Here are some of the lessons I have learned from my Mother Plants.

• Practice thrift. When I wanted a hedge of the low-growing but pricey antique Scotch rose, I tried digging up the little sprigs that came up next to the one in the garden. They were too green to root properly and the project was a flop. By taking cuttings from rather more mature wood, dipping each in Hormex #8, and rooting in ground bark, I was successful. My driveway now has a line of them that is so thick I use hedge shears to prune it. When you invest in one plant, you can propagate it for your own use in the landscape, for plant swaps, and for gifts. This Mother Plant has children all around the neighborhood – when someone admires it, I give them a rooted cutting. I always want more than one plant, for insurance against a loss if for nothing else, but cannot always buy as many as I need.  Thank goodness necessity is a Mother.
• Hone skills. I’m sure every mother challenges her children as mine did. My children thought that cursive writing and thank you notes were terribly old school as was my insistence that they master both. In the plant world, it may seem passé to propagate since most desirable plants are readily available, like my African violets. Still, it is true of most skills that one must use it or lose it rather like cursive writing in an age of keyboards. Adaptations are important, too, as learning proceeds. That’s why I no longer dip leaf cuttings in powdered Hormex since I tried watering them with Hormex Liquid Concentrate (1T/gal) weekly for a month and got more results faster – lots of babies at the soil surface below the leaf!  I haven’t reared great cursive writers, but hopefully they will keep practicing and someday write me a thank-you note. Yes, I have been described as one tough Mother.
• Spread oddballs around. Sometimes very fine plants are largely unknown or have become immensely unpopular over time. I confess to loving some of both and propagate them to persuade others to my eclectic taste. The green vine known as Malabar spinach, for example, brings at least something dark and leafy to summer salads. Saved seed are fine, but rooted stem cuttings make a meal much faster.  I watered 3 inch starts into a flat of sand with a drench of Liquid Hormex Concentrate mixed 1T/1gal. In 2 weeks the vines began to sprout and were ready for transplant in another fortnight. My love affair with the variegated wax begonia called ‘Charm’ began years ago with a 4 inch pot of the shiny, round, bright green and yellow leaves that soon added classic pink flowers hanging like earrings from every stem and tip. It has become one of my go-to plants, a cheerful presence always there when I need a smile. I dip green cuttings like Charm into undiluted Hormex Liquid Concentrate; they root in sand or potting mix and begin to grow in a month. Whether it’s greens or grins, these are the Mothers of my Invention.
• Profit perhaps. A fellow I knew got deeply involved with angelfish and soon found his hobby expensive yet also fertile. He began selling the offspring and was able to fill his home with ever more exotic fish. If your plants are not patented, you can propagate and sell them to create your own Mother Lode.

Nellie Neal is a passionate propagator and owner of GardenMama, Inc. She advocates for gardening 24/7 at her website, www.gardenmama.com. Ask questions and comment about this blog on the Contact Us page of www.hormex.com.

The ivy grew on the brick of her sweet home that was destroyed in a storm, knocked down by the wind and flooded with the water. Since there was so much destruction, the economy suffered and they decided to move rather than rebuild on the same site. There wasn’t much to take, but she saw the ivy sprouting a new leaf while still stuck to a piece of a brick wall and had to have it.  She dug up the ivy, stuck dirt, vine and all into a plastic bag and took to her new home where she grew it up a tree. After two decades, that tree fell over in yet another big storm and the sudden sunlight plus a summer drought nearly killed the ivy. She tried to keep it going, but finally asked me to take some cuttings and try to grow a new stand of the plant so she can once again grow it – or better to say IT, this plant and only this plant. No pressure there!

The goal here is to root a vining ground cover like ivy, perennial vinca, jasmine, or most any other so it is easily transplanted to the landscape. It is also true that vines can develop roots at each joint as well as at the tip of the cutting. That combination calls for rooting in a shallow flat to accommodate 4-6 inch pieces of vine and to encourage roots to grow wider than deep. Mix a rich mix that will drain well, too. You can combine a good quality potting mix with ground bark, coarse sand, or perlite to fill the flats. Roll the entire cutting stem in Hormex Rooting Hormone #3 or #8 if the vines are woody. Nestle the cuttings into the flat of damp mix and water them in. Put the flats in the shade and water them weekly with Hormex Liquid Concentrate mixed 1 T/1 gallon of water.

The English ivy is doing fine since I moved it into the window boxes two months ago. The boxes will fit nicely on her porch and the ivy might even climb its columns with a little encouragement. Yes, I will tell her to pull it off every few years and repaint! It was easy to lift the rooted plants from the flat and they took right off. I’ve added impatiens for color and the ivy makes a nice skirt for them. She may want more, so I’ll fill another flat to give to her along with the window boxes.

Years ago, there was a regular column in one of the so-called ‘woman’s magazines’ that asked the question, “Can this marriage be saved?” It always seemed that the answer was yes, if the couple took their issues seriously and worked to bring romance back into the relationship. Likewise, most plants can be saved and when there is a sweet sentiment or great passion involved, it is important to try.

• Dig.  Digging may be a hole big enough for a 3 gallon shrub or no more than a trowel full for a cucumber plant. It is always a little deeper and a good bit wider than the transplant.
• Amend. Even though I am planting in already improved garden soil or top quality potting mix, I amend with organic matters before planting. My products of choice range from worm castings to poultry litter fertilizers chosen to add nutrients and microorganisms as well as barks and sands to improve soil structure. This task achieves the organic goal of continuously improving the soil and it does work to lessen maintenance later.
• Plant. I’m careful to plant at the same level or just slightly higher than the plant was growing originally and to stake at planting time if absolutely necessary.
• Water and Stimulate. Since plants are mostly water, it makes sense that a new transplant needs water to prevent wilting. But exposure to the world outside its original container and plunging into new soil can be traumatic even with ample water at transplant time. That’s where Hormex Liquid Concentrate comes in, to work with the water to provide exactly what the roots need to get them growing. I have used other products and made my own compost tea to use as a root stimulator, but none of them can match the results of HLC. I call it transplant shock insurance, something to do on the front end.
• Mulch. The benefits of mulching with ground bark or a similar organic material are well known. I am greatly opposed to mulch volcanoes, and generally advocate limiting its depth to 1-2 inches. In recent seasons I have learned that a thin layer of mulch in the top of pots really helps prevent drying out in windy weather.
• Cover. The last step doesn’t mean quite what it sounds like; instead, the finishing touch is flexible wire fencing set up as barriers over raised beds and around young shrubs and trees. This kind of fencing is called hog wire, but we know it as cat wire, an unfair title since squirrels, dogs, possums, and who knows what else might wander through. It was the cats, though, that drove me to it when they discovered the catnip bed and destroyed my cash crop.

I’ll admit that part of the relentless optimism of gardening means constantly planting something with the unspoken expectation that it will grow. By gardening with organic principles in mind, I put the most effort into the beginning of the season and use my vast experience of gardening success and failure to tailor those tasks to meet my gardens’ needs and mine. Still, I was rushed one afternoon recently and didn’t put the cover on a new planting of okra and Peter peppers. The next day, 2 okra plants and one pepper were out of the ground, chewed a bit, and wilted badly. The sad thing is that this is not the only time I have had to deal with transplant shock so I knew what to do – replant and drench with Hormex Liquid Concentrate at slightly higher than the transplant rate: 1/2 tsp. in 2 quarts of water. Disaster averted and the transplants are fine five days later!

Now, if we could predict the weather…

The auxin known as IBA (indole-3-butyric acid) contributes to the formation and growth of healthy roots and is the substance in Hormex Rooting Powders of various strengths. Vitamin B-1 (thiamine) is the additional active ingredient in Hormex Liquid Concentrate. B-1 is produced naturally in leaves and moves into the roots to assist their growth and is always beneficial to plants. By adding the hormone B-1 to liquid auxin, Hormex Liquid Concentrate promotes thrifty growth at all stages in a plant’s development.

How fast and how well cuttings take root and begin to grow depends on the condition of the plant material, the media you choose to root in, and the temperature of the media, air, and water used in the process. But in the end, we are dependent on the amount of IBA available to the plants for roots to be stimulated. The role of IBA in plant growth is to regulate and direct growth by working in relation to other hormones like cytokinins. For example, the ratio of auxin to cytokinin in some plants can determine whether cells differentiate into roots or shoots. By adding Hormex products to the process, we increase the auxin influence towards roots.

How this influence occurs can be attributed to the nifty ability of auxin molecules to move from cell to cell, to marshal their influence where it is needed. It’s a talent we mere mortals do not share which imparts to the plants the ability to shift growth patterns right down at the cellular level. It even allows them to react to some external threats. We take advantage of this quality when we expose some kinds of cuttings to the air so that they form callus on the cut surface before rooting them. The injury of an open wound on the stem stimulates cells to adapt and become thicker to block further fluid loss. Fortunately for us, this layer also develops roots more quickly than the fresh cut stem.

All auxins are hormones, but not all hormones are auxins. Chemically, each auxin consists of an aromatic ring and carboxylic acid group in quite elegant molecular arrangements of carbon and hydrogen. When I was a teenager, we didn’t talk much about hormones, human or plant, but a good biology teacher offered extra credit for a report on plant anatomy and I stumbled into a curiosity about how growth happens. In college, I learned about plant hormones in class but really first observed their power when I tried to root bougainvillea and lollipop plant, aka golden shrimp plant. Both are rather woody, tropical plants then in consideration for greenhouse production schedules. My first task was to determine whether tip cuttings or stem cuttings would root better and to compare cuttings rooted using IBA with those that had no hormone applied. I used a single blade knife to make clean cuts from healthy stems on the stock plants. I made labels, filled flats with a damp perlite/peat media, and tapped out a little rooting hormone onto a brown paper towel laid on the bench in the head house. I stuck the untreated groups and then rolled each remaining stem base in rooting powder and shook off the excess before sticking it. Virtually every tip cutting died before roots could form, but the 2 that survived were from the treated group. The stem cuttings were much more successful overall. Some of the untreated made a few roots, but nearly all the treated stem cuttings rooted and rooted very well in the same length of time. The proof of the pudding, as they say, was in the hormone.

When you get into propagation, you can literally watch growth happen and some methods make that easier than others. Two recent questions asked about using Hormex products in aeroponic cloners and rooter pots. One reader has recently switched from rooting in perlite to using a device that suspends cuttings in a mist bath. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, I promise. With a simple web search, you can learn more about aeroponic cloners and their principles, view manufactured products and videos, and find DIY designs for those who are handy. After I saw one at a hydroponic herb farm used to root rosemary and learned how efficient it was, I became a fan of the technology. The farmers grow a variety of herbs to harvest and package for grocery stores, and hydroponics gives them advantages in both space and cleanliness. They had a huge mother plant of rosemary but had trouble producing it quickly enough to keep up with their customers’ demands until they tried this soilless propagation method. This reader wanted to know about application rates for using Liquid Hormex Concentrate in the device.

Aeroponic cloning machines expose the base of cuttings to a fine mist so the roots are never exposed to soil. The process creates an ideal root system for hydroponics and for many kinds of cuttings to pot up.  You fill the container with water almost, but not quite, up to the bottom of the cut stems and a pump system delivers mist to the chamber to promote rooting. There are 2 ways to use Liquid Hormex Concentrate with these clever devices. One is to dip each cutting into undiluted LHC for 3-5 minutes before placing them into the rooting pots and the second is to add LHC to the water. Yes, you can do both. The rate the reader is using is roughly equivalent to ½ teaspoon in the 6 gallon tank, or slightly less than the rate suggested for use as a transplanting drench (1 tsp/5 gal). I suggested that he increase that amount to 1 teaspoon in the 6 gallon tank.

Another reader will be using rooter pots, devices that can speed up and improve upon the classic air layer technique to clone plants. He asks about choosing Hormex Rooting Powder strength to best root a range of different fruit plants: apple, peach, pear, plum, nectarine, and cherry trees plus grapes, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and aronia or chokeberry bushes.

Rooter Pots work very well to clone trees and berry bushes, too, if they are stout enough to support the device. I first saw them used in an arboretum to propagate a fiddle-leaf fig tree that had grown too large for its space. By using the pots, docents were able to produce clones of this favorite tree for their benefit sale in advance of the necessary pruning. I’ll confess the cup-shaped rooters nestled among the huge fiddle-shaped leaves looked like something in a sci-fi movie, maybe the jewelry a robot would wear! The metal or plastic pots open up completely to enable you to enclose a section of stem while it is still attached to the tree. They hold a lightweight soil mix and have holes for drainage once they are closed around the stem. You keep them watered and open them for inspection after a few weeks to watch the progress. Once the roots are plentiful and long enough, it is time to cut the stem below the rooter, open it up and pot up the new tree or shrub. Rooter pots do require you to wound the stems by stripping a band of bark off to promote rooting from that site. The use of Hormex Rooting Powder to coat the bare stem will greatly increase its ability to make roots and the strength to use depends on the plant being cloned. For fruit trees and berry bushes with woody stems, use HRP #8 in rooter pots and find other specifics about strengths and species elsewhere on this site.

Please keep asking questions!

Once a hibiscus plant is mature, its green stems are new growth that appears continuously and its brown structural stems get woodier with age. They are not technically shrubs but are also a far cry from green stemmed plants like coleus or philodendron. The former are closer to trees in their interior plumbing and so require specific rooting techniques while the latter will often root in water. Hibiscus is neither, yet both! The easiest, most effective way I know to root my favorite double apricot bloomer is a little different, too. First, I do not use true tip cuttings. Instead, cut a sturdy stem no bigger around than a pencil with 8-12 inches of brown stem. Trim off green stems and all but 3 leaves. Slice a fresh diagonal cut through the lower end of the stem at a joint (or node) and roll that end in Hormex Rooting Powder #3. Stick the cutting 3 or 4 inches deep into a small pot of damp perlite or cluster a group of 5 stems into a tall quart sized pot. I have also used rooting cubes as is often advised, but found them shallow for the tall cuttings. I have seen hibiscus rooted in sand and in bark, but I like the roots that form in a pot of perlite. They are plentiful, sturdy, and suffer little transplant shock when moved to a container or garden bed.

Some hibiscus will root in just weeks, others take much longer. If you decide to root several different varieties, give each its own container to avoid confusion later. If you have a mist system or propagation hood, use it to raise the humidity around hibiscus cuttings without overwatering them. You can leave the pots outside in humid shade, float them on a saucer of water that lets the perlite draw up what it needs, or make a cloche from a 2 liter plastic drink bottle. Cut the bottom off the bottle but leave the cap on. Set it in the pot and over the cuttings or cover a small pot with one cutting completely. As the humidity builds inside the cloche, water droplets will form on the inside. That’s your cue to take the top off to let in fresh air and prevent heat buildup.

Similar in-betweeners are butterfly bush, and chaste tree and they will also root in perlite in the same fashion as hibiscus. However, I have been able to root them from shorter cuttings taken nearer to the tip of a branch than hibiscus. The shorter, greener cuttings are much more dependent on high humidity, of course, since they are tender and wilt easily. That’s another reason to use the woodier part of the plant.

You have to remember that perlite has no nutrition in it, but is simply a support material that assists in water management around the cuttings. When rooting cuttings like hibiscus in perlite, it is important to provide a minimal amount of fertilizer and a maximum amount of rooting hormone. Rolling the stem in Hormex starts the process but you can do more. Water when the perlite looks dry on top with a solution of 2 or 3 drops of Hormex Liquid Concentrate mixed in 1 quart of water. It probably won’t take the full quart to water your hibiscus cuttings, so give a half cup or so to each of those new tomato plants. They’ll appreciate it!

Besides writing about plants and growing hundreds of them in my garden, I host a weekly radio program. Spring finds me on the road with the show, traveling to garden events and retailers. Listeners come to the broadcast, where we eat donuts and drink coffee and talk plants during the breaks and afterwards. Last Saturday, a sweet lady brought in a sad African violet for me to diagnose. The leaves were perfect in size and beautiful underneath. Most of the upper leaf surfaces looked ok, but others were blotched brown. She assured me that the plant had not been exposed to direct sun, cold water, or other liquids. But its pot was a cute enamelware pot with 2 very small holes drilled into its base. The soil felt heavy and several offsets were crowding the thick stem of this troubled gesneriads. I suggested that she remove the damaged leaves, unpot the plant, rinse the roots and dust them with sulfur to deter diseases in the root zone before potting into a container that drains well and a mix made for the violets.

But first, I cautioned her, root at least 5 leaves and use Hormex to do it. Take a leaf with 2-4 inches of stem from the middle row of a mature plant. In this case, that means you do not want the newest or oldest growth, but rather some from the middle rows of leaves. Use a single blade to slice a slanted end on the stem, roll it in Hormex Rooting Hormone #1, and slip it into a little pot of African Violet potting mix or damp sand. Keep it in humid shade until you see little plants at the base of the leaf. A good way to do this is to invert a glass jar over the leaf, as long as you can remember to lift it daily for good air exchange. When the little plants appear, pot up the stem with plants attached or separate small plants and root them. Lay the babies on damp sand and mist frequently with Hormex Liquid Concentrate mixed 10 drops/1 quart of water. When a new leaf sprouts, you’ve got roots and it is time to pot up the new plant.

Big purple trumpets graced my first gloxinia and I was determined to root a leaf and did so using the process described above for African violets. While I was at it, I learned of another way to root them in water. Here’s how it works: Fill a pitcher with tap water and let it come to room temperature. Cut a circle of waxed paper (not plastic wrap) that is one inch larger around than the top of the jar and secure it to the top of the jar with a rubber band. Poke a small hole and one slightly larger in the wax paper. Cut a long stem of African violet or gloxinia and slip it into the small hole. Pour enough water into the jar to cover most of the stem without reaching the leaf. Add a drop or two of Hormex Liquid Concentrate and put the jar where it will get light but not direct sun. When you must add water lost to evaporation, add a drop of Hormex. Roots should form in less than 2 months and then you can pot up the stem as described above.

There are more gesneriads, of course, and not all will root from leaves. Two of my favorites are miniature Sinningias, Columneas (like lipstick plant), and my nominee for most overlooked of the group, Achimenes. Don’t worry – I’ll get to all of them in this blog.

Nellie Neal is a passionate propagator and owner of GardenMama, Inc. She advocates for gardening 24/7 at her website, www.gardenmama.com. Ask questions and comment about this blog on the Contact Us page of www.hormex.com.

The old man sat at one end of a bench that stretched the length of a football field. Almost pot to pot, his creations covered the expanse – a sea of quart sized pots with new grafts inside and covered with glass jelly jars. Surely so many must have taken years to produce, yet all were about the same size and it turned out he’d only been in that greenhouse for 3 months! He neatly snipped off the top of the rootstock plant and made a matching slice in the scion wood from the desired camellia variety. With grafting wax in one hand, he joined them together, added the cloche and moved on to the next. He let us try and only chuckled as we struggled to get the grafts to hold together. I was humbled to sit at the feet of a true master!

Since most popular camellias can grow well on their own roots, most of us root cuttings when we want a new plant. Besides being the simplest way to get a new plant, this method insures that the offspring will be identical and so grow and bloom in the same way as its parent. We all know someone who makes propagation look easy. That person can cut off a camellia stem at any time of the year, stick it into the ground next to the plant it came from, and dig up a rooted plant in six months. Others can leave a cut flower in a cup of water and roots will form before you know it. Trust me, these anecdotal experiences are true but sadly rare and I suggest a more conventional approach with much better odds of success.

Take cuttings of camellia when the wood is semi-hard. New growth is soft and very green, hardwood will snap easily when you try to bend it. In between is the semi-hard or summer wood, as it is also called. Take a cutting about 6 inches long, or one that has 5 sets of leaves. Some sources say to make the cut right below an emerging leaf or node and others say to cut between 2 nodes. You may also be advised to slip off the bark at the base of the cut. While these steps evolved because they helped someone get roots to grow, I cannot find a side-by-side study to compare them. I start with a 6 inch long cutting when possible, but have rooted camellia cuttings as short as 4 inches with about as much care. The diameter of the stem does not matter in this process as much as its stage of growth, but ideally, the cutting will be bigger around than a toothpick and smaller in girth than a pencil. If it is not possible to stick the cuttings right away, store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.

When it’s time to get growing, I take the leaves off of the lower half of the cutting, make sure the lower stem is cut on a slant, roll it in Hormex Rooting Powder #3 and stick it into a damp mix of peat moss and sand or perlite. If those ingredients are not available, lightweight potting mix will do, but it must be well-watered before use and requires close attention to watering. I like to root camellias and other woody plants in small plastic pots, usually recycled 4 inch containers that have been washed in hot, soapy water and rinsed with a 1:10 solution of bleach and water.

If you put those pots on a tray of gravel, it is a simple matter to keep the environment moist and humid without overwatering. Like the grafting gent, I know the value of increasing humidity around the cuttings and will put a tray of pots into a plastic cloche if they are to root indoors. Some gardeners put together rooting boxes just for woody plants and use only peat moss as a rooting medium. Because I live and garden where it is humid and warm most of the year, pots work better for me. I am better able to control moisture levels and can better allow for air circulation around each cutting. However you do it, remember that camellia cuttings need bright light, but cannot survive full sun any better than the shrubs themselves can.

I was introduced to orchid keiki in the lava fields on the Big Island during my ill-fated stint in Hilo. I was in the right place at the wrong time, and only a few days were spent in glorious exploration of this rare and wonderful environment. Thankfully, one day was devoted to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, home of Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes. Arundina orchids are among the first plants to sprout when the lava cools after an eruption and dot the black soil like prayer flags. The plants are tall, a weedy pest in the Tropics, and very prone to reproduction. The day I walked among them, I noticed that a few of the plants were multi-branched candelabras, but most had 2 or 3 stems and swollen nodes. A closer inspection revealed those nodes to be the beginnings of new plants, or keiki. This rampant reproductive nature of Arundina has made it a pest in some places, but you have to admire a plant that will not be stopped and constantly insures its future. It’s got spunk, and I like it. Just a side note: I grow other plants that are considered bullies, like the Clerodendrum known as Mexican hydrangea or Kashmir bouquet, but do avoid the real invasive species like Chinese tallow. I certainly would not plant Arundina outdoors in a tropical environment, I promise, but its reproductive abilities should be an inspiration to other, more finicky orchids.

Not only Arundina produces keikis; Phalaenopsis, Dendrobiums, Epidendrums, and Vandas also make them. Here’s how: Orchid stems can and do branch, sending secondary shoots out of their nodes. Sometimes a small plant sprouts there called a keiki. They are perfect copies of the mother plant, natural or sometimes induced babies, or keikis in Hawaiian. Correctly pronounced, it is ‘kay-ee-kee’, but most Mainlanders say ‘kay kee’ without pronouncing the middle syllable. Whatever you call them, these babies are cute and ready to grow slowly into plants with roots that are large enough to clip off and pot up. Be patient! This process can take six months, aided by your intentions and basic good care of the mother plant. As the roots begin to show, mist them lightly once a week with a solution of Hormex Liquid Concentrate mixed 10 drops in a gallon of water. Take care when removing keiki orchids so the roots are not damaged. Cut the keiki away from the mother plant with an inch or 2 of stem on either side of it. Use that stem to help stabilize the orchid in its new pot. Water weekly with a solution of 1 teaspoon/gallon of HLC and water. Remember, keikis grow slowly but usually flower the second year.

Orchid plants often produce flowering canes, including many Dendrobiums. They can sprout aerial shoots on back bulbs that lack leaves. Small plants develop there, similar to piggyback plant or airplane plant, but over a longer period of time. If a stressful event occurs, such as overwatering or excessive drought, canes can also fail to bloom and may produce small plants where you would expect flower buds. These aerial shoots will form roots in about 3 months and can be clipped from the mother plant (along with a portion of the back bulb if necessary) and potted up. The roots that form in air must be nurtured in the transition to life in soil, and will benefit from weekly watering with Hormex Liquid Concentrate mixed 1 teaspoon to a gallon of water.

Two other methods are used to propagate orchid: tissue (or meristem) culture and seeds. Both demand sterile conditions, so are seldom used at home. Seeds are preferred by those who want to see how diverse the results can be, and some of the finest selections known today were once random seedlings. Tissue culture grows slivers of meristem to produce glass tubes full of tiny plants just like the plant that donated the tissue. It is much cheaper to produce plants this way once the dear initial costs are recouped, and has made it possible to ship thousands of orchid plants in a small box from a commercial propagator to a finishing grower. When the horticultural history of the 21^st century is written, I believe that one of the benchmarks will be the geometric expansion in the availability of orchid plants, thanks to tissue culture. Long ago and far away, I worked with tissue culture briefly in a research environment. My fellow graduate student wanted to facilitate the delivery of cabbages and other vegetables to growers in her Asian homeland. She found her way of choice in meristem culture, and the rest of us got to explore what was, at the time, new-fangled technology. It’s true what they say – if you’re looking for a fascinating field that takes you from the backyard to state-of-the-art laboratories and runs the gamut of potential careers, you should consider horticulture.

Nellie Neal is a passionate propagator and owner of GardenMama, Inc. She advocates for gardening 24/7 at her website, www.gardenmama.com. Ask questions and comment about this blog on the Contact Us page of www.hormex.com.

Making divisions is one of several ways to propagate orchids and it is usually better done in spring than at other times of the year. Like many perennial garden plants, each orchid division must have at least one shoot and some roots as well as backbulbs if they exist. Those are the pseudobulbs that remain after a previous flower display has been cleaned up. Keep reading this blog for information about propagating with backbulbs. Gently slip the orchid to be divided out of its pot onto a bench or tray. If it is difficult to get the rootball out of its pot, break the pot rather than wrench the roots. Shake off any loose soil and inspect the plant for obvious places to make divisions that will yield strong shoots and plenty of roots for each one. It’s best to get a strong mess of roots, at least one new shoot and 2-3 backbulbs in each division.  Use a sharp, single-bladed knife to slice straight through the crown tissue and roots in one motion.

Like people, plants respond well to a little pressure and moderate amounts of stress can actually be quite motivating. Your quest is to minimize that stress and manage its effects for good results, from the way you choose and separate new divisions to how you treat the new plants as they root and begin to grow. Once the cuts are made, rinse the roots in plain water and soak the divisions for 15 minutes in Hormex Liquid Concentrate (2 T per gallon of water). Pot them up in a classic, bark-rich orchid mix and water weekly with a solution of Hormex (1 tsp. per gallon of water) at least until new growth begins.

The timid among us may find the act of cutting a beloved plant painful; trust me, it’s worth it. The stress of separation can produce stronger shoots and more flowers than the orchid plant left to grow for years in the same pot. Most will reward your efforts with flowers next season. If only the stresses of life were so predictably rewarding!

If you seek a way to propagate orchids that delivers a big investment on time, or want a more affordable way to acquire some varieties, use backbulbs. These are the stems with swollen bases left after flowering or that form without ever initiating bloom. Both root well and can be removed when the mother plant is repotted or divided. Roots are the first order of business in propagating backbulbs and Hormex Liquid Concentrate provides 2 growth hormones and vitamin B-1 to encourage rooting. Dip the base of an orchid backbulb into the concentrate for 5 minutes before planting it in orchid mix, or a combination of mix and finely ground bark. Water weekly for 6 weeks with a solution of HLC mixed 1 teaspoon per gallon of water. At that point, tug gently on the backbulb. If it resists your touch, rooting has begun. Continue using a Hormex solution monthly to insure good root development. It can take up to 4 years to bloom a backbulb but those who do say it’s well worth the time to expand their collections.

Orchids can also be propagated from keiki and aerial cuttings; I’ll blog about these fascinating plant parts and how to propagate them next week.

Nellie Neal is a passionate propagator and owner of GardenMama, Inc. She advocates for gardening 24/7 at her website, www.gardenmama.com. Ask questions and comment about this blog on the Contact Us page of www.hormex.com.