is ticking your cuttings only
have a limited amount of stored moisture and energy
my experience is that when plants stall in the early stages
it dramatically reduces their chance of success
commercial rooting powders liquids and gels work because they supplement the
natural production of these rooting hormones
and allow the plant to begin root development sooner
a number of natural alternatives have been promoted as a replacement for
rooting hormone things like honey or aloe vera or like
this one cinnamon and what they're supposed to do
is if you coat the bottom end of your cutting
they're supposed to protect the cutting as it tries to root
the problem with this is twofold one the evidence
is really really sketchy it's all basically anecdotal there's not a lot of
scientific support that they do anything to protect your
cuttings the second thing is that they're actually trying to solve
the wrong problem if you do your troubleshooting around your growing zone
if you're managing humidity if you're managing
heat if you're managing light if you've got those things under control
then by far the higher risk of your failure of your cutting
comes down to it running out of time running out of energy
before it has time to set those roots in that case
application of rooting hormone helps it along application of something to
protect it from rot really doesn't help at all so i'm
going to go through one more topic here which is willow water because this one
is alleged to be able to add rooting hormone to your cuttings i'm
gonna go take some cuttings and some willow and i'll be right back well i
can't believe i got this far into the video without talking about
iba now don't worry i won't go too far into the chemistry of it but if you are
curious about it i've made a video on whether it's safe
to use rooting hormone that goes a little more into the background of the
chemical of the matter but all you really need to know for this
video is that of a few different compounds that were
tested in the 30s and 40s and then onwards
for their effectiveness in promoting roots and plants iba was the one that
was found to have the the best effect and to be
the most stable and usable in product so it's
what's in most commercially available rooting formulations what's also cool to
know about it is that it is present in reasonable amounts in stems of
willow and you can see why that would lead people to believe
that the extract of willow in willow water
would be effective as a rooting hormone now willow water is usually prepared a
number of different ways in this case i've just chopped up stems and put them
in water to i guess steep but the other ways people
do it they sometimes they smash it sometimes they boil it into water
with all with the idea that the iba will be soaked into the water
and then you can use that on your cuttings now there's a problem with this
chemically we also know that iba is not very soluble
in water at the very highest concentrations you can naturally
dissolve iba into water it's going to only be
about a quarter of the strength of the very weakest rooting formulations
on the market so i guess marginally you could say that
would help but only on the very easiest plants to root on anything a
little bit harder usually the rooting rooting hormone
formulations just to give you an idea the weakest
ones on the market are usually around 0.1 percent
uh on moderate or moderately difficult to root plants it might be around point
four percent and in hard to root plants it might be around one percent somewhere
along those lines so willow water on a hard to root plant
is probably about 40 times too weak to do anything to help
promote rooting so willow water is probably not a good solution not to
mention which it's it's an issue of you don't know how much
iba you've put in here it's not very stable
you'd have to prepare it fresh every time it's just not convenient like using
a rooting formulation go ahead and do it if that suits you
best but it's probably not very effective the alternatives that i've
discussed here today are just about credible at least there's reasoning
behind their use the ones i can't quite understand are
the ones that look like somebody's just looked at their pantry and said hmm a
banana might work or maybe a potato or red onions and i hope that if you see
these out there that you are equally critical
to them as you would be of anything that i've talked about here today
look for some evidence first before you waste your time or
food making cuttings alright that should wrap up my topic today if you have any
questions about anything to do with propagating
plants i would love to answer those leave your
comments below the video