And we're live. This is Plant Ditty Podcast. I'm Matthew and I'm Stephen.
So for this month's Chile and Chat, we thought we'd revisit propagation because
it's been a little while. Have we seen anything interesting or new lately?
What's going on in our propagation lives? Why are we doing the propagation we're
doing right now and so forth. Yeah, and this is a great time
if you're in the Northern Hemisphere to start propagating stuff. It's warmer, the
days are longer, and plants are largely entering active growth. You both had
fresh plant material to trim and propagate, as well as a few nice months
ahead for them to establish into their own self actualized plants. Right, But
first, it's our mate Chile and Chat. So you know what that means.
It's for us to give a shout out to our newest patrons. As
you know, official patrons get access to our catalog ad free with periodic after
shows with questions, thoughts, and fun bits that didn't make into the episode
itself. Hey, you can also just support us by buying us a coffee
if you prefer. That's right, So here we go. Special thanks to
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to come soon. So Stephen and I are both dedicated Plant Daddy. So
who don't mind the look of grow lights indoors. That's right, it's for
the plants. They need that light. But you know, not everyone feels
that way. I know other plant parents who are very reluctant about the look
of artificial light. And I even heard your own husband complain about how the
grow lights in your last apartment gave him a headache. Okay, I'm so
glad you remember that and brought him up. Brian. Come tell Stephen what
you were telling our friends about my new Soultech pendent light. Oh hi,
Stephen, Hey, okay, be honest, what do you think about the
soul Tech plant light. I can't believe how unobtrusive it is. Matthew hung
it right next to a chair I like to read in, and I thought
for sure that I'd hate it. But it's just pleasant indoor lighting, like
the light from a normal light fixture that a normal person would have in a
normal home. It's so much better than the grow lights in his office room.
Still gives me a headache. Well, there you go. He wasn't
paid or course to say this, I promise. Yeah. That is an
unvarnished reaction from a long suffering spouse of well you all know a very enthusiastic
plant parent, let's call it. So let's add this to the list of
reasons we're excited to offer our listeners fifteen percent off Soltech products with Code Plant
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percent off your order. All right, so let's chat propagation. We might
casually mention from time to time when we're propagating things and our infrequent plant updates,
or we'll discuss propagation techniques that are relevant to the specific plant that's our
topic for the week. But it's been a while since we just deliberately accounted
for what we've got rooting at our own propagation stations. So, like I
said in the intro, it's things are ready for pruning. Plant meetups have
started again and it's a great time to start new plants. Yeah, so,
Stephen, what cuttings are new in your life? Okay, I've been
doing a lot of pepper roma cuttings. I have not done that in years.
Yeah me, okay, I haven't really done that since the Piccolo Banda
experience maybe a year or two ago for us, and that's a good one.
Yeah. So this started when you gave me those pepperroma in canna cuttings
a few weeks or maybe months ago, hard to remember kind of this point.
Yeah, I tried putting the entire stems into water, but that wasn't
really working. I don't know if the cuttings, like maybe I didn't get
them into water fast enough that suspect. So then I took leaf cuttings from
those and here we are today. Yeah, I haven't tried that one from
leaf cuttings. It's a pretty fleshy plant. It's a little bit more of
a succulent pepper roma than some of the more tropical pepper romias. Yeah,
it's a cool one, very sort of fuzzy and cuddly. Yeah. I
think that incana actually means something about gray, and it has nothing to do
with the inca people. It's it's more about that fuzzy, felted look that
the leaves have. So what did you do with them? So I took
a glass candle holder that is kind of perfect and small one of those things
that like I bought on a target run. You know, yeah, I'm
like just some little yeah, like, um, I put the incanna cuttings
in there. I threw in some Peppermia green bubble, which is a cool
one if you haven't googled that ever. Also a Pepperomia elongata that I got
locally recently. That's actually for you, but I took a leave. Sorry.
That one kind of gives me some like philodendron vibes, like Chris,
Yeah, I would have thought that about the plant. Actually, um,
if I hadn't touched it, I guess it's cool. But you know,
I guess I've been mostly propagating hoy as lately as everyone seems to be,
so like the pace of Peppermia through me a little bit. Actually, I
felt like when I put them in water, they didn't do anything for longer
than I thought was normal, and then suddenly I look they had like exploded
with roots kind of overnight. So yeah, this is not like a groundbreaking
story really, but I will say I forgot how satisfying this kind of propagation
can be. It's a reason that people get into plants because they put like
a Peppermia or an African violet leaf in a little vase or votive if you're
you, and then the little baby plants form after the roots. Yeah right,
experienced plant parents probably know this. Pepperammia is just a great genus for
this. It's giving me really good root porn feelings. It feels like a
super easy wind compared to the other plants that I grow right now or just
like in my plant parenthood life, which is a struggle I choose, I
know. So, Yeah, if anyone else is an old, jaded plant
person like me, maybe revisit this. If you haven't in a while,
like just saying it's been fun. Yeah, haven't of them growing baby plants?
Are you still just at the root stage? Actually, I have some
little baby plants coming too, and I'm not really gonna wait for that.
I feel like I'm gonna just kind of put these into a pot, like
these aren't ones that I'm trying to grow into show quality plants or anything.
I just can't want the you know, to free up some space at this
point. Yeah, but yeah, little ones are coming, so you know,
by the time I get around to it, I probably will see those.
Knowing me, I love that. So how about you, Matthew.
You know, I don't really have much propagating right now. I do have
a few glasses or takeout containers of what spagnum moss with some haroid cuttings.
There's nothing really too exciting. It's basically remember when we talked in episode one
thirty one about like adopting an old plant, and I mentioned how sometimes propagating
the pruned parts of an overgrown plant is just a good way of either restarting
that plant as kind of like a bush your specimen, or you can restart
a fresh, new full pot of something with those cuttings. Yeah. Well,
a good example of that is my philodendron lemon line. It's kind of
a really great philodendron that I've seen a lot of recently. But it's going
by a trade name Golden Goddess, but it's actually patent as lemon lime.
Anyway, It's a really beautiful shartruse cultivar of Philodendron domesticum. And I've had
this plant for years. I got it for free from Miles like over winter
he got a plant in a shipment that was pretty like cold damaged from a
cold snap. The way had over the winter, and it's really done well
for me. It became a very dramatic trailing specimen hanging in a window.
Now it's sitting on a bookcase, trailing like six feet and like the vines
are growing back up. So it was kind of time to start removing some
of those longest vines because after three plus years of growing, they were getting
a little bit bare at the top. And I actually posted a video of
what I did for this a few weeks ago on Instagram one episode one thirty
one came out, But basically, I just took a bunch of little takeout
containers, put some moss in, and then I had single note cuttings that
I just kind of tucked in and by now it's, you know, a
couple months later, they've all put out substantial route growth and they're starting to
shoot out some new growth from the nodes themselves, so they're going to be
potted up soon. And the first going to start out is kind of like
bushy upright plants, like you often see them for sale. But then as
they grow, they're going to become trailing plants again. So I'm thinking ahead
to who I'm going to give those two slash where I'm going to put new
pots of this really beautiful trailing plant to kind of continue that look okay,
yeah, and then the other aeroids that I have kind of similar thing.
You know how much I love this sin Dapis trebi, that moonlight plant,
right, Yeah, I have one full pot of that that's not big enough
to be propagating. But my first plant has grown some trailing vines that have
been kind of bare. They're growing like runners without leaves, So I trimmed
those off and I tucked those into moist sphagnum moss. But they're extremely slow
to root and start growing new plants. Yeah, you've said that this is
one that I have to google. Each time you mention it, I will
stand in my truth. I'm just a little Syndapsis blind or something. But
yeah, it's a pretty one. This is really it's a really different one.
It's people don't know it, Honestly, one of the prettiest aeroids that
I grow, like. I just love the leaves and I wish that they
were faster to propagate, because if you grow like the Syndapis pictus or exotica,
like those ones with the silvery blotchy leaves. They are so much faster
to get going. Yeah, But I also have the Syndapsis jade satin,
which is the same as like Pictus argiris, like all those ones, but
it doesn't have the variegation. It just has like deep colored leaves. And
I mentioned when we were talking about how slow it can be to propagate plants
sometimes that I had a cutting that I bought online of this plant. I
had it rooting in a shot glass for a really long time. Actually,
I also have this on Instagram. It's one of our earlier reels. And
that plant finally has several new leaves, like two of them are from when
it was in soil, two of them are from when it was in the
moss shot glass. The new leaves are huge, so that one's looking good.
I feel like that plant is finally a propagation success. And my other
plant that has yards of trailing vine, I think I'm going to start cuttings
in the same way. But then the last one, I have some epipremanum
penatum, both like the standard green one and Sea Boo blue that I'm doing
propagation on. My Baltic Blue isn't big enough to propagate from now to have
the standard green Epipremnum panatum growing fresh shoots out of moss from some single node
cuttings. I'm going to put that on a moss pole while it's still young
so that I can just immediately get it to begin climbing because I want to
get some of that mature fenistration. This plant seems to fenustrate really early compared
to see Boo blue, so I'm really excited to get those on moss.
Yeah, even the cuttings you gave me that's already already have some like yes
fenestration, I guess, or some splits, and that's that's the Baltic blues.
So it's a little bit different than the standard green one. I don't
know how much different they really are, but yeah, but I did just
post a massible tutorial because I'm going to be going like hard into that technique
getting a lot of these young wearies climbing. I really want mature leaves.
So I actually have some mossibel experiments going on too. Maybe that will be
an episode soon for us. I think we should do a mossibel episode.
I'm really excited. Okay, so you don't really have that much exciting going
on, but you do have like ten projects. Okay, yeah, well
that's how I characterize it. Okay, so I am also doing dressera capenses
from leaf cuttings. That's the Cape sundo. That seems a bold way to
propagate that plant. Yeah, Like before you say, wait, why in
the heck would you do that with such a common weedy ish plant. Well,
lately there are a lot of people collecting site specific forms that have like
really different you know, shapes and sizes. The one I'm trying, I
guess, is like a super large form. Okay. Yeah, So there's
a few ways you can do this with these plants, and I'm kind of
trying a few at once because I haven't really done or Sarah propagation like this
in a while. Yeah. So, you can put the leaves in wet
live sphagnum moss I'm trying that. You can put them in carnivorous soil as
well, just peat and pearlite mix. I am doing that too. I
have both of these under a glass dome just to get maximum humidity. Yeah
yeah, and to protect them from fungus snats. This is like one of
the few stages that I'm aware of where carnivorous plants are susceptible to this past.
Actually, the last time that I did ping leaf cuttings like leaf pullings,
the fungus snat larvae done them in Oh okay, interesting. Yeah,
Also I have just a leaf in water, like in a closed bottle.
All these are typically done under like carnivorous level, like high light levels.
Yeah. Yeah, And you know, how's it going pretty terribly actually,
be honest, like, nothing's really happening right now in any of these scenarios.
Maybe the cuttings I got were a little bit old, or I waited
a little bit too long. Leaves are kind of slowly browning and dying in
each of these scenarios. You know, I was reading more about like,
all right, you put it right side up, you can put it on
its side, you can, you know, just to make sure that it's
absolutely ideal. But I'm not really sure if this is going to work,
unless it's going to be something kind of late in the game. But yeah,
you know, maybe you can try again. I might not have any
luck this time, but you know, thoughts and prayers place I would hope
that they would survive long enough without rotting to get some baby plants, just
because the leaves are you know, generally kind of ephemeral. For most kind
of risk plants, you don't typically have very long, so I would guess
i'd probably have another week or so, but I'm going to wait until these
brown off completely, and I'm just you know, that shouldn't be too long
to wait. But yeah, you know the singers crossed. Yeah, and
you know, luckily this is not some super rare species. I can get
other cuttings to try with and yeah, who knows, Okay, nice.
Yeah, Anyway, I'm told that seeds are a way to propagate. Two,
you're doing some growing from seed, Matthew, Yeah, I mean starting
plants from seed. I guess technically council's propagation because you're making new plants.
We recently talked about the bandarin plant and how excited we were to cut those
hideous, those super super hideous flower stocks with the seed capsules off of our
plants. Yeah, so as soon as we were done recording that episode,
I did exactly that, and I got those planted out in some cells of
a seedling tray. So probably haven't germinated, but that's fine if they don't
germinate that's also fine, but I'm just curious what that looks like. I'm
not very excited about that, it's just for the curiosity. But what I
am excited about is that I have successfully pollinated my four bobisa, which we
talked about way back in episode forty seven, who as the start of the
pandemic. I'm really excited. Weird, Yeah, I mean no, that
that's weird that it's that long ago. I mean, abuse is not weird,
you know, I love right right, I mean before you tell me,
like, I know, I could have stored pollen if I cared that
much, but that was like more trouble than I wanted to go with.
But the reason this is exciting for me is because this is the first time
that I've had my male and female both bloom at the same time as I
got them back in April of twenty twenty. Yeah, so I recently posted
a TikTok and reel of me pollinating them, and then almost immediately like I
feel like maybe the next day, I was able to tell that it had
been successful because like at the very base of the pistol of the female flower,
like the ovary began to swell and so at this point, like it's
almost reached full size, and I've got this little seed capsule that it's still
going to take a little bit of time to mature. Yeah, but you've
talked about how you've lost seeds, like literally lost them, because yeah,
they're just all over the floors of the various apartments I've lived in. And
I mean, yeah, I can tell my U four b absa stories you
know, after you've told yours, that probably makes sense, So just keep
going. Yeah, I mean what happens is the capsules when the seeds are
ripe, they begin to dry out, and then when they dry to a
certain point, they just kind of burst. Like there's this kind of like
tension built up that at a certain point, the moisture loss causes them to
just rupture and forcibly expel the seeds when they're ready to do that. And
it's just a good mechanism. Yeah, Like it's super effective. Yeah,
Stephen wasn't able to find the seeds that did that to him, and so
a lot of people will do things like cover their plants with a nylon or
put a bag over it to something. The approach that I did last time
worked super well and I'm going to do it again. This time, the
capsule begins to dry out from the top, and I'm going to keep an
eye on it from that point because then by the time that the whole capsule
itself is brown, but before with the stock that it's on has started to
dry, I'm just going to remove it, put it in a dish,
and cover it with some cling wrap. I'll poke some holes in so that,
like you know, air can come out, because I don't want it
to be too humid. Yes, yeah, I'll just wait for it to
finish drying on its own that way, so that when it bursts, it'll
release the seeds and like a little ceramic trinket dish. Yeah, that I'll
have like everything collected together. And then I'm going to pot these up in
the same pot together, just like I did last time. I'm going to
use a well draining succulent mix, but one that holds more moisture than I
do for the ones for adults like my adult plants. You literally gave me
a bag if you're preferred, like mostly granite chips and like mineral mix.
And then I'm going to keep these little seeds really bright and warm. Last
time, they germinated quickly, so I hope, slash expect that it will
be the same this time, and I'm going to try keeping them more consistently
well watered this time along to see if that speeds up their growth. Yeah,
we were both a little hesitant to overwater our Euphorbia obesa. But I've
heard from some social media plant friends of ours that young plants actually seem to
both tolerate and also enjoy pretty regular watering as long as they're warm and bright,
and they're going to grow pretty quickly. Yeah, Euphorbia are less sensitive
in kind of broad general senses to overwatering than a lot of cacti are,
I would agree. Yeah, yeah, I've never thought about that, but
like, if I have to say true or false, yes, yeah,
I mean that's a gross generalization. But the two year old plants that I
started my first generation of seedborne obisa, they are just starting to look like
proper versions of mature plants, and they're only like one and a half to
two centimeters across. They're so cute, they're extremely cute. But I also
have let them dry quite a bit and quite regularly, so it'll just be
interesting to see what happens with this more benevolent approach to rearing I intend to
do for their younger siblings. Yeah, I have many thoughts here. I've
been kind of laughing because there's a lot of parallels, Like I have been
trying to capture these seeds, which with a bunch of little mechanisms that I'm
just making myself. I feel like i go online, people are like,
oh, just catch him with this you know thing that you put on it,
like it's so easy. Yeah, I feel like I've engineered eight different
things that don't quite work. My latest one is I have just the kind
of bottom of like a clear Dixie esque kind of like little cup. Okay,
so it's clear. I've poked holes in it just like you have,
and this will at least catch the seeds that are exploding and they won't go
to other pots. So I'm thinking, like, Okay, I could potentially,
like I know what these seeds look like, I could find these seeds
in the bottom of this pot from the mother plant. Okay, not perfect
at all. Maybe I will do what you're talking about, like remove the
whole seed pod. Anyway, Yeah, I kind of looked at my you
know suculent table the other day, and I'm like, okay, well,
you know the weed in my collection is going to be four biovisa. You
could do work. It's so much better than Mother of Thousands. Yeah.
Wow, that just carve them at all, right, a little horror feeling.
Yeah, but this is such a satisfying, you know species, I
think, and along the lines of what you were saying about care, I'm
starting to do the same thing I used to, really put these under highlight,
treat them like kind of cacti cacti like in my collection. But I
have eased up in the light. I have kind of eased up on the
watering and the sense that I water more and it's kind of greening up.
I enjoy the look more that way. So I'm with you there as well.
Yeah, and I think that they're more flexible than we necessarily assume.
So if you go back and listen to episode forty seven, maybe don't be
quite as precious about it. If we gave that impression of salt there.
Yes, yeah, okay, next propagation related topic. Have our propagation approaches
or opinions evolved at all lately? Have we seen anything surprising online like recently.
When you asked that question while we were outlining, I was thinking,
like, oh God, or people on TikTok train or root things and red
beer, like it's right in the title he was. I mean there's that.
I mean my feelings more kind of like, oh, shoot, there
should be there's something that I should be up on that I'm just not in.
What have I not known that people are doing for the last year and
a half. People have been propagating plants for millennia. It's not like okay,
but any broadly, I myself not like a trend I'm seeing. I
am doing more water propagation lately. Like I said earlier, I had been
giving things more of like a Hoya prop box esque treatment. So that's like
close changer humidity. Yeah, like it's wet medium but not like water water.
Yeah, well well actually there has been some water involved anyway. I
think I associate water propagation with like easier plants though for some reason, yeah,
pepper oman pathos. Yeah, but that's kind of why I had not
done it so much lately. Maybe it seems old fashioned to me, which
are like something from childhood that's like simple, but actually isn't the best when
I think people are also concerned about like, oh, no, I have
too much water roots. Like the water roots are adapted for that, they're
going to transition to soil poorly, which is why we've been doing like moist
mediums. Yeah, and like there are kind of reasons for that, but
there aren't like any great reasons. That's just kind of my feelings in where
I had been trending. So still successful otherwise. Yeah, Like so I'm
you know, I'm kind of getting back into water fish, how about you,
Okay, um, Yeah, I'm actually that's super relevant to my experience.
I'm still doing a lot of things in damp moss because kind of like
we were saying, I don't want things to grow you know, quote water
roots that are going to be a rough transition into soil. I have had
that experience in the past before. So to me, moss is good intermediate
kind of approach because I have like a super wet moss to start with.
It encourages route growth, and then I just back off the water so that
by the time that the plant is ready to pot, I'm actually letting that
moss almost completely or sometimes completely dry between waterings. That way, they're adapted
to kind of a wedding drying cycle by the time that they go and do
substrate. But I am doing more things in just straight water because I'm realizing,
like I just have to initiate rue growth and once they're like an ant
or too long, like I can just kind of pop them up. He
was like a well draining substrate like I would use for the adult plant.
Like, yeah, I'm going back and forth on this. I've done some
hoyas in moss. I've done some pison water. They're both good approaches.
I think that it just comes down to preference. But I do have a
Hoya verticiliata. I think that's what it is. Vertis alata, vertis a
latta, thank you maybe yeah, whatever, Okay. It was one of
the first toys that I ordered online when I first got bit by the hoya
bug. And it's one of the points that I gave you on our plant
swap at the end of last year. That one the original cuttings that I
took that I put in a tumbler of moss, I like ripped a chunk
of that like hunk of ritted cuttings out and gave to you. But the
ones that I still have. I haven't boughted them up yet, and one
of them is actually putting on up a dunkele and forming buds, so it
very well might just flower for me like in moss. Okay, yeah,
and like this is kind of how this stuff goes. This leads into my
next little bit. I think, well, yeah, seeing things online,
are we seeing new things lately? This is random, but I saw a
video where someone said that they strongly prefer propagation in wet per light versus wet
sphagnum moss. They were talking about hoys in this case. That just got
me thinking, you know, about how some people feel a certain way as
best I will see it. It'll strike me as strange, and then I'll
realize that I think this because I was assuming the opposite was best without really
realizing or really interrogating that either. So this is not a call out at
all to that person who has a great channel, right, But it was
like an introspective moment for me, right because I saw that and I was
like, wait, what is he talking about? And then I'm like what
am I talking about? Okay, So I have a few thoughts. They
include like vermiculate and like ideas about like what is best and like how we
approach that is best? And but the first thing that I want to ask,
like just simply, um, why did they feel that it was better?
Like I I'm just curious what they found, Like did they find that
it was better for specific plants? How is he measuring this? Huh?
It was It was a really interesting perspective. So their thought was at the
per light allowed from more airflow to the cuttings and the filming roots, which
sounds reasonable. Okay, like at that stage of the process, that is
something you would probably want this. Okay, this was in a prop box,
so kind of like a closed environment, but but still like it's it's
more airy than like a wet wet you know, sphagnum moss could get.
Yeah, but I you know, personally I kind of disagree still, and
you know, I have my reasons, but like, wait, how good
are those reasons? Actually? I've never really run them by anyone else,
you know, like see what I'm saying. Yeah, right, So it's
just how this goes. So what do you think about rooting in wet perlite?
I will react to this as well, Hoyo's or broadly, I don't
think you do just wet purlight ever, right, Yeah, And when you
were saying like rooting in perlite, my first thought was like, Okay,
well people have been using vermiculite, which I feel like is a super old
fashioned thing that nobody talks about. So few people talk about vermiculite. Yeah,
I feel like that one is it's like less relevant for us here in
our climate. I always think, yeah, I don't think that it's our
best material. I also think that if he's doing pearlite in an enclosed ultra
humid space with less airflow in general, yeah, that could really benefit it
to have things like perlite rather than something like moss. I tend to do
my moss like in open air, so to me it doesn't matter, and
I'm letting them dry a bit and not packing them off whatever. But here's
what I think. It's just personal preference, Like this is the result of
trying different things with certain plants and seeing what works best. So in what
he's describing, yeah, perlite probably works great. It also makes me think
about this goal that I've had for years where I want to just do some
propagation of Hoya's directly into Lecca and just have them grow is semi hydro plants,
where the cuttings go into a coarse aggregate, which is very similar to
what perlite is, and then just kind of let them grow from there.
This also makes me think of just the way that different things work better for
different people in different environments, different growing conditions. Yeah, and I mean
his cuttings were full of roots, like it was working, you know,
question Yeah, I mean, like, surely it's working if he made a
video about it with like video examples of why it's working, Like, I
am not going to question that. Like I use coconut husk chunks instead of
fur bark because it works better for me, So there's no reason why you
wouldn't use per light if that works better for you than moss. I personally
find that in the open air environments that I'm doing my propagation, moss fully
allows sufficient airflow to the roots because I just keep it at the level of
moisture that works for me in the plant. But I think that my takeaway
of this is that it's great to hear about other options and ideas that work
for other people, because you could certainly run into a plant that doesn't root
well in moss, and so maybe you want to try out peer light instead
to see if that works, Like yeah, yeah, And it makes me
think of like maybe if you had used per light for your compensus, just
laid it on top of that, maybe that would have been a different experience,
Like I'm also thinking about. I tried peppermia in cana in water in
moist like growing medium that I would pot up an adult plant, and also
in Sphagnum moss. They weren't terribly successful, like roots were grown, but
ultimately, like I composted those plants before they were real plants, I think
perlite might have been better for those because of that airflow, because of the
drawing that it allows, and it might also be a better approach for my
more like arid climate desert ebagonias like I have keller manny. I I think
in Venosa those are really fleshy, succulent bagonias, and I think that purlite
might be the approach that I try for when I propagate those compared to two
moss for water. Yeah, a few takeaways. Roots were grown, that's
a good episode, name what roots were grown. It wasn't a total failure,
but but yeah, I know I think you're saying, you know,
no, but yes, but maybe I'm saying I think, yeah, all
of those well for him, and we're not going to question is yeah.
Yeah, here's my gut reaction again, not my researched opinion, necessarily chill
and chat episode. Okay, of course, Well, my feeling is that
it wouldn't work as well for many of my plants the way I do it,
so and that's possibly true, Like, I'm sure it can work.
It's probably the same way that he doesn't feel like moss works for him.
Yes, he was explaining, okay, like I'm sure it can work.
One thing that I would worry about is that pearlight is hard to find big
chunks, So I would worry that it's like too densely compacted, even though
it's so light and fluffy, Like, I would worry that it's too thick.
Yeah, I mean that's the thing. The pearlight looked washed, so
that's a big part of this too. I mean in succulent growing, sometimes
you wash, sometimes you don't. I would look at the pearlight and react
like, okay, this these chunks are going to be stuck to the new
roots. I think pearlite really gets stuck, like the roots grow into the
crevices and stuff exactly. And when I'm transitioning out of that very humid prop
box environment to my dryer home environment, why would I want these super drying
elements stuck to the root. Right, So the roots that are coming from
very moist why should they go to hyper dry? Yeah? Right, I'd
rather have moisture routaining sphagnum stuck to them. Like, if I'm going to
have something stuck, like, have something that will ease the transition that hydrates
really easily. Does that make sense? Yeah? You and I are actually
like in the same boat on this. That's why I don't pick off the
sphagnum us from my roots. Yeah. Oh yeah, I heard yours and
I was like, I just shake off what's X. Yeah, I'm like
you're building the same kind of you know again for me, not scientific,
Like I'll often add a bit more sphagnum around the water roots, like when
I'm transitioning to the soil, right, So I it's like I'm actively adding
after the prop situation. I'm not taking it all away, Like I'm not
adding perlite around the roots. Then, So that's that was like my reaction.
But again, you know I looked at him, you know, he
had all these roots all over these these cuttings, Like there's nothing wrong.
This is just my like you know, internal dialogue or something. Yeah,
and this just makes me think about how, you know, a lot of
times we fall into gardening practices because it's what we've learned, or it's what
we've been taught by someone who has done something a certain way, and we
might hear from someone that it works for them or see something on the internet.
There's this passing down of techniques and preferences that might not necessarily be the
best way to do something, especially when you account for like different people,
different growing environments, different plants. So so many of us are just self
taught to Like what you're saying is the high end of like people who learn
from someone like no, I just figured this out. I feel like quote
quote, but like you're finding resources online, Like these ideas are not necessarily
just born in your head. Like there's this passing down of information. So
it's like if some of these aunt is like I always use cinnamon when I
do potting, Like yeah, why like does that do anything? Like we
don't know it doesn't harm the plant. She has a beautiful prop box.
Yeah, yeah, I just work cinnamon is the best substract. It's two
hundred dollars. It's extremely expense. Yeah, use the stuff from the Sri
Lanka anyway. But it's interesting, I think, to kind of get out
of our own personal preferences and like these bias ruts. Yeah, you know,
like there's a way that we do something and we're we stick to that,
and so sometimes it's cool just to hear about something different that we can
try and then experiment with different approaches for different plants regularly, just to see
if something that we haven't tried before it works. So for me, I
am still mostly doing my propagation and moist sphagnum moss also water. I have
tried recently doing stuff directly into mediums or soils to see how that goes.
I'm often disappointed by those results. But I'm also not using prop boxes.
I'm doing a lot of my stuff in open air. I'm curious to try
perlite. But I took a whole bunch of Pepperomia hope cuttings recently and I
was like, this plant is a lanky, bushy mess. Let's just see
if I can trim it back, put a whole bunch of cuttings into different
things, see what works. It wasn't super successful. They rooted in moss,
okay, but then like portions of the stems rotted off. They straight
up rotted in soil. But I probably should have sterilize the soil. Okay.
So are you going to try perlite? Yeah? Yeah, but like
I said, I'm I'm gonna do it for plants that I think it makes
sense, So like my Ponia, Killermania, my vanosa, my peppermi and
cana. Yeah, like you let me know how that goes. I don't
know. I'm actually I'm a little intrigued now too. I yeah, but
you know, a footnote here. I'm also kind of like, you know,
isn't a big box of perl kind of wasteful? Okay, it seems
expensive and that's my biggest kind of well, I mean, you know,
sphagnum isn't cheap, but you know, the moss that I usually use it
kind of travels with the plants throughout my collection in this weird little cycle doesn't
speak to you at all, Like it's like how Lecca travels through Like yeah,
actually, yeah, now that I have some lucka, I sort of
get that. Yeah, like there's always one percent and all my substrates just
because yeah, I have noticed that from anything you you know, you give
me. But so yeah, like I'll get some live sphagnum moss growing on
my curnivorous plants, I'll take that. I'll use it in mixes in my
prop box setups, you know, or I'll put it in my chunky soil,
or I'll put it in my curnivorous plants that like to grow in live
sphagnum like ones that I need to refresh. And it's kind of like this
perpetual thing. So I don't have to buy that moss very often unless I'm
doing like a big moss bowl. So would I do this with per light?
I mean, I guess I don't really know, but I feel like
it would get all green after a while, like full of algae or something.
I would maybe want to toss it. Would I use there's probably some
tips on the line for like bleaching and rinsing your your algae infectually. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so you've fully peered into my unconscious plant
notions that are not very well examined or whatever. So you're welcome. I
just think that it's great to have more tools in your propagation tool chest.
It's like I have tools for home DIY things that I've used for one thing,
but I have it there in case I ever needed again. So yeah,
to sum it up, you know, we offer no answers. Everything's
right, Yep, no one's wrong unless you're using rip beer like as we
you know, so far as we understand it. Yeah, okay, So
Stephen, here's the question that I really wanted to get too. Why are
we propagating things right now? We keep talking about like we need to hone.
Our collections were burning out. We have too many plants. Why are
we making more? Yeah, I mean we've been doing this plant thing for
a while. We're over the initial highs of propagation or something. You know,
maybe we're over plant gifting. Not really, but somewhat. I was
like giving a plant. Yeah, we know that propagated plants have a tendency
to pile up, particularly when there are pandemics, and plant swaps are kind
of half happening. Well, and something that I've noticed. Have you seen
all the people who have like literal propagation walls of beause, like beautifully designed
little wall hanging test tubes. And that's like design aesthetic of its own.
To just have like a thousand cuttings of different totalings, what do you do
with those? I mean, propagation furniture has arrived. I mean it did
a couple of years ago. Yeah, but like it's a whole esthetic of
its own. It's almost like propagation is in and of itself the end result,
not the growing of new plants. Yeah, maybe that's an episode of
it's you know maybe Okay, um, Yeah, My reason is you,
Okay, I'm gonna blame you. You gave me those peppermia in cana stocks,
and you know you you kind of got me started again. And actually,
you know, I had a succulent pepperromia that I've been trying to propagate
and save, which actually may have got me started before your cuttings. But
you gave me more more cuttings. So which one did you have? You?
I'd rather blame you. Mine. It's called myeri. Oh okay,
I think it's fairly rare. There's a couple pictures on Instagram. I remember
some people reached out about it, but yeah, it's it's just the roots
kind of died off. I'm not really sure how to propagate it. I've
tried a bunch of different ways, Like I'm trying, you know, wet
sphagnum, moss, I'm trying water. I tried the you know, take
a cutting and let it callous over. That didn't really work either, because
I mean, these are succulent, but they're not you know, it's still
pepperomia so but they're like jungle succulis. I don't know what. Actually,
I don't know where these are from. But yeah, so you know,
fingers crossed there. But then I got the drusera leaf cuttings from the local
meeting, so I don't know, I'm just getting kind of bombarded with cuttings.
Maybe that's part of it, how about you. For me, it's
more like these plants have grown up, and I have a lot of plant
matter of this particular plant, and I like it enough that I'm not just
going to compost what I trim. And these are all plants that I can't
just go buy somewhere easily and expensively, and I'd like more of them,
So, like, you know, that's the sinapis Trivii Moonlight or the Jade
Satin. And when I propagate these plants, most of the time it's because
I would just like another pot of them somewhere, or it's like a little
pricey, so I can't just easily go out and impulse by a six inch
pot of it. Yeah, these are also plants that I would like to
share with friends. Like that's another big thing. Like if I'm cutting something
up and I'm like, I don't want more of this, but it's very
special and I know that this is something that will make someone's day if I
give them like this plant, I don't know, it's it's just fun,
and I like doing that. I don't want to be wasteful with what I'm
cutting off of plants. But there's also times where it's not about getting more
of a plant. It's more about like, I don't really know the best
way to propagate this thing, So how am I going to do this,
Like what's the best approach for in case I need to know this in the
future, in case I want to I mean, here we are, I'm
you know, is this the twelfth time that I'm mentioning those succulent pogonias and
peppermi in Cana. I wasn't going to say it yet. Yeah, I
know that you were thinking of though, but I'm also thinking about those really
slow growing aroids that are beautiful plants, but they're not nearly as quick as
like Ceboo blue or epper preminum aureum that you can just like quickly get to
grow into a nice plant from cuttings like that lemon lime philodendron. Like,
I want more of some of these plants. So I'm just kind of gradually
trying to, you know, hone my propagation skills and kind of see what
works for them. Okay, Yeah, your answer, I think was a
lot more sort of adult. Mine was like, stop, I blame you.
I just kind of lashed out, but it's okay, I understand our
dynamic works. Yeah, but seriously, what are you going to do with
these Who are these going to? Don't say me, oh no, because
I know that if I give you a plant that you're barely interested in,
I'm literally just giving it to your mom and I might as well just go
give it to her instead. That's right. You guys have a relationship you've
never met. No, we've never met it, but she could an official
she got that bagon yet that we were passing back and forth, she did
give it back to me. She's smart and you can give eventually. I
think No, I think I gave it away to someone else who killed it
the very end. Okay, well you know this is no way to end
an episode. Okay, rest in peace, you ugly Rex Bagunia. No,
it was actually beautiful. It's like red and black regardless. You ask
me a question, what was it? I was saying, where are these
going? You answered it, Okay, it's my mom. Oh well,
so actually here's the proper answer. The plants that I'm deliberately propagating, I
have specific areas. Remember how when we were talking about like plant burnout most
recently and I said, like, I'm looking for decor holes. I have
some like I have a couple of decor holes that I'm like, this is
where i want the philodendron lemon line to trail off of this bookcase using this
east windows light. I want on this ledge to have these you know whatever
plants. Like, I'm propagating things with deliberate intention of where I want new
ones to go. And then I also have like my little potted things,
and I kind of HIV in my head, like, oh, this is
gonna go to my buddy Dan, this is going to go to Andrew.
I'm gonna give this to my mom. Like okay, basically everything that I
have growing right now as into a new plant either has a place in my
home that it's intended to go for or a person's name on it. Yeah,
and I mean, hey, plant swaps, Okay, they're actually starting
up again. Well that's what. Yeah, you've already been to like what
three in the last couple of couple I gave away a plant yesterday. This
seatum that is cool, but it just wasn't speaking to me. It's one
of the kind of like Trailee Ones. I don't remember the name of it,
like I lost the tag early on. Oh and yeah, this helps
everybody. It doesn't mind me mentioning this. But I think Miles is doing
a plant swap at his store coming up soon. Yeah, Okay, I
saw that, So I mean they're starting at least in our area. Yeah,
go check out the plant Store in White Center on Instagram or social media
if you're in the Seattle area, because Miles at the Plant Store is doing
a plant swap. Sorry, Miles. Yeah, so yeah, anything else
though, do you have any other plans for your presink? It's I think
that's about it. Just make room for the propagation I'm going to send you,
Okay, the propagation pits. You know, one thing that we're going
to talk about in its own episode soon. You did request some of my
baby Platysarium Ridley, I actually, yeah, so we should have been propagating
those for years. My superbum is kind of finally on the way out.
It's been an extended battle. Oh I don't know I could pull through,
but yeah, I'm going to have a you know, platysarium sized void to
fill in my life. And I think I'm having a platistam renaissance, Like
I want to get some flats of them literal. Okay, anything else,
Nope, that definitely covers it. All right, This has been planted Ditty
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