Transplanting cuttings

Transplanting cuttings

About a month after making a whole variety of cuttings from Cordyline fruticosa (Ti Plant) to Gardenia jasminoides Gardenias and Ixora I am now starting transplanting the plants into individual poly bags or into the ground.

These Ti cuttings have different root development due to my having made the cuttings over a period of several weeks.

This is one of the nicest examples of root development that I had. There were about ten cuttings in a big poly bag of river sand.  I also have ten smaller cuttings which I planted directly into 3/4 inch bags. The ones that were in the sand have been carefully transplanted along one side of the driveway. Earlier on I had planted a whole batch of cuttings directly into the bed on the otherside.

Here you can see the different stages of root development. Ideally I would have preferred to have them like the plant on the right. Now I know that I should leave them in for at least four weeks for the plants to develop roots of that extent. In any case all the Ti cuttings I prepared have survived.
However, next time I will make sure I do not mix cuttings started at different times in the same bag because the faster and better the root development the faster the plant will become established and grow. Unfortunately given the space available ... that is dog safe space I only had one big poly bag of river sand and another bag of soil.

For the Gardenias I used river silt in a seed tray 6 x 10 which gave me 60 plants per tray. I only did one tray because I was not sure what the result would be. In all I got 56 plants. The other 4 that did not make it were due to the silt being washed out of the holes and the cutting dying. So I would say that the success rate for rooting Gardenias is quite high.

For both the ti plants and the Gardenias I kept the sand or silt moist and in partial shade. I do not have a greenhouse / shadehouse or even shade cloth put up but although the area they were in gets some direct sun they are shaded by the house and a large mango tree and lemon tree.
River sand seems to work best in keeping the stems moist while providing good drainage. My main problem was keeping them from being disturbed which would damage the emerging rootlets.
Just today I discovered that one of the cats (Lamuja the mother cat) has just decided that one of the seed trays with hedge cuttings makes an ideal soft and cool spot to lie on.

I  think that the Gardenias I have are Gardenia jasminoides  but I am not 100% sure.

Here is an interesting plant I came across driving  in Safatoa Lefaga. Apparently the Samoan name is Ava o le Pusi which means The Cat's Whiskers. I have not yet identified the plant. I was kindly given four young plants which are now recovering.

Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Additional information:

·         Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters (on plants, animals as well as gardening, conservation and environmental matters)

·         The Blood of  Souls (language, translation and etymology)

·         Whiskers on Kittens (Life with Kittens and Cats in general)

References

Whistler, W. Arthur, “Wayside Plants of the Islands. A Guide to the Lowland Flora of the Pacific Islands including Hawai’i Samoa Tonga Tahiti Fiji Guam Belau”, Isle Botanica, Honolulu, 1995.

ISBN 0-9645426-0-9

More Hedges

Here are some of the other hedge cuttings I mentioned earlier are a varriety of green and yellow varrigated leaved plants.

This type has long thin green leaves speckled with yellow. I am some along the fence between the adjacent property which is empty except for a small rather over grown banana plantation. Unfortunately one of the plants that is growing there is the fua saina or mile a minute and the other tougher creeper. At least the mile a minute has some medicinal uses. The other plant is a real pest and climbs up the fence and onto the plants on our property.

You need to constantly pull them off as they will very quickly cover the plants blocking off sunlight and choking them. The giant helliconias, beehive ginger, Golden Torch Helliconias and even the Moso'oi (Yalang Yalang) and esi / pawpaw trees are threatened by this fast growing creeper.

I have noticed that in some cases when they are not getting enough sun they go green.

These are pretty much the same colour scheme but broader shaped leaves. Like the first type it has hard glossy leaves. Neither of them flower but they are quite striking especially when they are big and bushy. A whole hedge would look quite nice.

These are another variety which looks really nice especially when it flowers. The flowers have purple inner petals and white outer petals.

These are the ones that the furry black caterpilar loves too. Colin and I made some cuttings filling two cell trays using the itty bitty cuttings method.

they are looking rather sad and bedraggled at the moment. But I am sure that they will recover. Once they develop little rootlest they will perk up. Then maybe in 3-4 weeks they should have sufficent roots to transplant. I like to wait until they have a nice ball of roots so that when you pop them out of the cell tray or poly bag the soil does not all come pouring out. The cuttings that are transplanted when they have reached that stage of root development tend to recover from transplantation much faster and start growing.

Here you can see the road front with the purple-black hedge being grown. Its very uneven at the moment because the section that is growing all nice and bush was the section planted first and from which cuttings were taken to establish the other sections.

Planting a Purple Hedge

I have been plating a hedge at the house at Malifa on the side facing the road. I choose a purplish black leafy hedge plant for a couple of reasons. First it is unusual as most people have hibiscus hedges while others have variegated (green and yellow) leafed hedges. Two it has nice white flowers with little bits of purple in them. I plan on having a second layer with yellow/green variegated leaves. Actually it is not exactly the plant I wanted. I have seen one which is a deep purple. This one ranges from green (in the shade) to black and purplish balck in the full sun.

I started with some cuttings that I transplanted once they had established roots. Then when these grew I waited until I was able to make more cuttings from these. Hoping that no "overly clever and enthusiastic" person decided to "trim" the hedge. I needed woody stems so it has taken a while. But as long as it is woody I can use it. At first I was using pieces from 6 - 8 inches long and sticking them into poly bags fileld with river silt which I have found to be the best medium for rooting cuttings. then I tried to see if I could get more cuttings from each woody stem. So I cut 1 - 2 inch bits making sure that each piece had at least one set of leaves. I used cell trays insead of poly bags since the plantlets were much smaller and that also saved on space. It worked.

Once these had nice healthy roots systems I dug a trench and transplanted them extending the bit of hedge on both sides. Colin and Leatuse helped me with this. Recently we transplanted another stretch and started some more cuttings. As you can see they are green since they were in a shady area.

One major drawback of this plant and one other variety of variegated (green/yellow) hedge plants is that it appears to be the favourite food of one of the butterfly species here. I’m not sure which one. They have BIG fat black furry caterpillars with green and blue stripes with voracious appetites.

In the foreground you can see the Torch gingers that were planted as a secondary screen as well as for the stunning and large flowers they produce. Fully grown the stalks will be about 10 feet tall. I intend the hedge infront to be atleast 6 feet tall to block out the noise and dust from Vailima road as well as provide some privacy.

These were planted from suckers about a month ago. As you can see they already have suckers coming up. These were suckers from a couple suckers that I had planted a few months before that which are to the left as well as one sucker from the original stand that I planted at the back of the house over looking the river (creek). The soil on this part of the property is very sand which is strange but may have been where they dumped sand when building the house. Anyway the soft sandy soil seems to help the plants grow suckers a lot faster. Here you can see the ones I planted a few months ago. The grassless exposed area used to have a covering of bread fruit leaves which I had started with the triple purpouse of compost, mulch and to kill the sensitive grass (Mimosa pudica )that was starting to grow there.

Then certain individuals removed all the leaves. After I explained the reason the leaves were there they started putting some back. The only useful outcome of this is that you can now see the extent of the sucker development. There is also one rather anaemic looking flower stalk emerging. Well plants can be anaemic but its a rather apt description for this poor little thing. Maybe its because of too much direct sun? The others are all semi shaded.

I only hope that with the removal of the moist leave cover that the young plants are not adversly affected. soon they will be covered up again so hopefully it will not be a problem.