Today I'm going to take some clippings from my lime tree.
I like to take a few clippings every year, and I basically root them and they
make little lime trees of their own, and then a year later they actually make
great housewarming gifts or birthday gifts.
So let's get started. You want to take a branch and you want to make a slice
in it at a 45-degree angle right near some kind of a notch that seems to be
the easiest way for a plan to regrow root.
So I'm going to trim this one just above the notch.
So I had this leaf with a little notch at the bottom and i'm just going to cut
it at a 45-degree angle. So I want to cut off part of the notch and leave a little
sliver of it alive and then I'm just going to stick this in some water and
i'm going to leave it there while i'm getting everything else ready.
So I got a couple more I want to notch up here and I'm going to stick
that one in the water. Then cut right through this last little notch.
Now i'm going to prepare my soil.
I like to use some seed starting soil because it's nice and loose and it gives
plenty of room for the roots to grow so. I like to fill my containers up a little
bit more than halfway with some very fine seed starting soil after I let them
down a little bit i want to be about half full the soil
next I like to add a little bit of water to the soil
this could be kind of hard to get bone dry soil to accept water so i just kind
of flood it and let the water drain out next step is to finish preparing my each
of my individual clippings
I like to pull off all the leaves except for the top two
I just pinched them off right near the stem you want to be careful not to rip
into the stem why you're doing this because I could damage the plant then I
take these top two leaves and I trim about two-thirds of them off because i
don't want the plan to dry out too quickly
basically make a little kite out of the leftover leaf
and then I'm going to stick this back in the container of water while I prepare
the other couple of clippings
so the reason you have to pinch off most of the leaves is because plants
evaporate water through their leaves and until this planet we grow some of its
roots it's going to be desperate for water so we want to try to contain as
much of that as we can
you don't want to take off all the leaves because that evaporating water
actually helps draw water up through the stem and that's going to help the plants
generate new routes gonna take these top two leaves and then trim about
two-thirds of them off
I'm going to wind up with a little kite shaped piece of leaf left my next step
is to dip the stems in some root going hormone
so I just dip it about an inch or so in it's going to be pretty caked because
it's because it was wet so I'm just going to tap it off to get to leave just
a fine coating of powder on it and then I'm going to stick that into the soil
approximately an inch down
you don't want to go all the way to the bottom of the container because you want
to leave a little bit of room for the roots to go down so I'm gonna take like
trimmed up clipping it gets kind of cake down there so I'm going to tap off the
excess and then I'm going to stick it in my soil about as far as the root growth
hormone comes up next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a little
microclimate around each one of these clippings essentially like take a
plastic bag and I try to get as much air as i can and then I'm just going to put
it around the container
it's important to select the right size container that will fit with whatever
you're using to cover it with but when you put this in the Sun it will generate
humidity inside of the bag and that will help to keep the plant from drying out
while it's struggling to grow roots so the next thing I'm going to do is cut a
little slit up the corner of the bag and that's going to create just a little
pocket of air flow which will help keep the plant from getting moldy inside
respect a little bit of the corner up
I don't want to go up too high because I do want to hold in humidity
I just want to make sure it's not completely suffocating
in there so the next thing i'm going to do i'm just going to put these in a
little container so i could water them without getting water all over the place
and then I want to put these containers and a nice sunny spot because that's
going to generate the humidity inside of the backs so I want to put these in a
nice sunny spa
so it could take a couple of months for these things to start generating new
growth and this one is what I did over the winter and you can see that it's
just starting to grow some leaves right here
I would keep it inside the plastic bag until those leaves are about a half inch
long and then you want to take it out
so if you don't get new growth in the first couple of months don't get
discouraged as long as your plant stem has a little bit of green to it
it's still alive and it still has a chance to keep growing after about six
months
your plants should look something like this and after about 1 year if it's nice
and healthy
it should look like this this one needs to be repotted soon after a few years
your plants should be ready to start growing lives they start out as little
buds like this
so after the flower falls off you should be left with a little green lime looking
but like this it takes a few months to grow but eventually you got it