Hi Steve & All

I found Steve's couple-months-old-discussion in the rec.gardens
newsgroup this AM while searching for answers to a similar problem.
How goes your plumeria, Steve?

My situation at least started like yours - anemic plumeria plant grown
from a cutting for several years finally fell over early January after
its roots rotted away. I just let it lay their for a month or so
until I decided to give it another try.

Here we are four months later in our warmest most humid month and the
upper part of one cutting has grown appreciably but still no sign of
roots. I'm looking for experiences or tips others might have that
will let me get this out of the water and into some soil mix where it
can become a real plant. Some details on what I did to get this far
follow:.

I cut the apparently healthy upper foot part of the "plant" into
several double node sections and stuck all but one in small pots with
about a 50 - 50 peat+clay mix and watered.

The last section was placed in a glass. The glass is watered to keep
about 1/3 inch of tap water in it and sits on our sink next to a West
facing kitchen window.

All the potted sections rotted and died. The section in the kitchen
window, rots also (at the base) but at a minuscle pace.

All I do is add a little water occassionally and completely change the
water about once a month. After a couple months the top began to bud
and that bud has now grown and has four recognizeable lealets, the
longest is about an inch. Still no sign of roots. On seeing the
first sign of a bud I remembered a plant phys. class I took about 30
years ago where we were told roots don't like light and putting
tinfiol around glass rooting containers is a good way to keep the
light out. I did that.

A San Diego County CA Fair exhibitor a few years back told me that
tropical plants (I think she was showing mainly plumeria and tuber
rose) need a special fertilizer high in phosphorous. I do have some 30
yr old experience with hydroponics and I still have some aggie grade
phosphoric acid etc. I figure that a milliliter of the acid to about
5 gallons of water makes a decent phosphate cocktail for plants in or
out of soil and I'm contemplating trying a 50-50 mix of this phosphate
with salt peter (KNO3) until I get it out of the jellyglass. I may
alternate with some solution that has micros like Iron, Manganese and
Boric acid. Our tap water probably has plenty of Calcium and
Magnesium.