Plant Propagation Hacks

Join Melody and Emily for a fun conversation about plant propagation. We've got some extra tips in this episode for hacks that you can try at home for expanding your plant population. Let's go!!  

https://youtu.be/bQCObBXCRW4https://yardstopgardencenter.com/

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Arts Doc Garden Center podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about plant propagation. And uh welcome back, Melody, by the way. Thank you. We're glad that you uh you did episode I think it was 15 with Zoe on houseplants. And we were thinking it would just be a great idea to follow up with plant propagation because a lot of people propagate their houseplants, but you can propagate most plants, I assume. Um for people that don't know um anything about plant propagation, what exactly is it? What's just when you multiply your own plant? Okay. So you're just literally multiplying a mother plant. You could do it in soil, you could do it just by you know dry stem. You can do it in water, that's the most typical way. Okay, and then there's of course just stem cuttings that you just either way it goes. Um is one more popular than the other? Water. Okay. Water propagation. Just because you could see it. Yes. You don't have to guess if it's rooted or not. Okay. Because in water you'll just see the roots growing. That makes sense. I did one like that in water, and um seeing the roots was kind of helpful to know like where it was, and once they were like, you know, yeah, well grown, um, that's when I transplanted it. So um well, there's the hard part. Because you see it in the water and then it's used to living in water, and then when you transplant it, you have to make sure there's a fine line between too dry and too wet for that now, because now it's gotta get used to soil. Yeah. So how do you go about starting the plant propagation process? Um, do you just cut little clips off of the plant and or do you pull out little segments of the root or what's the um you could divide if you want to do it that way. You could always divide a plant with just propagating it too. Okay, but if you're putting it in water, you would cut just like the plant behind you, the long stem, you could literally cut between each leaf on that plant. Right. And it would be its own propagation. Okay. And it's easy to just stick it in water and watch it grow. As long as there's a node. A node. What's a node? It's where the leaf grows off of the plant. Okay. Attached to the stem, it stays on the stem where the leaf grows off, or you know, like the little like uh little eyeballs, people they love to call it the little eyeball. Yeah. On a stem. Okay. And you you can put it in water or soil or is okay. Yeah, water or soil. It's just easier. I always say for especially for beginners, put it in water. Okay. That way you can see your your progress. Two to four weeks you'll start seeing roots. Two to four weeks. Okay. So then after you start seeing the roots, you would take it out and transplant it in a bigger pot. Well, um this is just m the way I do it. I always say however big the plant is you're propagating, you want the roots to be that long. Okay. You're almost a hundred percent success rate. Yeah. When you have that mini roots. You could always do it if it's they they say in like everybody else, an inch long root. You could do it. But I always just wait till it's about the same size. In the two to four weeks, that process goes for all plants in in general? In general, even in in soil or water. You would two to four weeks you're gonna have some roots. Yeah. But it's just harder to to know it's rooted in soil unless you're digging it out all the time. Yeah. And then that just puts you plant shock, so you don't really want to do it. Okay. Do you need like a greenhouse to um do plant propagation or can you do it indoor and outdoors? Indoor and outdoors. As long as it's not in the sun. No direct sun. But if it's a house plant well, any anything you're propagating, you don't want it in direct sun. You want it to be indirect sun and indoors, just in a nice like lit it lit area, but not too bright, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. But you can do it inside. They're everywhere in my house. Yeah. Literally in every bathroom, every ki my kitchen. I would love to see your house. Covered in propagation. I would really love to see your house. It's too hard to throw a clipping away. I've learned to I can if I clip my plants back right at springtime because it makes them bushier and healthier. I I've learned to either give away I'll bring them and put them in a box free. Yeah. Clippings. I can't keep them all. And I want to. I want to just keep growing more plants. Yeah. I've seen those little plant propagator things that you can buy and you can people buy them to give, I guess, gifts to people. They give them little print pop propagators or whatever. Yeah. Um so that's cool. I literally have a propagation of probably every plant I have. Just, you know, on the safe side. That way if something happens to your first plant, you have its baby plant. Yeah. But it's really cool. I give them away. Yeah. It's really cool. It's really cool that you can grow um plants from other plants without buying more plants. You just have to wait for the process. But I've done it with um impatience because I don't know. They just seemed easy. And um, you have to wait a while, but it's kind of fun. Yeah. Well then even the plants we sell here, a lot of them um you can do root division. When you have instead of one plant, you have three plants. What's root division? Well, if the let me just say, okay. Um is it when you take a stem and like you just you slit like three if I were to take that plant completely out of its pot. Yeah. This one, this um synapsis behind you, and I took my finger and put it in the middle of the root ball and gently pried it apart. Now I have two plants. Most plants will let you do it. Yeah. Snake plants are easy because they create pulps. So they just put out another whole grouping next to it. Right. And a lot of times the greenhouses that grow the plants, yes, to make a big plant, there's really three in the pot. Wow. So right from dump, you have three plants. Okay. So it depends on how big you want your plant to look, or if you really want three plants instead of one. So African violets are really easy to do. Not a lot of people know that. Right. Yeah. There's there's so many different ones. Wow. Almost, I can almost tell you every plant that I've ever bought, depending on the root system, how well established and healthy the plant is, you can divide them. Yeah. You can just That's really fascinating. I didn't really I guess I didn't know that. I always thought you had to take it just, you know, one little well, I mean, it makes so much sense actually. Now that you're saying that. Well, just so they, you know, with the nurseries that grow the plant. Yeah. To make you get the small little four-inch plant, it's just one. Then you go up to the gallon size. There's literally most of the time three to four plants in that gallon. Right. I mean, they look beautiful and you don't really want to separate every one of your plants. But yeah, there's more than one. Wow. And then I guess another question going back to the plant propagating, when you do propagate the root and you put it in water or soil, um, does the top of the plant die off? Like, and just like the the root survive? Does that make sense? Like, will the top kind of die? Well, it once you take it one once it's been propagated in and then you want to put it in soil from water? Yeah. Okay, so when you you've propagated it, this was the longer the root, the healthier the root system that you've grown, the better. The better survival chance. Because there's a lot of times you propagate and you see all those roots and it looks fantastic. Then you put it in soil and it goes, nope. You're not doing this. Because this the roots aren't long enough. Right. And I could tell you, if you just rather leave it in water, a plant can live in water. It can live its whole life in water. Will it grow? Oh, sure. Oh, oh yeah, for sure. You just have to remember water's water. There's nothing in there that's feeding that plant. Okay. So you have to fertilize. And how do you is fertilizing for a propagated plant in water that you just want to leave in there? Um, what's the difference in fertilizing that versus one that's planted in soil? Okay, you just have to kind of follow the uh well if you if you do your pro I have multiple pot propagations. So I do a gallon jug and then I put my liquid fertilizer in that to measurement. Okay. And then I just put a little bit in all my water. So I'm feeding it. You it's not gonna live without well it's not it's gonna live. It's just not gonna thrive without food. Right. That makes sense. So I guess I could specify a little bit more on propagating in soil. Um, if I was gonna propagate my plant in soil, does the size of your pot matter? Like if you put a small, small plant into a really big pot of soil, is that going to like like do plants somehow have spatial awareness? I know it sounds so weird, but they kind of do, right? Can you explain that a little bit? Well, a house plant like this is what I tell everybody. So if you were to buy a plant, and it happens a lot here, they buy this big we have the most beautiful pottery. Yeah. And they want to put a little like one gallon patient in there. And a giant pot. And I say, okay, this is how I'm gonna explain it to you. Um, if if you do that, the plant's gonna go, okay. Well, down here I've got lots to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna work on all my roots that you can't see. That's gonna be an amazing root system. But up here, I'm not paying attention to. That blows my mind. Yeah, so I'm not gonna pay any attention to my leaves or get any bigger. I'm gonna make you worry the whole time. But I'm focusing down here in my root system. Wow. So if you want it to be big and beautiful, yeah, just put it, it just needs to be upsized by an inch or two, never really huge. So I tell people all the time if you really want it in that giant pot, leave it in its garden pot. Right. And put it in there. You can surround it by soil and do all the things. It looks like it's planted, but it's not, you know? Yeah. That way it stays beautiful. So it's better to put them in a smaller pot size and as they grow, transplant them out of that. And a lot of plants like to be rootbound, they don't like to be all really me out there in the soil. Yeah, like to be, you know, hugged a little bit. Yeah, it's crazy. So you go from like the plant propagation to the pot, and then do you go from the pot to the ground, or can you just keep the plants in the pot? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, yeah. I do that with my roses. Okay. I often like so I have some plants that I bought from Yardstop actually, and they're really beautiful. Um, I put them in the command soil, and they just did amazing. Yeah. And they're they're just like, I feel like they're outgrowing their pots. Right. And does that mean that I just need to cut them back and help them to kind of like stay in their spatial container, or do some plants need to be put like taken out of pots and put into the ground? No, you don't have to. A plant can live in a pot its entire life. And you you don't have to change the size necessarily. No. I'd wondered about that. Yeah, so it's only it's kind of like um a fish and fishing. It's only gonna get as big as it's allowed. Okay. But you can plant, you can actually propagate roses that you get in a boat. In like a propagate roses? Wow. Don't you done know? Oh my god, so like say your wedding day. Yeah. You know how everybody dries their flowers? They never look good. Yeah. I hate that. You don't have to. You could literally take, say, um, I don't know, say your boyfriend or your husband brought you this amazing bouquet of roses. You could literally propagate from one of your stemmed roses and make a whole rose tree. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, it's amazing. I guess too, and I think propagated plants, I think house plants, but you can propagate roses. That's amazing. Trees? Can you do trees? Sometimes it depends on the tree. Okay. I mean, not everything can be, but yeah. Like it's possible. And a lot of a lot of plants and and stuff propagate for themselves. Yeah. Like even the banana tree. Yeah. Okay, so it gives you bananas. Guess what? The event's gonna croak. And then but there's gonna be another banana tree right next to it that pops out. They're called pups. Just like succulents sometimes. Oh, same, same with um plants that kind of reseed themselves. Right, right. They um osmosis. Yes, yeah, but they reseed. Yeah, those always fascinate me. Yeah, honestly. I love them. Yes. I love anything that can make multiple for me. Right. Because then that's just money well spent. Yeah. You can be mad. Like really, like, okay, I just paid, you know, 20 bucks for this plant. Yeah. But it's gonna make 15 more of them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What? 20 bucks doesn't seem a lot after 15 plants. But you mean tell me the secret on roses? Oh, love the secret, because I might try it. Okay, and in in come at me in the comments, because I've tried it, I already know it works. So I promise you. Go ahead. Try true. So you take your rose out of uh anything, and then you you you just say, okay, well, uh, this is a great way to have memories in your garden, like a memory garden. Yeah. Because you would know, oh, that came from Valentine's Day, or oh, that was my engagement rose, or wedding rose, all those things. So you just take your one stem and you need about six to eight inches. Okay. Now this is the hard part because you're gonna chop the top off. The whole rose has to come. The bloom. Okay. And then you're gonna pull all the leaves, right? And then you're gonna do a 90-degree cut, like a little sli, you know, sliver of a cut. You're gonna put cinnamon on that cut. Oh, what? Cinnamon is the same as as hormone um uh root hormones. Okay. It's the same thing. I I'm thinking of the spice for some reason. It's spice, cinnamon. Oh, the cinnamon's like space. Why you would buy in a grocery store. It's the same thing as root hormone. You just stick your stem in the cinnamon. Now here's the strangest part, okay? So you're gonna take a potato. Okay. Uh this is I'm telling you, it might sound crazy. No, I'm gonna try this. Then you take the and you stick it inside the potato. Yeah. So now it's like, here's the potato, here's your stem. So you got potato stub. Yes. And then a stick of rose stem. Just the stem. Dimmed in cinnamon. Dipped in cinnamon. And you poke it in the potato. Yeah. And then you bury the potato. I'm listen. No, I'm gonna try this. I have so many roses. My rose bushes are amazing. They sound amazing. And then you bury the potato. That's it. Wow. And then you just moistened it a little bit and you watch that whole entire rose bush grow. So you'll get a whole rose bush from a stem. Yeah. How long will it take for that whole process? Okay, so it's gonna go through a whole entire growing season. So it's uh, you know, three seasons, yeah, six. It could be it could be a while. Yeah. But you'll start to see it. Yeah. You'll start to know. Right. And you just don't give up. Don't give up. Wow. I promise you it'll happen. No, if you get it from the grocery store, it it's uh better like if you get it, like, okay. So it it needs there's a whole lot of factors. Like it ha it can't be a 10-day old cut, right? It can't have where it's a little wobbly. If you have really good, you know, strong stem. If the limbs are a little welted, right? You'll know. But you know what what harm is it if you do let's say you get twelve a twelve stem bouquet of roses, right? Do all twelve. Yeah. At least I know for a fact that at least one of them's gonna make it. You know what I mean? So what are your odds? Not a lot of odds there. Are there any plants that you can't really propagate or that just don't do well with propagation? Or yeah. Oh well, okay. So, um, Sanseveria you can do Mother Long's tongue. Yep. It is the longest propagation time in history. I swear. It is like it just takes forever to take it. It's forever, forever. You can do it in water. Yep. It took almost six months before I saw roots grow on the bottom. Wow. Yeah. I feel like water is faster. It is, and that's the thing, because you can also take the entire one type cut off the entire mother-in-law's tongue, one stem, and you can cut it in three to four inch pieces. And then stick that's the this is the part, you gotta make sure it's the bottom. Yeah. And then stick that in soil and propagate it. Wow. But you're looking at longer than six months, I promise you. It's crazy. It's crazy. That's crazy. But carnations and eucalyptus and that's another thing. Eucalyptus you can do. Um and roses can all form a bouquet. Yeah. They can does annuals versus perennials, um, will some of them like last longer than the other propagate propagations? If that makes sense. Like, you know, marigolds are yeah, what are they? Um annuals? Annuals. Yeah, I know they they just die off. So like are some plants do some plants just do not take very well? Yeah, like you propagate them so. I mean, division. You have division, so you have multiple plants, but it's still an I mean the best part in Florida we don't have we have it's like a it's a perennial, but um division is always the easiest when it's like those, you know. Right, yeah. Did you do a class on propagating? What was your class that you did for for coffee with a gardener? Uh picking we did two of them. I feel like uh one was picking the right plant for you. Right for the ones that say, Oh, I I don't have a green thumb, I killed it. There's always a plant for you, I promise. There's a section for everybody that's their their for them. Right. Um, what else did we do? Um, not really not really propagating, but we did like a whole soil preparations and what kind of soil and insects, you know, because there's a lot of bugs you can get on plants. Right. I just had a problem with that this weekend. Oh, really? Aphids. Yeah, yeah. They're gross. Yeah, that's a problem. That was fun. But um. And then we're having a re uh repotting class soon. Okay. Yeah. That'll be interesting. I think we should definitely get you to do one on um propagating plants. Thanks so much, guys, for tuning in to our podcast. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Melanie on on plant propagating. We'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.