My first plant to take!

[vfem]

I took MANY cuttings in the last couple of months... a total reminder I do NOT have a green thumb so much as a muddy brown with hints of green thumb! LOL

Anyways... I finally have new growth on 1 of more then 15 cuttings I've tried. All the other cuttings have been thrown to the compost. I did manage to get 1 lantana to root happily as it now has 5 new leaves on it.

It will have a place of honor in the new plant bed come spring. I am so proud.

Will share pictures later. *(I bake for Christmas and I have dz and dz's of orders to get filled so I'm just taking a break from the stress of cookies! LOL)*

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I love it when cuttings take.

Well, I must say that cuttings can be hard. It helps if you have some really good information on the plant you want to take the cutting of . . . there is a great book for this called "Making More Plants " that I highly recommend. It is very informative and also a pretty coffee table type of book.

My hubby thought cuttings were easy and he decided to try some this year. I tried to tell him it can be hard, but he is one of those types that has to learn for himself.

 

[obsessed]

Is there anyway to salvage the cutting you threw away? I say this because I took some lantana cutting also and this last weekend they looked like dead sticks so I threw them away but on the last one I took it out of the pot to crumble the potting mix into the garden and it had roots! So I think it might have been able to come back in the spring had I not killled it. So the rest of the dead sticks I am going to wait till spring before I chuck them out!

 

[dickiebird]

Mine are about the same way, about 30 cuttings and so far it looks like 4 have taken and have new leaves. I tried these with out any kind of assist, now I have some rooting harmone so I think I'll try some house plants.
THANX RICH

 

[897tgigvib]

I believe my first cuttings to take were Geraniums.

My aunt Eleanore, who I most sorely miss, took me to the Arboretum in San Francisco when I was a little kid. She only had one eye that she "could see out of", but drove anyway and never so much as got a ticket in her life...anyway, we went to the huge greenhouse there, a major conservatory. Slowly walked around there, probably the first there in the morning and last to leave after closing. After we finally left, we walked around the outside of it. There was a section that hat rare geraniums growing outside in raised brick beds. Eleanor saw a sign that said how rare one of them was. She proceded to say there was no reason for a geranium to be rare, and that we were going to make sure it would no longer be rare. She surprised the heck out of me when she reached in and carefully tore off something like 4 cuttings! Now, I've always been like boo boo bear...i wouldn't do that if i were you yogi, the ranger might not like it very much...That was when my aunt Eleanor said what she learned from my grandmother, who died 3 years before i was born, that stealing is always wrong, except if it a slip or a bulb that nobody would notice missing...

Well, right or wrong, she took a couple and gave me a couple. oh the pressure was on, and i was 8 or so...i had to make sure i did not help a rare geranium go extinct! I put one in a clean jelly jar over the kitchen sink, and the other one directly under the living room window, a southern exposure. They both took. The one i started inside was planted at the nearby corner. That one stayed small. The other grew large. They sure did get transplanted to the next house we moved to. Mom or Eleanor did that.

I don't remember doing any earlier cuttings. um, the poplars and willows i helped my mother do.

 

[so lucky]

I like your Aunt Elanore's sense of right and wrong. Not sharing a "rare" plant that is as easily propagated as a geranium is wrong!

 

[897tgigvib]

Yes, aunt Eleanore was a very special lady, my mother's oldest sister. During the Scarlet fever epidemic Eleanor was a little baby and got the fever. The town doctor came and told the family to keep her comfortable and to prepare for the worst.

Oh no. My mother's mother was not going to give up like that!!! She stayed up with the baby, bleached the walls and everything, kept the baby cool with wet towels, chewed her food for her and fed it to her, and refused to give up for weeks! She was one of the very few children who survived, but the fever "burned out" one of her eyes.

My aunt never after that had a single sick day of her life. At the end, she was still going on long trips on the golden gate transit bus system and trading buttons worldwide. One day she fell in her kitchen, over 90 years old, alone. I was in Montana. She was discovered 3 days later still clinging to life, but died in the hospital. I got to talk to her on the phone. Only thing she could say was for me to keep talking, love your voice... she went to heaven that evening.

 

[jackb]

I think that propagating woody plants by taking cuttings is one of the most difficult aspects of gardening.

Jack B

 

[canesisters]

Yes, aunt Eleanore was a very special lady, my mother's oldest sister. During the Scarlet fever epidemic Eleanor was a little baby and got the fever. The town doctor came and told the family to keep her comfortable and to prepare for the worst.

Oh no. My mother's mother was not going to give up like that!!! She stayed up with the baby, bleached the walls and everything, kept the baby cool with wet towels, chewed her food for her and fed it to her, and refused to give up for weeks! She was one of the very few children who survived, but the fever "burned out" one of her eyes.

My aunt never after that had a single sick day of her life. At the end, she was still going on long trips on the golden gate transit bus system and trading buttons worldwide. One day she fell in her kitchen, over 90 years old, alone. I was in Montana. She was discovered 3 days later still clinging to life, but died in the hospital. I got to talk to her on the phone. Only thing she could say was for me to keep talking, love your voice... she went to heaven that evening.

what a beautiful story

 

[897tgigvib]

Some of the woody plants are easy Jack. Fat buds and juicy cambiums help.