Still very warm here in the south,and wanted to start cutting before we have hard freeze. Have had sucess in misting. Wanted to here you method & success!

I use a propagating mat kept at 75-80 degrees with a soil thermostat. As long as the rooting zone stays warm, there should be no problems. Use cuttings from robustly growing but not dormant plants, and keep the rooting medium damp, not wet. I use fine vermiculite, but perlite, sand, and mixes will work. The sand should be a washed builder's sand (no fines or clay), used for making concrete. Beach sand is a no-no. The medium should be sterile.

On the mats, I use what are called pen packs, which are solid PVC baby flats about 2" high, 6" wide, and 4" deep. If I have a flat going bad, or need to pluck it out for potting up, the whole unit comes out. You can root rows and columns of plants up to 4x6 or 5x7 in these baby flats.

If there is a breakout of black leg on the mat, remove the infected baby flats and wash off the mats with some dilute clorox. Make sure the mats drain off (no puddles), and keep the new flats on the highest parts of the mats. That way, infected drainage and leaf drops drain away from your better flats. Watch out for mealy bugs, white fly, spider mites, and scale. Ants will move all of these critters around.

Use a ground cloth over a layer of crushed rock to keep out weeds, which will hold pests and pathogens.

If you lose heating, have a big sheet of black plastic handy to cover your greenhouse. This will cut heat losses to about one quarter if you have a reasonably tight greenhouse. Pull it over just after the air temps reach freezing. The plastic will glide over much more easily on the ice crystals. Wet plastic sticks and makes covering the greenhouse much more difficult.

What would you say is the easy cultivars to propagate? These are a few I was going to try to root,
Guaranitica -Involucrata-Microphylla - Mexicana.

We are still having alot of warm ,dry - days here in the south, in the high 80's!
I'm a little slow sometimes in getting the whole picture!

Thanks for sharing,
Donna

My mister was based on evaporation. A square of bronze cloth would get weighed dowm by the mist, and when it evaporated, it rose and turned on a mercury switch. Wind flapping around the square was the only problem.