a question answered (Plant Propagation)

I had a question posed to me today from a new(ish) reader. I thought I'd take a minute to give a quick answer.

Jasonbx asked...
Started reading through your blog earlier this spring. (I tried starting tomatoes from seed this year, and was looking for any info I could find.) I'm curious if your thinning cuttings dipped in rooting hormone made it? Also would this potentially work with larger tomato "branches" or only main stems?


Well Jason, Yeah... They did great!
As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say that they did even better than I would have hoped. I kept them very wet for the first week and a half, sort of to mimic the way that I had had them in water like I had done in a previous test. That trial ended up rooting them pretty well even though I hadn't used any rooting hormone at all. This time I was putting them into a soil-less medium so I thought a little hormone wouldn't hurt any.
Tomatoes tend to do very well as it is for setting new roots. You can see above that the roots have easily established themselves in the cell pack that I placed them in. Below is a picture of another tray of cuttings that I just did the same thing with last weekend.This tray has the extra cuttings from some bell papers, jalapenos, a few more tomatoes and even some eggplant.

That leads me into the answer to the second part of Jason's question. Can you do the same thing from regular "branches"? Yes, absolutely. In fact, if you've ever had a large tomato plant droop till it touches ground, you may have found that it will readily throw down roots mid-branch and start a new plant. As long as you don't cut too large a piece of new growth (it needs to be able to support itself easily) it will root fairly easily.

I hope to do some more interesting propagation trials as the season progresses. I'm glad to know that they've helped a little, or at the very least piqued some interest!

Happy propagating!
P~

Keeping things clean (21 Days)

One of the most important and probably opt overlooked things one can do to help themselves be successful in thier propagating is to keep things clean.
There are a number of plant diseases that could easily prey on young, newly propagated plants if given the chance. Many of these can lay dormant in the very pots that we use to plant them in. Like many gardeners, I try my best to stretch my dollars and to consume less resources by re-using many of the pots that come through my garden. Taking the necessary care to make sure those pots are clean is a pretty simple tasks that can help to avoid a lot of problems.

I started with a regular bucket filled with water. This is just a preliminary wash to get off most of the dirt and grime off the pots before I sanitize them.While I rinsed them off I used an old rag to wipe down the pots quickly to remove as much dirt as possible.

After wiping down and generally cleaning out the pots I put them in a sinkful of warm bleach water. Using the bleach water is for basically the same reason as you would use a sanitizer when washing dishes. It kills bacteria and keeps disease from being able to spread easily.

After cleaning I stacked all the pots that I cleaned so that they could air out and dry completely. Bleach is not a good thing for plant roots so you do want to make sure that they are dried completely.

So now that I've gotten these all cleaned and sanitized, it's time to get those plants into the dirt.

I did plant one variety of tomato into a few of these pots, some of the romas that I am working to clone. I didn't want to jump in and plant too many of them for fear of they having a problem accepting the transplants. Best to stick a toe in the water first you know?

In the last few days we've had a dusting of snow and a serious cold front. I'll get out to plant some more this weekend comeing up. Watch for more and some photos then.

Anyone else trying to clone cuttings this fall?
P~

Propagating plants (10 day update)

Took a peek under the plastic wrap today and found a little surprise.Do you see them? Those little white spikey things poking out from the stems? Those are roots. So far so good!Here's a little closer look at them. This particular plant was one with the heaviest concentration of new roots, but most all of them are showing at least some rooting activity.

Take a look at the picture below, it's from a little different angle.Remember in my last post about the propagation how I said that the stem/leaf crotch was the place where most rooting would happen? Well, here you can see just that. That's one of the leaf ends that's poking out of the main stem and it's right in the middle of the heaviest concentration of new roots.

Like Hannibal from the A-Team used to say...

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

More to come as they progress.

P~

Propagating from cuttings

I was able to get a few things done in the Greenhouse tonight and pictures are here to be shared!
You can see that the greenhouse is still quite a mess and, if you know me, you know it may well stay that way for a while. Work cannot wait though, so the propagating has begun.

Pop quiz time... (You did study right?):
Q: What do tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, and tomatillos have in common?
Well, one answer is that I gathered cuttings of all of them before the freezing weather came and another answer might be that I'm cloning, or at least trying to clone, all of them! I'll tell you real answer before I finish.

Before I started working with a particular cutting, I made sure that I had some cups prepared for them. If you have a glut of old glasses or mason jars they would be a great reusable option here. I don't, so clear plastic cups it is. I covered the tops of the cups with some plastic wrap held in place with a rubber band and poked a few breathing holes in the top with a knife. (You can see the temp inside when I got home from work was 63 deg(F). Our actual high for today was only 45 deg(f) so I guess the greenhouse is doing its job so far. We'll see what happens as winter approaches.Before I get to the next step, I thought I'd cover what I looked for in my original cuttings that I took from the parent plant.
The best cutting stock to use from your original plant should be taken from the part of the plant that is still actively growing. Plants have a feature called apical dominance that helps to control where the plants hormones go to tell it to create new growth. Starting with actively growing pieces of the plant gives you a head start in the right direction. For my tomatoes this was from the suckers that I would normally have pruned off and some of the tops that were vigorous and showing new growth.

Below you can see one of the original cuttings that I took from a Heartland Tomato. I made the cutting a little larger than what I would have wanted to have as a final size.The marks on the photo are roughly the places that I made trimming cuts to pare it down to the size I wanted. A couple of considerations are to make sure that the cutting will fit inside the cup without tipping it over. Also, this cutting has no root system so it's not going to be able to support a lot of superfluous growth so trimming off some otherwise healthy leaves is actually a good idea.

The reason I made the cut to the already removed leaf section on the right of the stem was because it had been removed roughly and left ragged ends that I felt may open the plant up for rot or disease. Also, if your familiar with the tomatoes tendency to throw up shoots from the crotch of the leaf and stem sections, this is because that is a part of the plant that contains new buds that the growth hormones in the tomato plant concentrate on telling to generating new growth. That new growth can be determined by the plant to generate new leaves and stems. It can also be told to produce new roots when the plant needs them. That's what I need so I wanted to make sure it was clean and ready to grow.After trimming up all of the cuttings for a particular variety that I was working with, I inserted two into each cup through a couple of the holes in the plastic wrap. I put two into each cup purely because of space and time. I only have so much of both so better to optimize than to not get things done.

I anticipate that I should have at least two weeks before I really need to worry about replanting, but more than likely it will end up being more like three. This is a good thing because I need to sterilize some pots for them, as well as to work out some more passive heating solutions for the greenhouse.
For now, you may remember the seed starter that I built last spring, well it's the new clone base camp. I can cover it with an additional layer of 6 mil plastic and keep some water bottles in there for thermal mass to keep things warm over night and with any luck (a lot wouldn't hurt) things will work out for the best.

So then, do you know yet what the four plants that I mentioned I'm trying to clone have in common?

If you guessed that they're all members of the family Solanaceae then you'd be absolutely CORRECT!

The great thing is, that Solanaceae plants are very good rooters and are probably one of the better plants for this type of propagation. So wish me luck!

Till next time... Grow on!
P~

Much has changed

The weather has done an abrupt about face here in Northern Utah. A couple of solid cold fronts has come through our valley and cooled it significantly. We managed to make it through the first one pretty well unscathed, but this last one that came through at the end of last week left the garden largely frost killed.

Since that was the case, I went ahead Saturday afternoon and tore out a majority of the perimeter gardens. (That's what I'm calling the border raised beds that I have around much of the back yard.) I still have a few other beds that need to be wrapped up for the season, but they'll have to wait until our current rains have passed. It was a much earlier end to the season than we had last year I think but I'll have to consult the old garden journal from '08 before I'm sure. It seems that I've been so far out of whack with my sense of time this year that I can't be sure of anything anymore.

Here's the good new though... all is not lost. While I didn't bother to cover any of my tomato plants, some that were near to the house made it just fine anyway, I did get off my butt and get some good cuttings from some of the plants that I had this year that I really liked and I have them in the greenhouse soaking in cups of water until I have a chance to properly propagate them for the winter. One of my goals for this off-season in the greenhouse is to propagate and hold over these cuttings through the winter. I'm not concerned with necessarily getting tomatoes in December or anything, although yeah I'd be super happy for those, my main hope is that I can keep them alive until very early spring when I'll be able to again propagate a new batch for a couple of things. I want to be able to plant an early batch of them at a decent size so I'll be able to get tomatoes in May-June rather than June-July. A~ and I are thinking about participating in one of our local farmers markets next year and that would be a boon. The other possible use for a large batch of clones is that I can possibly sell a few to our neighbor gardeners via a front yard plant sale or share them with other gardeners at a plant swap. Both are best case scenarios but hey, a guy has to have dreams right?

I'll update you with some pictures of the propagated cuttings and the greenhouse insides as I get them done. Anyone interested in details of my cloning experiences? Anyone with advice for me from experience? This is a new process for me so I'm more than willing to consider any ones input.

Hope all is well for all of you. I've noticed a couple of new followers and some new subscribers too, I hope you'll all feel welcome, enjoy the read and enlighten me with your input!

Till next time.
P~

seed starter is up...FINALLY!!

Well between an unplanned trip to California, Master Gardener courses and two kids doing science fair projects, I never had a chance to get around to finally finishing the seed starter that I got started with a ways back... sorry for taking so long to update you.

Tonight I finally got around to bringing it down into the basement where I'll have it set up until I'm done getting starts going; probably until mid May at least. I'm going to just put up a bunch of pictures (since that's really the best way to explain it don't you think?) and explaining myself as I go.
The main requirement for this project, outside of the obvious functionality of the starter, was that I could disassemble and store it with relative ease in a minimum amount of space. Above it the framework of the starter minus the lights. The trays are roughly two feet wide by 4 feet long, and the long boards that make up the legs are just shy of six feet long. They leg board are "L" shaped and nest inside each other.
Here they are all laid out just before A~ and I assembled it. The process is simple, attach the bottom shelf loosely to all four legs and then move your way up. It's a two person job, but in a pinch a single person could do it.
This is the set up that the whole shi-bang is held together with. It's a 2 1/2 inch long carriage bold with a washer, lock washer and wing nut for easy hand assembly.
This is a view from the top of one of the legs so that you can see how the legs and the shelves attach. Below is a picture of the shelf from the inside.
I lined the bottoms of the two shelves that will hold plants with plastic sheeting because I didn't want to accidentally spill water over the sides and have it drip out the bottom onto either the flooring or the fluorescent lamps. And speaking of which, these are the brand/s of lamps that I am using. One gives a high number of lumens but is heavy on the red spectrum of light (kitchen and bath) while the other will fill the gaps in the blue spectrum.
Mind you, they're not professional bulbs or anything, but hey...they do put out a good bit of light! I have two lamps per shelf for a total of four. Each shelf can hold 192 individual plants or 48 plastic four packs. Total I'll be able to have up to 384 plants started at one time. Woohoo!!
And last but by no means least...here it is, my starter. I only have one shelf loaded so far, but I'll be able to get my cabbages and broccoli started to supplement what I direct sow into the ground soon. The bottom shelf will have the later season stuff like tomatoes, peppers eggplants and such. then I'll spread them out amongst the two shelves as they get bigger.

Spring is here!! I don't care what the weather man tells me. When I start seeds and I can turn my soil like I did today...Springs here!! Time to get growing!

Hope all your seeds are sprouting well. till tomorrow.

P~

First try at propagation

I guess you could say that the title says it all huh? I tried my hand at both softwood and hardwood propagation this weekend.

Propagation from softwood cuttings is the re-generation, or more to the point the re-creation of a plant from new growth cuttings that were still actively growing when they were cut. The cuttings from my moms Meyer lemon tree were the subject of this first try. The planting medium that I put them in is a 50/50 mix of some vermiculite and peat that I had on hand (It's considered a soil-less planting medium.) that had been completely dampened and them had the excess squeezed out.The first thing that I did was to strip all the lower leaves from the cuttings that I had other than the top two leaves just where the piece was growing. Then, I made cuts to the stems just about 1/8 inch below a leaf node leaving a section that was about 4-5 inches long. That reminds me, did I show you my Valentines gift from the greatest wife ever? Check it out, pruning shears that actually cut!Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so I made a cut to the stem just below the nodes. Then I dipped the stem piece into some rooting hormone powder and inserted them into the planter. The label on the hormones says that I should see roots appear within 4-8 weeks.
The other kind of propagating that I tried this weekend was on hardwood cuttings. These were from her pomegranate tree. I figure that since pomegranates grow naturally in very arid areas of the world, like the mid-east, that they should do wonderfully here in the arid Utah weather as long as I can keep them warm through the winter.

I treated these cuttings exactly the same way, with the exception of removing leaves. Since these trees had been pruned earlier this winter by my mom, they were just now starting to bud out. All I did was to trim them down to about 12 inches in length by again cutting just below a leaf node. I also dipped these into the rooting hormone and put them into the same type of soil-less growing medium.The last step was to place them in a warm spot. (enter the top of the fridge again) and to cover them to keep the humidity in. For this an old plastic grocery bag was called into service.

For those curious about why I made the cuts just below the leaf nodes here's why. The leaf nodes are essentially places where the plants cells that are able to create new growth have congregated. Under normal conditions, these cells are programmed to create leaves. When the rooting hormone is applied, it tells these cells to change their plan and to grow into roots. Some plants, like willows for instance, naturally have these chemicals in them and can easily propagate. (stick a cutting from your willow tree into the ground if you don't believe me...) Others, like these plants, need to be told what to do.

Hmm... I guess some of that Master Gardener course is rubbing off. I'll let you know how these test plant turn out as time moves along.
Thanks for dropping in, catch you tomorrow!
P~