rooting plants and propagating them from cuttings is always challenging
in today's video we share some secrets that will help you grow great quality
plants
so let's start with secret number one for propagating cuttings you need some
kind of enclosure like this one this is just a plastic box
these are very cheaply available at most home improvement stores
next we will need some green moss now remember that green moss is a little
different from the peat moss that you get
which is powdered that's used for potting mixes this green moss
is actually directly retrieved from the source and the beauty of this green moss
is that it holds a lot of water which is perfect for what we are trying
to achieve which is to root cuttings now we lay down the green moss on the
bottom of the box as you see here and the idea is to
spread it out equally to make about two or three
inches in the bottom
now you can add more green moss because it's reusable
you can keep reusing this green moss again and again for this purpose
but all we're doing is just laying it down so that it forms a nice
medium for our cuttings we then water it thoroughly
now remember that when you use the green moss from the bag
it is quite dehydrated it's quite dry and you need to water it and let it
absorb the water for at least an hour or two you can even
keep it for a longer time like five or six hours but
I've seen that a couple of hours is enough
and here are our cuttings this is a pothos cutting
we have some beetle leaf cuttings and some
iv gourd cuttings all of these are not that easy to
root but you see here these nodes that are there
will send out roots in this environment so all we really do is push in the stems
in such a way that the nodes are below the peat moss that
we just added
and even for the potholes you can do the same thing for any kind of cutting
just make sure that you bury the stem a little bit inside the peat moss
but don't worry too much about burying it too deep
because the plant will still produce a lot of roots around
as you will soon see and these are some iv gourd cuttings
these are one of the most difficult to root
they usually end up wilting and drying when
rooting in other medium all we're going to do is just put in some of these
cuttings into our medium which is our first step in propagating
these cuttings and then we just close the lid and make
sure that it's air tight the key is to create humidity in this
medium which helps these cuttings take root
and here you can see just after a few days the
cuttings are now ready to be planted now it may sound like a surprise but this
humid environment that's created is very conducive to the plant producing
roots as you see here and you can see the
roots they are very well formed this is a longevity spinach cutting that
we had placed and some more pothos cuttings and some
beetle leaf cuttings and you can see how well they have
formed this is just an amazing method of propagating plants and i found
this method to be one of the best methods for
rooting plants or cuttings you can see here the roots are quite well formed
and the plants are doing great now remember that you need to
put your box in a shaded location not in full sun
a little bit of sun is okay but you don't want it to be
in full sun otherwise your plants will actually get baked with the heat
you want the temperature inside the box to be at around 80 to 90 degrees
at max and the humidity that comes from all the water content inside
is that makes all these beautiful roots for these plants
now here you can see the pothos plant again so many roots on this plant
this is just so easy to grow now that you have
all these roots around the plant and this is a root on the beetle leaf
cutting
so all you really do is after your plants are rooted
you just take in some potting mix we just have some leftover potting mix here
and then plant your cuttings into smaller
pots and you can up pot them once they grow larger
and here is our beetle leaf cutting same thing we just take a nice
pot and then add some potting mix and then plant our cutting
and since the roots are already there there's a very high chance of this plant
surviving as opposed to planting them without any
roots and here you can see you can just curl
the plant around inside the container and then add in some potting
mix to get some great quality plants and here is one more
cutting this is a pothos cutting and you just have to make sure that all the
roots or at least most of the roots are touching the soil so we're just
removing some more leaves so that it's easier for us to put this
plant inside the potting mix so that a lot of these stems will take
root
now don't worry if a couple of roots are outside
they will just dry out over time but you do want to make sure that you have at
least two or three roots inside your potting
medium
and here is an iv gourd cutting that we planted
you can see here the ivy gourds are difficult to root but just look at how
many roots this iv gourd cutting has you can easily propagate and create two
or three plants from that cutting and here is one more iv gourd very nice
looking roots here and some more beetle leaf cuttings
and you can see we put in the whole vine into the
growing medium the greenhouse the mini greenhouse that we created
and you can see how many roots are there and this can easily create three betel
leaf plants by just cutting them and removing them
and planting them separately and we have done exactly that you can
see here the plants they look beautiful we have planted them in a potting mix
that we created ourselves which is just peat moss and perlite
and you can see they look quite good moving on to secret number two
you can use a container like this these are plastic containers that you get
at the grocery store they are almost free after you use the veggies
and you can just add in some potting mix here
and create a mini greenhouse now this is a very neat trick
a very cheap way to propagate seeds and you can also propagate cuttings but
since this container is smaller we're going to be just sewing some seeds
inside this container and you can also use dishwasher tablet
boxes they make excellent mini greenhouses
we just add some potting mix and then we're going to be planting some curry
leaf seeds here curry leaves are very tropical plants
they need a lot of humidity to germinate and they usually take a long time if you
don't give them humidity
the next step is to just wrap this up and create the mini greenhouse as you
see here and we're just using some stretch wrap
here these are cheaply available in the moving section of your hardware
store
and also on amazon and I'll provide links to all these products in the video
description and the comments below so that you can buy these products
but you can see here how we have created this greenhouse
for a very low price this is an excellent greenhouse it works great as
you see here we are opening this up now after a few
days and you can see the curry leaf seeds
that we planted and curry leaves don't have a high
germination rate but you can still see the seeds have germinated
and at this point we just taken some potting mix once again this is a mix of
peat moss and perlite it's a great potting mix for planting
newly germinated seeds and we've been growing curry leaf plants
this way for quite a long time now and this works out very well
and you can use any kind of plastic container again
this is just a tupperware that was lying around in our home
and you can see we are sowing some onion seeds
onions again have a very poor germination rate
and this kind of a greenhouse will assist germination to
quite a large extent and these are two very good varieties of onions that we
are sowing we just top it off with a little bit
more of the seed starting mix
and then mist in some water so that the soil settles down over the seeds
and you can just add the label and then use the same technique as we used before
just use a stretch wrap to close out your greenhouse your mini greenhouse
and the key is to create humidity this humidity will let your
seeds germinate very well quite quickly and in just a few days you can see here
the onion seeds that we have sown should have germinated and have
germinated and onions usually take a long time to germinate
the germination rate is very poor if you don't give them humidity
so all in all this technique works really well for
any kind of seed starting you saw starting curry leaf seeds you saw
starting some onion seeds so this is a very cheap
way to create your own mini greenhouse moving on to secret number three this is
how you propagate cuttings that are a little more woody and here is
a little technique to create holes in your cups
that we'll be using to propagate our cuttings
i just use a drill and then just drill down
all the way to create all these containers at once
now we are using a rooting hormone we have
removed a little bit of the stem or the cutting
since this is a woody cutting we want to make sure that we scar
it a little bit and then dip it in the rooting hormone as you see here
and then plant them now the rooting hormone is a dry substance
so just dip the bottom of the stem in water and then in the rooting hormone
and then plant your cutting and this technique works out very well
if you have extra leaves just remove them you need a few leaves
but even if you don't have a lot of leaves that's perfectly fine and I've
noticed that the v-shaped or the y-shaped cuttings are
quite good and one of the mistakes that a lot of gardeners make is to
water your cuttings after you have planted them
but all you need to do is water them before and then put in your cuttings
and also make sure that you're using a finger or some kind of a pencil or work
to make those holes before you put in the cuttings
and in just a few days you can see that the basal cuttings have grown quite well
and i hope this technique works well for you for propagating cuttings
so there we have it folks those were our three secrets for
creating great quality cuttings rooting your cuttings and propagating
your plants as well as seeds and it took me a lot of time to make this video
so I'd really appreciate if you could hit that like button
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and if you have any questions put them in the comments box below we'll see you
again soon happy gardening