TargetSlayer
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If I may touch on one thing I never see but would share (please forgive me if this is common knowledge for any of you):
You see everywhere that "willow water" (soaked bits of various will species to make a tea) is high in all-natural rooting hormone. While this is true, be careful before you run out and use it liberally: it's very acidic and will burn esp. acid sensitive species, particularly if exposed to any already-existing roots (I sometimes use it for separating or moving plants where roots got damaged, as well as cuttings).
I noticed BIG time that less is more with this stuff, but then this same, lesser concentration freaked out, out of the blue, & burned my maple cuttings once, mysteriously, after I thought I'd found the medium-concentration "sweet spot".
Turns out: that time I had used reverse osmosis water with neutral pH instead of my usual, alkaline well (hard) water! Out of the blue was literal (pun intended) when speaking in terms of pH measurement. Instead of blue green or even green, test drops turned bright deadly yellow in troubleshooting/recreating.
Conversely, and for some time, I was getting away with a stronger concentration of willow juices by using my alkaline well water which was a double-benefit. Nothing likes to root in my straight-up alkaline water (even reluctant when conservatively pH adjusted with H2SO4). The salacylic or whatever acids in the willow bring down my well pH nicely when moderated with bromothymol blue to a nice green hue with a eensy touch of blue (6.-5-ish?). So the double whammy is it adjusts my water for the better when rooting and also is great for the hormone!
If you don't measure pH and wish to experiment with willow water, I'd start out in very low concentrations (not looking like sweet tea, but maybe slight fogginess and almost no visible tannins) if you're using presumably neutral pH water that already roots ok sometimes. If you have the hard water that leaves calcium on your windows you're safer, until you make it look like sweet tea and even then long exposure will burn. I killed the heck out of a rare maple bonsai specimen that should have lived, that way. After all, to really notice the stuff working over a control group I have to soak cuttings in it for hours or overnight. Enough to burn if you've made it too thick.
You see everywhere that "willow water" (soaked bits of various will species to make a tea) is high in all-natural rooting hormone. While this is true, be careful before you run out and use it liberally: it's very acidic and will burn esp. acid sensitive species, particularly if exposed to any already-existing roots (I sometimes use it for separating or moving plants where roots got damaged, as well as cuttings).
I noticed BIG time that less is more with this stuff, but then this same, lesser concentration freaked out, out of the blue, & burned my maple cuttings once, mysteriously, after I thought I'd found the medium-concentration "sweet spot".
Turns out: that time I had used reverse osmosis water with neutral pH instead of my usual, alkaline well (hard) water! Out of the blue was literal (pun intended) when speaking in terms of pH measurement. Instead of blue green or even green, test drops turned bright deadly yellow in troubleshooting/recreating.
Conversely, and for some time, I was getting away with a stronger concentration of willow juices by using my alkaline well water which was a double-benefit. Nothing likes to root in my straight-up alkaline water (even reluctant when conservatively pH adjusted with H2SO4). The salacylic or whatever acids in the willow bring down my well pH nicely when moderated with bromothymol blue to a nice green hue with a eensy touch of blue (6.-5-ish?). So the double whammy is it adjusts my water for the better when rooting and also is great for the hormone!
If you don't measure pH and wish to experiment with willow water, I'd start out in very low concentrations (not looking like sweet tea, but maybe slight fogginess and almost no visible tannins) if you're using presumably neutral pH water that already roots ok sometimes. If you have the hard water that leaves calcium on your windows you're safer, until you make it look like sweet tea and even then long exposure will burn. I killed the heck out of a rare maple bonsai specimen that should have lived, that way. After all, to really notice the stuff working over a control group I have to soak cuttings in it for hours or overnight. Enough to burn if you've made it too thick.
