Brad,

Just a "heads up" about tsangii (which is really DS-70, I'm sure.) I find it hard to root using my usual methods, but I've found that they root well in those little rooting cups. (I'll put a link to a site that shows them.) They're pricey - a 6-pack cost me about $12 locally, so I only use them on stubborn to root plants. If you can't find them at a local nursery, I can give you a link for an online source. Barring that method, the other way that I have limited success with is putting the ends in a baggy of moist sphagnum, securing the baggy below the leaves, then put the whole thing in an aquarium or a zip lock to maintain humidity around the leaves. It's slow to root, so be patient. The key is to maintain the leaf hydration until they root.

Denise in Omaha

Here is a link that might be useful: Rooting gel cups

Hi Denise,

Can I find the rooting gel cups in one of the box stores?
I'm going to Wal-Mart today and maybe I'll find some there.
Maybe I'll have to pursuade mom or dad to take me to a garden center...

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Denise - Do you think what's in the cup are those water crystals with maybe some vitamins or something added? Did you open one to examine the gel when removing the rooted plant?
I'm wondering if those water crystals plus dampened with some VF-11 water might just be the trick. I know some Swedes root Hoya's using them with success.
Just a thought,,,,Debbie

I did tell Brad that I dipped the cuttings in rooting hormone and that the cuttings have been wrapped in moist spagnum moss and plastic wrap. I then put them in ziplock baggies. So they were sent all ready set up for rooting.

"Ladygreenjeans" whoops! I meant to say ladygreensleeves.
LOL Sorry ladygreensleeves!

Brad AKA Moonwolf

I root these just fine in water. Lately I've been rooting them in Hydro medium which I know by the name Leca stones -- little balls of porous fired clay. The plants really seem to like to anchor their roots on these.

Congrats on the new cuttings Brad!!!

I just received a new batch of cuttings that will be my last for this season. I ordered a total of 7, very rare and VERY expensive cuttings from a grower that i've ordered from before. i've never really been displeased with any of his hoya cuttings up until now.It took 11 days from the time I ordered and paid for them for him to get them to me. He's only 2 states away so it should not have taken that long at all.Also the cuttings arrived in poor shape. They almost looked as if they had been cut the day that i ordered them and then were allowed to sit until he got good and ready to ship them.

It's a bit late in the season for me to try and root anything so hopefully they will root and grow. My normal rooting method is in soil but since it is so late in the season I have this new batch in the cloning machine.

Rather than going into great detail to explain what this machine looks like and what it does,i'll find and post a link to it so everyone can actually see it for themselves.

david

this is pretty much the exact system that I have only my pump is slightly different. My pump has a single tube that sprays water onto a divertor mounter inside the lid which sprays out into a 360 pattern,touching each cutting. The unit also has a thermostatically controlled heater.

http://cgi.ebay.com/AEROPONIC-cloner-18-cloning-machine-clone-w-grow-kit_W0QQitemZ200315324142QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2ea3b946ee

Brad... I loved your little slip-up! Ladygreenjeans! It brought back some great childhood memories of Mr. Greenjeans on Capt. Kangaroo. Way pre-Sesame Street days! (Ok, I'm showing my age now...) I'm sure you're way too young to remember, so I'm betting you remember your mom talking about Mr. Greenjeans, otherwise your brain wouldn't have gone to "jeans" rather than "sleeves."

No, haven't seen the gel cups at any box stores (sent you a link privately...) And Debbie, no it doesn't seem the consistency of the crystals that fatten up, but it very well could be the same thing. I think you're idea is a fabulous one and I'm going to try it with my next batch of cuttings! Much cheaper!

David... May I ask? Were the cuttings from Antone? Just curious as I had that experience from him, too...

Denise

Denise, everyone tells me I was born too late because the music, TV shows and movies I like are mostly from the time before I was born or was too young to remember. I never watched Capt. Kangaroo but I do know of it. Remember, you're talking to somebody who loves listening to artists like Dottie West and the Carpenters and watches shows like M*A*S*H and The Golden Girls (yes, people I just admitted it, I watch The Golden Girls). Laugh if you must, but some of the things they say just make you LOL.

The box came back to ladygreensleeves due to postage reasons, so she'll send them to me on Monday.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Well I didn't want to mention names but yes Denise that is where I got the cuttings. I paid $275 for 7 hoya cuttings,some of which at this point I am pretty sure most likely will not survive.

If the cuttings had of been taken and shipped in a timely manner they would have looked fresh cut. After seeing what some of these looked like,I really feel as though they were cut and allowed to sit for who knows how long before he got around to shipping them.Like I mentioned earlier I placed and paid for the order one day and they arrived 11 days later so there's not telling exactly when they were cut,but I feel pretty certain that it was not on the day of shipment.

It only took 2 days to get them once he did finally ship,but there is just no way that these cuttings got into the condition they were in in just 2 days.They had to have been cut and allowed to sit. I have been ordering cuttings from David Liddle now for over 6 years and his cuttings always arrive from Australia looking like he just cut them.

Considering how much $$$ I spent on these cuttings I should have taken pictures and written to him about the condition of the cuttings and asked for replacements but I didn't and at this point,now a week later, it's too late. With any luck i'll get these to root and grow but chances are this will be my last order for hoyas from him.

In the past I have had no problems with this vendor. It's only recently that these issues with shipping have become a problem and i'm not sure why.As far as size of the cuttings I purchased goes I have to say that I was quite pleased with all of them as they were each at least a foot long. I only wish that he would leave the cutting attached to the mother plant until he knows that he is ready to ship them.

It seems that when the PO raised their rates they also changed the size of the boxes they supply. So if any of you have ordered boxes from the PO like I have before they replaced them with these newer ones, I would like to suggest you replace them so that the same thing that happened to me doesnt happen to you. The PO is so anal about an inch on their stupid boxes.
And they wonder why people go postal......go fiqure!

Brad..... It's ironic that you slipped up with the greenjeans...I almost went with that....I grew up watching Capt. Kangaroo(showing my age too). Hard to believe that Sesame St. has been around for 40 yrs as well.

So how was your Friday the 13th?

My Friday the 13th went fine. Nothing out of the unusual happened and there was no scary guy with a hockey mask either. (Sorry, I just had to say that).

Yep, I grew up watching Sesame Street too (which was a shorter time ago than when most of you all watched it when you were young or with your kids).

It may sound funny, but I'm already listening to Christmas music! I bought a CD at Wal-Mart yesterday (Classic Country Christmas) and listening to it at the moment. Dolly Parton's singing Hard Candy Christmas. It's such a beautiful song.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

David...so sorry to hear of your problems with the cuttings from Antone....I recently had the same problem with cuttings from Hoyaplants.com....they arrived in miserable condition and were, for the most part, short, puny cuttings. It took them 11 days from date of payment to delivery...and ZERO correspondence from them...not even to inform me that they had shipped. Live and learn! Yesterday I took two of the most expensive ones (H. blashernaezii and H. patella) out of their potting mix and put them into water...they look awful...but, the stems are still greenish-looking...and I thought it was worth the chance...they were in no way going to "make it" in the potting mix....they arrived terribly dehydrated and never rehydrated. Good luck with yours!! BTW..did you enter the 2nd plant show? Patrick

David - I had a feeling. I got a couple of cuttings from him last fall. I ordered them, and a week or so later, I e-mailed asking when he had shipped. He said, "Oh, I'll ship today." I received them a few days later, in very dehydrated condition. Lost them both. I did e-mail him, but got no response. It will be the one and only time I'll order from him.

But I gotta say, if I'd spent $275 on 7 cuttings (which makes them nearly $40 each!!!!), I think I'd take a road trip and ask (politely at first) with cuttings in hand, why they got to me in such deplorable condition. I'd be having a cow if I'd spent that much money on dead (or nearly dead) cuttings!

Denise in Omaha

Patrick, yes I did enter the second plant show even though I really didn't want to. By entering, it meant that I had to make a fourth trip to the fair grounds in a 10 day period. A total of 3 hours round trip each time.

I entered 4 hoyas and 3 took first place and the last one took third place. So between the 2 shows I entered a total of 6 plants,and won 4 first place a second place and a third place. Not too bad for my first show.

Denise, I know $275 is a lot of money for plant cuttings especially the way the economy is right now ,which is all the more reason why I should have contacted him in regards to these cuttings being so dehydrated.

I figured though that it probably wouldn't do any good to confront him about it as i've read where others have had issues with him and gotten no satisfaction. This is my second time having this problem from the same vendor so the days of him getting my hard earned $$$ for dried up hoyas are over. I think rather than me arguing with him about it,if enough people read what is being said here,maybe it'll sink in and they'll think twice before ordering from him.

I've even had this problem of taking weeks to get things shipped when I won some of his Ebay auctions. I always pay instantly with pay-pal and if I pay you immediately then you should as the seller,make every effort to get my purchase shipped to me on time especially if you expect go get positive feedback. I have always left him positive when I should have actually left neutral,though I was satisfied with the rooted plants I got,it took entirely too long to ship them. Even the Ebay shipments took well over a week and I had to email and ask about them before he would ship them.

I sincerely hope that David Liddles wife will keep up the business and continue selling hoyas because the vendor choices for quality hoya cuttings here in the states really sucks. You either end up getting cuttings that are half rooted and falling out of their pots upon arrival, dehydrated and half dead or just not even close to being labeled correctly.

I stopped at Dollar tree last week and they have these little cups of gel balls, I'm not sure what they are called, I'll look tonight when I get home. They remind me of that polymer stuff you add water to & add to your potting soil. They hold moisture, you add more as they start to dry out. I plan to use them to root some hibiscus but they should work for anything. They look like your little gel cups Denise but the stuff inside looks like wet clear marbles. Anyway, if you have a Dollar tree by you they are $1 and a big jar of them, I think they could easily be put into smaller containers for smaller cuttings. I never thought to root hoyas in this medium.
Tally HO!

That's very interesting beachplant! Please let us know if you find more info about them. I am curious to see "if" this can used to root hoyas and Christmas cactus cuttings. Especially for $1...wouldn't that be great!! I have problems rooting CC cuttings...they always seem to rot**sigh** before they root.

Hey Pug,

Can I disgress this thread to discuss CC cuttings? I too used to have trouble w/ them.

Once I switched my CC mix from C&S w/ extra pumice to AV mix w/ extra pumice, that helped. Also, I got in the habit of just sticking a piece of CC 3-4 segments long into a pot of established Hoyas, seems to work fine. I've started 3 bits like this now & they're all fine.

Also, I've gotten better at just starting them in mix. I think C&S mix is too hard & too lean for CC, they seem to much prefer AV mix or Hoya mix. I'd recommend using a 3" plastic pot & sticking 3 cuttings at least 4 segments long each into the mix, to the depth of one entire segment, I try to get a bit of their intersegment roots down in the mix (if they have any). I don't water these very often (I figure their leaves can sustain them a bit for moisture), otherwise they're likely to rot before they root.

Hoping Brad doesn't mind the digression.

I too am trying to find the 'real' CC w/ its rounded edges! If I can find some & get it started, I hope to share them around.

I'll bring one in to work with me tomorrow so I don't forget. I figured for $1 why not give it a try?

I put pretty much everything in potting soil. CC or rather thanksgiving cactus have always given me fits, with our semi-tropical climate the humidity and rain can really rot them. So they get a lot of sand added to their mix to help them dry out. I've been thinking of trying a soil-less mix on them, Jodies amaryllis mix maybe.
Tally HO!

Beachplant, there's a Dollar Tree downtown from where I live! I just may have to go check it out! Can you post a picture so I know what the container looks like?

Karen, no I don't mind the digression. I've never grown CC but they are very beautiful! I just got a bag of MG C/S mix for my white Crown of Thorns from Lowe's and it's still alive for now. It gives me something to enjoy since my hoyas aren't in bloom.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Hi Beachplant,

Sand is one of the worst things you can do for your plants; can harden & compact much like too much peat, turn to rock & be impossible to re-wet. Since the native habitat of CCs is up in the crotch of tree branches in the tropical forests of Brazil, I can assure you they NEVER come into contact w/ sand. What you'd want is fast draining mix, use perlite or pumice or both to make that happen. You might try the mixes I mentioned above, I'm sure your CCs will do better in either of those than what you're using.

I've digressed the thread enough, thanks Brad for not minding.

With our frequent heavy rains, floods, hurricanes, tropical storms, high humidity, etc. perlite just doesn't work, it floats out of the pots and after a couple of rains the plants are sitting in a pot with bare roots. I used to use it in my mix for amorphs but found out it just washed away, I use mulch from the city for them now and they thrive, well, the ones that didn't die in Ike. Our "soil" is almost pure sand, we do live on a sub-tropical barrier island after all, and the city was raised after the 1900 storm using dredge from the Gulf, a sandy bottom body of water. It has a ph off the meter it's so alkaline, our water is alkaline, the soil eats organic material almost before your eyes, it's easy to dig, drains too fast, you can almost build a sand castle in the backyard. Oh, and there are a lot of oyster shells mixed in, the yard was filled after Hurricane Carla in the 60's.

I am the research queen. The first thing I do with a plant is research the heck out of it. Where is it native to? What kind of light in it's native habitat? Poisonous? Edible? Soil? Ph? I have an extensive collection of books, more at work, the internet and of course Gardenweb to assist in my searches. I also utilize a lot of catalogs, sometimes the best way to ID a plant is to find someone selling it. Then it gets put in the garden in a pot, moved as needed before finally being planted.

Some of my cc or TC I guess are planted in hollow logs, some in hanging baskets. I've found what works for me over the years. Don't use playground sand, use sharp builders sand, it won't compact and become hard like the playground sand. It is actually pretty good for rooting cuttings. I'm used to growing in sand. If we have a really wet period I move them under something so they can dry out. I lost a couple of epis last month it rained so much. And they were in hanging baskets!! Now this month we have had to water.

But I wander off topic. The product is called
Decorator's Choice Liquid Marbles. It's in a plastic, round container, 8.5 ounces Fully Hydrated. Distributed by Greenbrier International, Inc. Chesapeake, VA 23320 Made In Thailand. The directions say "Ready to use. Just open the lid and use as desired. If the the bottle appears less than ful, fill bottle with water and allow to soak for 4 to 6 hours. Drain off excess water and use as desired. Note: As liquid marbles dehydrate, spray with or add water. ....."
I'm going to put in cuttings on Friday & try this. I bought 4 bottles of it and think I'll go get more.

One of these days I'll figure out how to post pics on here, add it to my list of things to do. Maybe I'll figure it out today while sitting here working if not too busy.

Tally HO!

The cuttings arrived just a little while ago in the mail and are potted up! Ladygreensleeves was kind enough to send me two bonus cuttings: A NOID pubicalyx (possibly Red Buttons) and a meliflua. Plus some outdoor flower seeds!
Thanks ladygreensleeves!

Brad AKA Moonwolf

PG, Thanks for the suggestions...I am now trying to root them in a soil-less mix(Al's mix) Turface, coarse silica, Fine bark or small pieces of Orchid bark...very similar to what beachplant mentioned that (Jodik) uses.

I also use the coarse silica sand...not play sand I agree(too fine). Beachplant you probably use something similar to what I use...I get mine in swimming pool stores, or masonry contruction supply stores.

Brad, thanks for letting us hi-jack your thread a little longer.

Coarse Silica Sand...
{{gwi:11739}}

This is the mix I'm using for most of my plants that hates wet feet. Succulents and hoyas mostly and now TC's...I just adjust accordingly for each type of plant.
{{gwi:994921}}

I just got a bunch of "Water Marbles" at my local craft store. They retail for $2.99, but I got them 3/$1.00. Each pack makes 3.5 quarts of marbles. :)

Carolyn

PG, I sent you an e mail. I think I have an old fashioned CC. If you want I can send you a picture so you can be the judge. LKM. . .

Maid~

I just dig the sand out of my backyard. It's not as fine as play sand but not as corse as builders sand.

Nice buy Carolyn! I'm doing cuttings tomorrow and will try out the water marbles. I can leave stuff to root on my desk in these.
Tally HO!