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Propagation
One of the most satisfying aspects of growing plants is propagation of your plants to share with others, as raffle prizes and for the sales table. This is one of the few situations where you can get something for nothing. Propagation of rare plants helps to make them more commonly found in collections, which should help to reduce pressure on wild populations. A range of easy techniques can be used to propagate most plants including succulent species cuttings, division, offsets, grafts, cross-pollination and raising from seed. Eventually, it will be found that propagation is so easy that space, materials and time become the limiting factors.  Select a leaf that is not too old or too young. Just about any leaf will produce plantlet's. For a variegated plant, choose a greener leaf rather than a highly variegated one. Cut the petiole at a 45 degree angle (cut side facing up) about 1"-1 ½" from bottom of leaf. The sharper the angle, you will get more, but weaker plantlet's. Not as much angle will give you fewer plantlet's, but stronger ones. Then bag or dome the leaf to keep the humidity in. You also can also start leaves in water. Make sure you label your pot and put the date on it. Plantlet's should begin to appear in a couple of months. If you have a large mother leaf and it has been growing all this time, you might want to cut off the top 1/3 of the leaf so it will stop growing and put more energy into the babies( this will not hurt the leaf). Within 3-5 months after the plantlet's appear, they should be ready to separate and pot into their own pots. Rule of thumb is, when you have at least three nickel sized leaves, you can separate If you can see how many plantlet's you have and want to keep all of them, you can wait until they all have three nickel sized leaves. Then pot them all up into a 2" pot, label and date each one.  
June 17, 2004 June 29, 2004 |
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