Few questions on handling nep cuttings

[alpiner]

1. Can you share your best way of handling odd form of mature plant from cutting, i.e. The cutting starts to shrink as plant grows bigger, giving imbalance look to the potting. Worse still, it starts to bend due to the added weigh from new plant. Right now I’m providing external supports, but that seems to be temporary as it will get worse over time. In addition, I may be wrong but I think it limits the stem of new plants from growing thicker too. That prevents me from trying out air layering method to induced roots directly above the cutting. Pls share if you’ve done that with success.
2. How deep do you normally pot your cutting, i.e. relatively from roots to bottom of pot? I learned from another experience CPer that the root of cutting should not be too close to the bottom, which makes sense.
3. Are roots going to be formed on the part of cutting buried in the media? I cut a slit on higher part of cutting on Glacilis and Amp, separated sliver with sphagnum moss, before covering everything but that may take some time before I dig up to make observation. Extracting too early I may just disturb the progress, and waste the effort.

Thanks in advance for your sharing.

[alpiner]

Wow! It's really quiet over here, nowadays. Hope you can share your method, or thoughts. Thx.

[edwardyeeks]

I haven't really done cuttings before, but for the cutting shrinking as the plant grows bigger, I usually pot up the plant to cover almost all the browned up part of the plant. Neps will grow roots around the browned stem after a long long time. This should apply to most nepenthes species (save some of the highlanders and ultra highlanders).

[kevyn chan]

for me, the lanky vine and growth from the cutting poses the risk of breaking and not only from the natural elements ie water filled pitchers and strong winds but from pests such as monkeys and mischievious kids.

i have a pot of mirabilis red that never had a chance to flower because of uncountable times of breakage from the original stems and to the subsequence shoots. so now i have some weak cuttings (with its original growing young leaves as i did not cut off the leaves)...and the growths from the original pot are supported with bamboos. new basal shoots are forming too.

usually if i receive rooted cuttings from sender, i will bend and peg the long vine into the media and i will have a nice rossette plant sitting in the centre of the pot, this is because the packed plant is softer from dehydration during the postage. this is from my observation, not sure of others...

as for the cuttings, i still dont have any high success. out from 10 cuttings 6 will sprout shoots and 2 or 3 will survive into mature plants. what i did was, cut a slit on the base of the cutting, poke it in to the media and let nature take it course...i provide water dish for most of my cuttings...

air layering sounds interesting but have to risk the whole plant from the shock of slitting the (*) layer of the stem for the process....rather do it on common species as experiment...

[alpiner]

[QUOTE=kevyn chan;53014]for me, the lanky vine and growth from the cutting poses the risk of breaking and not only from the natural elements ie water filled pitchers and strong winds but from pests such as monkeys and mischievious kids.


monkeys and mischievous kids = pests Fortunately I'm too high in the air for monkeys. But strong wind in the landed property translate to very strong wind in this altitude. I've raff's newly formed leaf snapped close to the stem, so all the wide leaf neps need to place in 'wind shelter'.

so now i have some weak cuttings (with its original growing young leaves as i did not cut off the leaves)...and the growths from the original pot are supported with bamboos. new basal shoots are forming too.

Does the basal shoots form from the original cutting part?

usually if i receive rooted cuttings from sender, i will bend and peg the long vine into the media and i will have a nice rossette plant sitting in the centre of the pot

Can't imagine the 'bend and peg'. Did u hold the bending with just media, or with additional peg or wire? Trying to keep the roots facing gravity and rosette sitting in the center, makes the in-between very tricky. Snap... and the rooted cutting becomes cutting again.

[kevyn chan]

[QUOTE=alpiner;53157]

Originally Posted by kevyn chan

for me, the lanky vine and growth from the cutting poses the risk of breaking and not only from the natural elements ie water filled pitchers and strong winds but from pests such as monkeys and mischievious kids.


monkeys and mischievous kids = pests Fortunately I'm too high in the air for monkeys. But strong wind in the landed property translate to very strong wind in this altitude. I've raff's newly formed leaf snapped close to the stem, so all the wide leaf neps need to place in 'wind shelter'.

wide leaves neps are prone to snap during strong wind...those that has matured pitchers at the end will actually sag and the plant looks unsightly eg miranda, hookeriana...the long tendrils with pitchers hanging in the air will snapped too...and what i did was to rest the pitchers on the neighbouring pots...
__________________________________________________ ____________

so now i have some weak cuttings (with its original growing young leaves as i did not cut off the leaves)...and the growths from the original pot are supported with bamboos. new basal shoots are forming too.

Does the basal shoots form from the original cutting part?

basals are from the ground shoots and of course the severed part also grows multiple shoots on each internodes....the plant used to be strong and healthy therefore it produce at least 6 shoots down the broken point...and when the 2nd incident happened (the whole huge branch broke) the plant when into shock and now only produce leaves without pitcher...
__________________________________________________ ___________

usually if i receive rooted cuttings from sender, i will bend and peg the long vine into the media and i will have a nice rossette plant sitting in the centre of the pot

Can't imagine the 'bend and peg'. Did u hold the bending with just media, or with additional peg or wire? Trying to keep the roots facing gravity and rosette sitting in the center, makes the in-between very tricky. Snap... and the rooted cutting becomes cutting again.

of course with additional steel wire bent and buried in the moss...you can imagine the clips on the train railtrack...also to hope that basals and roots will be formed...yes, it is very tricky but this works on the vining neps with ventricosa and gracilis parentage however if it is too long, it will be peg onto the pot hanger...and also to avoid the "coconut tree effect", the whole plant will be buried deeper into the media...

this is based on my personal experience and what i have done so far...not written in any journal or pop up from imagination...

[alpiner]

Originally Posted by edwardyeeks

I haven't really done cuttings before, but for the cutting shrinking as the plant grows bigger, I usually pot up the plant to cover almost all the browned up part of the plant. Neps will grow roots around the browned stem after a long long time. This should apply to most nepenthes species (save some of the highlanders and ultra highlanders).

Some of the cutting are too long to be fully buried into the media. And having the root too near to the bottom is like hving a pot too shallow. If the sliver doesn't work properly, at least I can bury as deep as it make sense, cut the bottom shorter during next repot when root formed on the browned stem.