preferred cutting methods

[medicinedan]

Do you (anyone) prefer to lay your cuttings sideways?

And after you have let them callous and are are ready to plant them. How is the medium in terms of moisture? Do you leave it bone dry or water it in ect..?

I know there is a mountain of stuff about this on the net but they are usually conflicting, ie : one site says moisten soil, one says dont, one says leave in dark , one says give bottom heat.

Is it just personal preferance? What methods work best for you.. cheers

[Gunter]

I let them heal a bit and plant them up in pea gravel, then I keep them dry, they get a little bit of moisture though not much. They root in 2-8 weeks, the average is about 3-4 weeks for rooting for me.

[Conan Troutman]

There is so much conflicting info because most growers develop there own technique.

I'm Fairly new to Cacti caper but this is how i go....

Cuttings should be calloused with dry heat/air before planting, the longer the better.No direct sun light. Can dry her out

Generally plant 'log' style cuttings sideways. bout 1/3 to 1/6 of catci deep.

Best keeping medium dry until you see good signs of growth or by trying to gently lift cactus from soil. You can gently mist if careful.

After all she DONT have roots yet.

Never used bottom heat but from what I know can stimulate faster rooting of some species.

hope this helps...

[strangebrew]

I think laying sideways is pointless, interesting experiment to do once but ultimately pointless.

I stick to a dry medium. A juicy cutting outside seems to produce transpiration overnight anyway, so adding more moisture seems unnecessary.

Bottom heat would only be necessary indoors/cool climate.

In the end a lot of it is just personal preference. Just experiment a bit and work out what's best for you, e.g. last year I mucked around with perlite for the first time but I've decided it's not for me but some people seem to like it.

[dracos6]

i use debco cacti and succulent mix, it is not moist but not bone dry out of the bag, i plant calloused cuttings into this with no extra water and wait a fortnight till watering, never had a prob.

i tried the horizontal thing with a spach. once but it still had a growing tip and it seemed that for every cm the tip grew the bottom dried out a cm. not sure if this was species or just the fact that it had a growing tip. quite a lot of people like this method as its said to produce far more pups (makes sense) not to crash hot for aesthetics tho

[Evil Genius]

I root everything laying sideways in a Mix of Perlite and Seramis (synthetic clay). I don´t water in the first months. I don´t dig in the rooted underside because this helps to prevent fungus. Normally i start with a few drops of water after a few months and then let the substrate dry out again. Then i proceed watering once a month in the Main Growth Period. HAd Good Results using this procedure.

[Torsten]

we use mostly the side method and we do so for several reasons, however many of these do not apply to most growers.

1) we are in the subtropics and we propagate for 8-12 months of the year. If you get a wet week in winter just after planting your cuttings then they are bound to rot if water pools in the cut surface (even if callused). This can also be an issue in wet summers when it rains for 6 weeks every day. Side cuts totally avoid this problem. Many will argue against this point, but then again we haven't had a wet year for a few years.

2) if we get a 30cm cactus we often want to make 6 cuttings out of it. That means one 10cm tip and 5 4cm side sections. A 4cm section is more likely to rot if upright than sideways. For most folks this is not an issue because they would make just 2 or 3 plants out of this piece.

3) we start in small pots to save space and then re-bury the cut piece during potting up. For retail we need to produce single piece plants, rather than chopped heads with pups. This does not apply to non-traders.

Note that when we get to the point where we have lots of stock plants with multiple pupping heads on them we don't bother with side propagation anymore, but simply take pups off our pup producers. So side propagation is really only important if you are trying to get as many plants as possible in the shortest space of time.

One other argument for side cuttings is when dealing with recalcitrant pieces. Vertical cuttings will either root in a few months or die. They rarely survive more than a season unrooted. Sidecuts can survive for several years without rooting.

[strangebrew]

EDITED - Moved to a new thread.

(Thanks for the input anyway Archaea!)

[ 12. September 2005, 06:25: Message edited by: strangebrew ]

[Gunter]

I would root it upright or at an angle myself.

[Jack]

i am a sideways man myself.

[mescalito]

haven't done it for so long I've forgotten

[Rev]

upright only

sideways sunburns easily and take AGES longer to root and gives smaller pups