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Rooting in a gel
"Mike Lyle" wrote in message om... "Franz Heymann" wrote in message ... "Jane Ransom" wrote in message ... In article , Franz Heymann notfranz. writes Why has the concept disappeared from the scene? Possibly because people realised that, to root cuttings, you don't need gel or rooting hormones or anything else. All you need to do is do it at the right time in plain ordinary soil - well compost and sand if you want to be really finickity!!!!!! Many years ago I did a trial run, rooting Lithospermum cuttings in a gel, cutting compost, sharp sand and garden soil. The samples were not large enough to make a quantitative comparison, but for what it is worth, the gel came out best and the garden soil was worst. What I found most attractive about the gel was that the cuttings needed no attention at all other than looking to see if they had rooted. Moreover, this inspection could be done without disturbing the cuttings in any way. It occurred to me that one ought to try and replace the commercial gel with a thick wallpaper paste, made up with water plus a few drops of Benlate sterilising agent and a drop or two of liquid rooting hormone. Somehow, there were always something else to do, and this experiment was never done. Perhaps one of our readers is sufficiently experimentally minded to give it a try. I was always put off trying it because I feared the anti-fungal agents in the wallpaper paste might kill or weaken the roots, and because of what Kay mentioned: surely this is just an extension of rooting in water, with the usual attendant difficulties of transfer. You may get some failures with the usual compost-sand mixture, but at least the successful ones are easy to plant on. I assure you that it is easier to transplant the gel-grown cuttings safely than it is to transplant compost-grown cuttings. I have elaborated on this in another post to this thread. I certainly wouldn't even consider old-fashioned flour-and-water paste, as that would be covered with moulds in no time. You could make an agar gel out of Irish (Carragheen) moss, but I couldn't be bothered. The agar would also be mould ridden if it did not contain a disinfecting (if that is the word I want) agent. The commercial gel and a commercial wallpaper paste like polycel both contain an anti-mould agent I can't make up my mind about rooting hormones: there certainly are some cuttings where they are said to do more harm than good, and with others there doesn't seem to be much point. They do lose their effectiveness in storage. Thanks for that info. I have always wondered if I was squandering my savings by religiously buying a new supply each season. The fear (unbacked by any evidence at all) of anti-fungal ingredients is also what put me off using wallpaper paste as an experimental fluid sowing medium. We don't really need these aids anyhow. I don't agree with that last sentiment. I have not done it yet, but I would be surprised if it did not turn out to be more convenient and safer to prick out seedlings germinated in a gel than all that rough handling involved in the use of a seed compost.. Franz |
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