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Poinsettia Propagation
By admin | June 28, 2007
So we are a few days into our poinsettia prop and its been pretty warm outside and that’s never good when your trying to keep a glass greenhouse cool and humid. The only way to accomplish this is with lots of water (preferably very fine mist or fog) and by shading the greenhouse. Last week I spent several hours tightrope walking down the gutters of our greenhouse while I painted the roof. I use a product I found a few years ago at the Hortifair in Amsterdam. It’s called Redusol and it’s the best. I feel that it is far superior to Kool-Ray it is easy to take off with their removing agent Reduclean. Anyway, once I felt the light levels were sufficiently low enough, I went into the greenhouse to measure.
I want the light levels below 2000 footcandles, preferably 1500, for the first 10 days of rooting. Once I had the shade on, I focused on how to keep the humidity up to and the unrooted cuttings turgid. We use booms to propagate all of our vegetative annuals and are poinsettias are no different. The trick is to minimize the mist that is needed but not allow the cuttings to dry out. Too much mist, and the cuttings will suffer from disease and will likely root more slowly due to the saturated soil. Too little mist, and rooting will be slower and less uniform and they may never root at all if they dry out too much. The best thing is to “stay in the middle of the road” and slowly ween the cuttings off the mist until they are fully rooted. With the heat we’ve had (upper 80’s to low 90’s) I’ve needed to run the mist more often but we’re in good shape so far. Next week we’ll be sticking 8 inch and 6.5 inch pots and the week after will be the 6 inch.
Pictures of poinsettia propagation so far:
Topics: Poinsettias, Day to day |
