AllieCat said:Humboldt your plants look gorgeous and so healthy. Once someone sent me cuttings in a plastic Dixie cup with a lid and they arrived fine. I'm happy to pay you for the cuttings and the shipping.

That Mother of Thousands is wild. I've never seen that plant in person.

Thanks!

I'd never charge a friend for cuttings, and we're in the same neck of the woods so I doubt shipping will be much, I'm not worried about it.

The Mother of Thousands are really interesting. Once one of those little rooted plantlets falls it roots quickly and the whole thing starts back over again. That one in the photo is only a few months old.

Bio-active tanks, one with poison dart frogs, another with emperor scorpions. Sorry for the blur, the glass gets nasty.

Planted aquatic tanks





Plectranthus with way too much intense light, coloring is actually kind of neat
Hard to tell but that's a waterfall on the right.

Some random shots

Wow, you have great tanks

sedumzz said:Wow, you have great tanks

Thanks!
To be honest, I just grow the plants.

We have 10 bio-active displays, and I have zero time invested. Way too much else going on.

Great employees that love reptiles and amphibians and isopods and Goliath Beetles (employee is one of the only in the US breeding them) and they do a great job with the set-ups.

Same in the fish room, they do an amazing job.

In part because they're awesome people but also I think because they love what they're doing.
They're getting paid to what they enjoy, with access to whatever critter, enclosure/lighting they want.

We've even been breeding our own Lepidodactylus lugubris mourning geckos for several years.

Those nano planted aquarium tanks?

Full of fish and freshwater shrimp of all different colors.
3/4" long, they've been all the rage for a few years.

Like the lemon blue avatar, do you keep isopods?

Humboldt said:

Thanks!
To be honest, I just grow the plants.

We have 10 bio-active displays, and I have zero time invested. Way too much else going on.

Great employees that love reptiles and amphibians and isopods and Goliath Beetles (employee is one of the only in the US breeding them) and they do a great job with the set-ups.

Same in the fish room, they do an amazing job.

In part because they're awesome people but also I think because they love what they're doing.
They're getting paid to what they enjoy, with access to whatever critter, enclosure/lighting they want.

We've even been breeding our own Lepidodactylus lugubris mourning geckos for several years.

Those nano planted aquarium tanks?

Full of fish and freshwater shrimp of all different colors.
3/4" long, they've been all the rage for a few years.

Like the lemon blue avatar, do you keep isopods?

No,,, i don't keep isopods YET.................. but there is a colony in the alpine garden bed!? They always scuttle around ... so cute.

I got a clue as to why my hanging basket Plectranthus verticillatus was sick. I pulled it out of the pot (this has been given to the library 2 years ago and looked super at that time) and found the bottom nearly half of the 'soil' was pure perlite. As in, almost half the pot was filled with perlite, then potting soil and plants on top.
Now, I'm unsure why it looked great two years ago , and finally declined now, but if I knew there was this odd situation, I might have been more careful.

sallyg said:I got a clue as to why my hanging basket Plectranthus verticillatus was sick. I pulled it out of the pot (this has been given to the library 2 years ago and looked super at that time) and found the bottom nearly half of the 'soil' was pure perlite. As in, almost half the pot was filled with perlite, then potting soil and plants on top.
Now, I'm unsure why it looked great two years ago , and finally declined now, but if I knew there was this odd situation, I might have been more careful.

Re-pot properly, it'll be fine in no time.

AllieCat said:Humboldt your plants look gorgeous and so healthy. Once someone sent me cuttings in a plastic Dixie cup with a lid and they arrived fine. I'm happy to pay you for the cuttings and the shipping.

That Mother of Thousands is wild. I've never seen that plant in person.

Sent you a message, they're on the way.
We did tank maintenance today, and once they get going they don't stop.

Flagged the guy down and said I'll take whatever you can get.
Had enough to send you some great rooted sections with enough to pot some up from node cuttings like I usually do.

And a few Mother of Thousands, let me know if you have any questions.

sallyg said:I got a clue as to why my hanging basket Plectranthus verticillatus was sick. I pulled it out of the pot (this has been given to the library 2 years ago and looked super at that time) and found the bottom nearly half of the 'soil' was pure perlite. As in, almost half the pot was filled with perlite, then potting soil and plants on top.
Now, I'm unsure why it looked great two years ago , and finally declined now, but if I knew there was this odd situation, I might have been more careful.

Curious what the roots looked like.
Were they just growing down into the perlite and dying?

Humboldt said:

Sent you a message, they're on the way.
We did tank maintenance today, and once they get going they don't stop.

Flagged the guy down and said I'll take whatever you can get.
Had enough to send you some great rooted sections with enough to pot some up from node cuttings like I usually do.

And a few Mother of Thousands, let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you Humboldt, you're the best! I have some solid green spider babies and purple heart cuttings coming your way

There was zero roots in the perlite. Weird really. The perlite seemed soaked. Is there something that looks like small perlite, very white, but would stay too wet?

Perlite is just super texture granule bits

It's so rough and airy that usually when its by itself it lets water pass through

but if it's a lot of perlite, they trap water inside

So, it's like a big chunk of nonaerated perlite

Humboldt said:Scindapsus Pictus, started from 1 leaf

Can't see it in the photo, but this very slow plant is a just a single stem...still.

Once the cutting took I waited for it to get its third leaf uncurled and pinned the new root nodes gently down to the soil. Again for the fourth.

Fifth is coming a bit quicker now, and both pinned roots should take hold any week now and send up new growth.
It's been about 2 months since I pinned them.

One paper clip + wire cutters yields two very convenient pins.
Hair pins for larger plants work wonderfully, all those curves hold well in the soil.

I've had that plant on my list but never get around to getting one. I can beleive it is slow. The Marble Queen type Epipremnum, seem very slow to me rooting from one leaf.
Will the new nodes branch out from there, do you think?

sallyg said:I've had that plant on my list but never get around to getting one. I can beleive it is slow. The Marble Queen type Epipremnum, seem very slow to me rooting from one leaf.
Will the new nodes branch out from there, do you think?

Yes, at least that's what I'm hoping for at least.

If they root on those pinned sections they should also send up new leaves and increase the overall growth and development substantially.

I've had so many employees and friends ask for cuttings, and I tell them of course but ask me again in a year.

Next year, haha, truth!
Meanwhile, I took a bunch of random bits of Plectranthus Swedish Ivy today off a small pot, and made cuttings to root. The pot itself turned out to be much drier inside than I expected, and even had a cavity where I must not have filled it well when I made that pot. Can't help messing with plants.

sallyg said:Next year, haha, truth!
Meanwhile, I took a bunch of random bits of Plectranthus Swedish Ivy today off a small pot, and made cuttings to root. The pot itself turned out to be much drier inside than I expected, and even had a cavity where I must not have filled it well when I made that pot. Can't help messing with plants.

You're not alone.
Just finished trimming up my fridge-top spider plants (great light through double south-facing window, eyeing the soil and pumice and 30 plants I brought home last week).

How do you do your plec cuttings?

I normally just take a top with good growth, go down one or two leaf junctions, snip and remove the lower leaves, and go right into soil.
Closest to 100% propagation of any plant I can think of.

Water rooting works fine also, I just see no need, and the water root back to soil root thing slows the plant down in my experience.

If nothing else, the "ask me for a cutting in a year" is teaching me patience.

I get more requests for cuttings from that plant than anything else I grow at work or at home.

I was super psyched when that one leaf took, and am happy and proud to have gotten a new leaf every 6 weeks or so since.

Soil is still good, pot size is fine, checked on daily 5 or 6 days a week, watered when needed.
VF11 about once per month.
https://vf11ind.com/about.aspx
Buddy of mine swears by it, not a fertilizer as much as something that helps the plant utilize whatever nutrients are building up before they hurt the plant.

Can tweak the lighting and humidity with Jungle Dawn LED and greenhouse tray when needed, still not sure what works best.
Hoping the pinnings take.