Rooting Water Or Compost.

Tonight I'm going to show you some busy lizzie cuttings I took a few weeks ago. I usually root this sort of thing in water as it works better that way for me but just as a little experiment I put some in to water and some in to compost just to see which turned out the best. First of all though I will show you how I root them in water. In this instance I used an old 35mm film canister but the top of something else works okay.
As you can see when removed from the container they have all rooted well and are ready for potting on.

For this I used six pack containers but three inch pots would work just as well.
Right, now back to the experiment. These are a different sort of busy lizzie but are much the same as any other. The one on the right has been rooted in compost and the one on the left in water.


The one rooted in compost has a better root system although this was the best one of the lot, the rest being no better than the ones rooted in water. The main difference with the two ways being that several of the ones rooted in compost had rotted off whereas none of the ones in water rotted at all so for me rooting these kinds of plants in water is the best way. Fuchsia's along with Begonia's and no doubt several other kinds of plants can be rooted in water. In fact it would be interesting to hear what sort of plants you've manage to root in water.

The last thing to say about this is that when you plant them up just fill the pot with compost and prod a hole in it with your finger and insert the cutting and then work some compost back around the cutting and then just tap the pot on a hard surface. Don't go doing a lot of pressing and firming as you could damage the roots and that would be shame after you got this far. Just a gentle tap and a little watering in is enough to settle the cutting in to it's new home. It might be helpful to shade it a little from the hot sun for a few days until its roots develope.

I will have more on shading your greenhouse in a future post.

Bob