I thought I'd share the progress of my black mission cuttings. I got a black mission from a nursery that looked like it had died over the winter. I figured I'd try practicing rooting some cuttings from it though. First I tried the damp paper towel and ziploc method... all of the cuttings got mold. I lightly scrubbed them with a toothbrush and dish soap and put two of the cuttings into a cup with perlite in my "humidity chamber" and two cuttings into a tupperware container with damp sphagnum moss. The cuttings in the perlite got moldy again within days, both rotted, but I managed to save a 1" piece from one and tossed it in the sphagnum container. I placed the container half on a heating pad set to low. About a week later, the 1" piece to my amazement had roots! The other two looked dead. I put the 1" piece in the humidity chamber in a cup of perlite. A week later, I checked on the other two cuttings...



LO



Amazingly, they burst with life! I don't quite understand why the mother tree hasn't sprouted, but there must still be life in it!

I placed these cuttings in a cup with a mix of vermiculite, perlite, and potting soil and placed them in the humidity chamber.





My humidity chamber is just a 10g aquarium with a plastic seed starter cover over it.



The next cuttings I get, I think I'll try in these self watering pots I made from a 2 liter bottle and paper towels, they keep the soil moist without it being soggy from oveGr watering. My peppers are doing well in them.



Hopefully, in a few months I'll have a couple nice little black mission trees!

Nick

Very interesting and nice. 

I would have them laying in there longer. That would make more sprouted and would be able to make more plants from less. You can make three plants from the second picture. 

I suppose I could have cut the cuttings in half, but I don't know what I'd do with that many black missions :(

You can always trade them or sell them or even gift them. i had so many oneday that I gave them to my school's greenhouse. The teacher made a profit  by selling them. 

What a great practice session you got roots from something that looked dead! I like the 2 liter bottle self watering bottle too..how did you make those?

Looks like he cut it in half and put it up side down with cotton to act as the wick. 

Thanks for posting, I like the design of the self watering pots in the 2L bottle

The self watering 2L are really easy... just take a 2L bottle and cut it in half, maybe 2" more towards the top.  Then take a couple of paper towels to make the wick.



Here's a youtube video showing just how to do it:

that's a good job on the rooting and the self-watering pots.  Recycling a dead tree and trash.  Very good.

A nice SWP project that comes in different sizes (but works better with a drip system):

I love DIY! Thank you both for the Videos..can't wait to try them!

I wanted to give an updated on my Black Mission cuttings.  The growth in less than a week has been impressive!







Temps tonight look like they are going to get extremely cold again and I hadn't planned on moving my potted trees in, so I quickly had to find something that would allow me to pull in 55g barrels cut in half made into self watering pots... I have them on a drip irrigation system, so they were full of water and extremely heavy.  I stopped at Harbor Freight though and they had a hand truck with a nice wide platform on the bottom... along with a 20% off coupon it was only $80.  It worked well getting the trees into the garage!



Nick

Wanted to give an update on the progress of my black missions...

I just got back from vacation for a few days and they really took off! So much so the one on the left had the plastic top raised off the humidity chamber a couple of inches! Hence why it looks squished. I'll need to up pot these tomorrow into 1 gallon trade pots and get them used to the outdoors.

@ Nick...well done video...very instructional...thanks for sharing.  :)  :)

@ greenfig...another excellent video...thanks.