Try visiting a local garden center they either stock it or have sources to get some.

Here's what you need:
6 pack containers (what you bought your Wave petunias/whatever in)
A bucket
Chlorine bleach
A medium ("soil") to stick the cuttings in
Rooting hormone
1 gallon ziplock plastic bags

Here's what you do:
Put 1 cup of bleach and 9 cups of water into the bucket, and wash your previously enjoyed 6 pack containers thoroughly in the solution, gettin all old dirt off. Rinse extremely well, until you can't smell the bleach on them anymore. You've now sterilized your containers.

For your medium, go to Home Depot or Lowes and get a good potting mix and a bag of perlite -- both sell perlite, just ask for it. Mix the potting mix and perlite together about even -- 1/2 mix and 1/2 perlite. Put this into your sterilized containers and moisten until water flows out the bottom of the cells. Don't pack down the mix, though -- you want it light with a lot of air in it. This prevents rot of the cutting, a common problem when using plain potting mix. Poke a hole in the middle of each cell with a pencil to receive the cuttings.

The last thing you do is take your cuttings. For both species, use the growing tips. Cut off about 3 nodes worth below the littlest baby leaves (nodes are where the leaves come out of the stem) and cut the leaves off the bottom two nodes. If remaining leaves are large and might be in the way, cut them in half on an angle. The allamanda has milky sap, as I recall, so let that sap stop oozing before you dip the cut end in rooting hormone. Don't wait at all to stick the thunbergia -- you never want a cutting to wilt. Dip just the cut end in rooting hormone and insert into the holes you made, one cutting per cell, getting at least one node below soil level. Gently firm the medium around each cutting. When all are stuck, water in with a gentle spray. Then put the 6 pack in a gallan ziplock bag (bottom of the cellpack on the bottom of the bag, not sideways) and zip it shut. Keep in a shady spot (no sun or you'll cook your cuttings) and check daily to see if it needs a little venting. Often you won't need to open it up until the cuttings are rooted.

All decent garden centers around here carry Rootone, but if you can't find it check out AM Leonard online -- they're a big horticultural supplier.

Soeur

Soeur,

Thank you so very much for that detailed and basic explanation!! I'm quite sure that information will save me no less than $300 this year. Now I guess I just start experimenting. Thanks again . . . I've been asking my grandfather who used to grow citrus groves for no less than 6 months to find me some rooting hormone. I guess I just assumed that I could not find the stuff easily (at local home depot or nursery) because it would not be in their best financial interest to sell something that would keep me from spending more at their establishments.

I'm going to print this page and take it with me to the store and follow your directions to the letter.

Anyway, thanks again and again. I really do appreciate it.

rooting hormone isn't needed., just a medium that will drain good. sand should work. i use a commercial mix that is produced locally. use a pencil to put a hole into medium to stick the cutting into. 1 node with leaves removed into medium, 2-3" deep, and 1 or 2 nodes above, with 2 - 3 leaves. tap gently to close medium around cutting. i use styrofoam cups with 3 holes for drainage. good shade is required, as well as daily misting. 6/02/2005

My mother-in-law actually gave me a weeping hibiscus that she simply cut and stuck in some good potting soil. I assumed rooting hormone might be necessary for more difficult (to root) plants? I particularly want to root my yellow allamanda bush. They are fairly expensive down here, sometimes hard to find, and I want to cover a fairly large area. I may also eventually want to root some kind of evergreen shrub.

Anyway, thanks to you both for the advice. Now hopefully I can save some money, one way or another. We don't want to have to take out a second mortgage just to have a nice garden. :)

I got Schulz's rooting hormone powder at Wal-Mart for about $3-$4. However, I was at another Wal-Mart on the other side of town last night and they don't carry half the stuff in their lawn and garden center as the one I usually go to, and they didn't have rooting hormone (or soaker hoses, or the moisture crystals...). It was in a ritzier part of town, so I guess people there just have a gardener or lawn service that takes care of all that stuff for them? *sigh*

Funny coincidence, just last night I saw Schultz's rooting hormone at wal-mart. (Guess that shows I don't live in the part of town where people hire gardeners, full or part time.) Anyway, I didn't purchase because not the recommended "rootone."

Schultz's is OK if that's what's available. I prefer Rootone because it has a fungicide in it, which helps prevent rot of the cuttings.

As far as whether to use hormone or not, it depends on the plant you're sticking. Some species root incredibly easily and don't need it. Many root better with it, and some won't root without it. Typically you'll get *more* roots using hormone than not, even on a plant that throws roots without it.

Soeur

I have three types of sky vines - blue, white and varigated. The blue is fairly easy to root but the white is very difficult. Last fall I took cuttings from both the blue and white. Good percentage of the blue took but the only new whites I got were from rooted suckers and some of the failed even tho they had roots when I potted them up. For some reason they are harder to get going than the others. I did used rooting hormone.

Patsy

Hi! This spring my granddaughter brought me home a piece of blue sky vine plucked from a wild hedge. We simply put it into plain tap water and left in on our kitchen windowsill, it took a long time but now has roots, and is in fact climbing up the windowsill and over towards the cabinets - must find time to plant that sucker out!