I wanted to share this for those of you that have not experimented with cuttings off of a plumeria. We have been growing them for 20 years, but still did not know what the limits were...like how big a cutting can you root? We do not keep many plants in pots, as that stunts the growth of the plants and it is hard to keep that many watered.
This winter when the freezes started coming, we dug up most of our plants, but we had around 40 that were too big ...so we cut them completely up as a way of saving them and we are really glad we did.
Basically what we did is, we would cut the top 4 branches off where they branch out giving you very nice cuttings (there are plenty of writings on the specifics of doing this properly). Then we would cut the "Mid-section trunk into 3 ft chunks, leaving 4-6 inches of the root ball sticking out of the ground. Out of the 40 we cut up, we only had 2 root balls that didn't re-grow..and the trunks on all of these were totally frozen....oozing a black goo out of them..and they are now growing new growth.
I am not advocating you cut your plants completely up...I am just sharing because we have never tried to root some of the things we have now, successfully rooted. We took some cuttings that were 6ft tall with 4 main branches. We have rooted the mid-section trunks, and the root balls are now generating what will be plumeria shrubs. Our main plant was 10ft tall and 14ft wide and the root ball on it has 12 main branches and is growing out of control.
This was our main plant (10ft by 14ft) The golf ball is there for size reference...this is a root ball that is around 7 weeks growth. If you are wondering how it can gro so fast...remember a plant that size has a HUGE root ball and will re-establish itself quickly. This plant froze before in 2010..I documented its regrowth then and this one is even more robust.
www.flickr.com/photos/terrynj/sets/72157634973466062/
Another root ball growth doing very well...this was a 9ft plant and we have 2- 6ft, 4-branch cuttings that are doing very well
This is a "Mid-section" cut about the size of your plant..doing really well and should prove to be a vibrant plant.
This is the main trunk of Texas Mango. It was cut about 3ft up from the ground and is around 3" diameter. It is rooted and growing fine. This is an experiment to see how robust a rooting this big will do...how fast it grows..bloom more? etc..
This is a cutting from Texas Mango (it was cut off the trunk in the pic above) that is 5 1/2 ft rooted height. Multiple branches and doing fine. You can also see back around our fence where a lot of our cuttings are resting against the fence and root ball growths.
We would take some larger cuttings and lean them against the fence in a pot with soil...there was no need to support them any other way and it has worked great! we had 20 plants along the fence line and you can see their root balls regrowing. This is about 1/4 of what we have on the fence..
I will make a side note here...many many of our cuttings have Inflo's on them that started as cuttings and have bloomed successfully. But once they start rooting...they concentrate only on that ...and I wouldn't look for any blooms until they get rooted well.
As I was saying, I am posting this to share my experience and on what you can root. Don't be afraid to get aggressive with them if you need to. We did this in desperation, but in hind sight...it has given us many beautifully shaped, vibrant plants and forced us to do something we normally wouldn't do. We are like all newbies..you work so hard to grow these things it was almost impossible for us to cut them up. I cried the day I cut up 40 9ft children of ours. They were all perfectly healthy when I did.
