Hello again! I have a bunch of baby…. Whatever these guys are that have rooted from propagating leaves. My question now is literally how to best plant them. I have seedling cartons that drain and soil, but do I just put them on top of a pile of soil? Do I bury the roots? Do I bury the roots AND the mama leaf? Thanks and as always, I appreciate your willingness to answer these sorts of things.
SuccyGirl:
Congrats on all your babies!! For some of these I would just lay them on top, they don’t have enough roots to really try and worry about. Others i would suggest burying a little. But only the roots!! You never want to bury anything but roots!!
Here’s a baby I’ll be using as an example:
It was in soil previously but more like in a bucket full of other cuttings and not in it’s own pot. This and one other are the only props I have going that are at this stage where they have roots but aren’t fully rooted or in soil. Usually I have leaves laying on top of soil before they put any roots out so I don’t have to fiddle with potting them up gently, they do it themselves!
First things first have your soil in your pots/seedling trays, whatever. Make sure it’s the same soil you’d use for your adult plants as they like the exact same thing, well draining soil. Mine is wet but you can totally do this dry. Dry might be better in case you’re damaging any roots but as long as you’re gentle I think it’s fine, and wet is a little easier to work with, it stays where you put it better than dry soil does!
Then make a hole! I’m using a wooden food skewer, you can use literally anything like a chopstick or pencil.
Using your tool help guide the little roots down into the hole! But be gentle!! I’m lowering the prop at the same time so the roots aren’t being pulled off the leaf at all.
At this point you can either add more soil into the space that’s left in the hole, or what I do is I push my stick into the soil around the outside to push it back into the space I made, I do that all the way around and then flatten the top of the soil if it’s gotten dislodged. Your leaf should then be able to sit right on top with it’s roots in the soil but nothing else buried!
For something with roots like this:
(I pulled it out of the soil to show you, but it’ll be fine it wasn’t really IN the soil, just kind of on top) A shallower hole and just putting soil on top of the roots is all that’s needed. Sometimes they don’t want to stay because their leaf is so heavy and will just pull themselves out of the soil. If that happens just use anything to prop them up so they stay in the soil. I see lots of people use toothpicks or rocks under the leaf to prop them up, so use whatever you can to help them.
If you have roots still sticking out that’s OKAY. They’ll either find their way underground or they’ll shrivel up and other roots will find their way down, have faith that the plant can figure it out!
I hope this was helpful! If you or anyone else has more questions feel free to ask! :)
