Rooting test

[shawnintland]

Well, after seeing some pictures on the web of people's successes with rooting nep cuttings in water I have decided to try it out. My usual method of cuttings in sphagnum in plastic cups with dome lids works fairly well but I find that it ends up taking up a lot of space for a few months whereas this allows me to really pack 'em in tight! I'll post again when I see signs of progress! Anybody else ever try this method? These are all N. tricocarpa, as I had a bunch of tall plants that finally leaned over and snapped! Added some other species yesterday as well.

~Shawn

[arvin555]

Good luck with your Experiment Shawn, hope it is a sucess, I will follow soon if your's show a higher than 50% sucess rate.

I wonder if it will work or if it is better if you used an aquarium or something that has some window so you can see if there are roots forming without lifting the whole "tray"?

Also obviously you have lots of nepenthes to spare to try this out hehehe! I also like the photo as it shows how you do your cuttings and how you cut the leaves right down that way. Thanks for sharing.

TTFN
Arvin

[jk]

Interesting experiment. I'd like to see how cuttings thrown together in a jar of water compare with the setup you have.

[shawnintland]

Arvinn - I don't know about the aquarium setup - some plants really need 'dark' in the rooting zone, but I know some neps can do just fine in a glass jar (see below). There doesn't seem to be much hassle lifting the styrofoam sheet out of the cooler though, for now. I cut the leaves that way as it gets too crowded otherwise and I've never really noticed any improvement in rooting by leaving more leaf.

Well JK, I did put a bunch of N. mirabilis in a jar of water to root up and they have all formed nice, black roots in less than a month. Mirabilis is kind of like marigolds here - they are so common that not many people bother with them except beginners. I like to pot them up and give 'em away to newbees as they are pretty tough and aren't such a big loss if they manage to kill em off! I also find that by giving them to nearby nurseries some of them get addicted to CP's and start stocking them! I just checked the 'test' batch yesterday and can see one small rootlet starting to form...

[alienfx]

Well,what i normally do is cut the 1.5 liter plastic botel in 1/2 then put all the cuttings inside,add rain water then re-tape the bottle.Close the bottle cap to increase the humidity.Works fine for me.I change the water every week to keep the water fresh.

[shawnintland]

Okay, it's been a month as of today so here's what has happened so far;

On the 'top' side, all plants have shown good growth of new shoots from the stem itself, many with more than one growing point.





And the 'under' side;
The roots have only just started to show in the last 2-3 days but seem to be going strong right now.









Lets see if I have to transplant them before I leave for Borneo or if they can wait!

~Shawn

[kentosaurs]

Nice......They root well for you..About a month and a half i too tried rooting a ventrata and now the whole stem at the bottom is full with whitish 1cm roots...After seeing this thread...It made me go out and cut one of my hookeriana basals and root it...Hope the dormant node for the main basal will activate and hope the cutting will live

Ken

[arvin555]

Shawn, question, did you put slits at the bottom of all the cuttings?

TTFN
Arvin

[shawnintland]

Good point Arvin! I did about half of them as I wanted to see if I could see a difference. So far, it is all slit ones that have sent out roots first.

[kentosaurs]

Somehow i still don't get how you guys slit....I tot it was something like cut the outer layer of the stem but i'm confused..I always simply cut lol...And it mine leaves the middle stem jutting out and outer layer is cut off about 1cm..So far it doesn't make any difference

Ken