My Florida Tropical Garden

Recently my son and I went on vacation to Venice, Florida where we stayed at the beautiful Venice Beach Villas for 3 nights. There I noticed some attractive coleus plants they had growing in their landscape. I snipped 4 coleus cuttings from the backside and stuck them in a cup of water. The cuttings are about 5-6" long and only 2-3 leaves on top, the rest of the leaves were snipped off. After only 4 days the thicker cutting already has roots! I wonder if thickness of cutting has anything to do with the quick rooting? I will have to experiment with that someday.

Today it has been 6 days since I made the cuttings. The thick one is growing longer roots, but the other 3 still no visible sign of roots. No worries I think it just might take a little longer.

About 2 months ago I was intrigued by the idea of propagating Tropical Hibiscus, essentially making copies of the mother plant through stem cuttings. Six weeks ago my first experiment failed. I made stem tip cuts (soft and hard wood), putting the cuttings in a pot of moist perlite after dipping in a rooting hormone. The pot of perlite and cuttings is then placed in a saucer of water, allowing the perlite to wick the water as needed. The experiment failed because I didn't cover the cuttings with anything. Within a few days the leaves actually started to yellow and fall off.

So I revised my next experiment by covering the cuttings with a polythene plastic bag. On July 19th I made 5 hardwood stem cuts of Red Snapper hibiscus, dipped in rooting hormone, stuck them in the perlite pot and then covered. Covering the cuttings creates a greenhouse atmosphere of high humidity which prevents water loss. Several days go by and no yellowing like before. I noticed a huge difference by covering vs not covering. After 4 weeks look what I found....ROOTS! =)





Potted up the cuttings in their own gallon size pot with Miracle-Gro potting mix.