On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 21:03:56 +0100, "Cire"
wrote:

I have always had an interest in growing-on cuttings of some of the more
unusal garden plants and I would like to consider that I am fairly
successful at it but I must say that I find yuccas a considerable challenge.

In my experience, don't be fooled into thinking that you have some nice
plants coming along when in fact they have not rooted at all, even a year
later! How they manage to survive that long without roots is beyond my
understanding.

I had to cut down a very nice 'gloriosa' a couple of years ago and I must
have had about twenty young shoots come up from the old root (three new
ones have appeared in the last week). I have potted up every one of them
after digging deep and taking a reasonable piece of the old wood. Even
eighteen months later some of them look very healthy but, if I turn them out
of their pot, they have no root at all.

About one third of them have rooted and are growing-on nicely but, of the
rest, about one third have rotted and the rest are pretending to be
rooting!

Some I have put into gritty compost, some into compost and perlite, and the
rest into my favourite peat and sharp sand. They don't seem to prefer any of
those mixes and I am thinking of trying them on Weetabix!

I think that they are very difficult and I would like to know what I am
failing to do right.

Eric



Do you allow the exposed cut surfaces to dry off for a few days before
you pot them up? Might help stop the rot, but whether it will actually
encourage rooting I don't know.

My only experience of rooting a yucca was ripping quite a large side
piece off a trunk I found abandoned on our local beach. I think it had
been chucked over the cliff from above, rather than being washed up.
It did have some tiny knobbles on it at the base which I assumed were
proto-roots. Potted it up in some _very_ gritty compost and left it
outside over the summer, watering very occasionally when I remembered.
It's growing strongly in the garden now.


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net