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.

My first two plant clones! I've successfully propagated a red penta cutting and a succulent leaf. These two were pretty easy though. The penta was rooted in plain water and the succulent leaf was just laying peacefully on a pot of soil. The red penta took about 2 weeks to notice some root formation and the succulent about 3-4 weeks to notice a root coming out of the edge where it broke off.

One hibiscus hybrid I grew from seed, the "Red White Splash", doesn't want to root very well. The leaves quickly wither down and fall off within a few days. I'm experimenting to see if this one will root, so today I setup a new cutting. The cutting is an all green stem tip about 3-4" long. I removed all the lower leaves except the top two. I dipped the end into Rootone and placed the cutting into a mix of Miracle Gro Seed Starting and perlite. I made sure there were 3 nodes buried in the Miracle Gro mix. I covered the cutting with an empty 2 L bottle with the bottom cut out. Just keep the cap screwed in to lock in moisture. The idea is to keep humidity in to prevent moisture loss from the leaves, hence the name Greenhouse Experiment in the title. Also I don't want to cook the plants either so I have to keep the covered cuttings out of direct sunlight.

Here is day one, fresh green stem tip cutting of "Red White Splash" hibiscus hybrid.


This upside down 2 L bottle creates the greenhouse environment.