Posts by Esteban

1458779688

	Subject: Bag Rooting Techniques	Replies: 108
	Posted By: Esteban_McFig	Views: 4,080

Quote:

Originally Posted by lolita1234
If the big (of soil) is freshly bought from the store, the soil is moist enough to use . But if the top end of the bag is open for quite some time, then the soil is dry due to evaporation . In this case, you just spray a little bit of water to make it moist but not wet

When the plastic bag (for rooting) is tied with a rubber band, perspiration (of the cutting stem) makes the soil look wet but in the reality it is not .

I think also the VOLUME of dry mix matters (I am using the same MG moisture control mix), which is a function of the size bag used. I began using the Mai bag technique, but opted to buy a bigger bag (4" x 6"), thinking this would give an even bigger root ball and i could transfer directly to a trade gallon container. What happened was the cuttings began to be dessicated by the volume of dry mix. Yes, the bag showed moisture droplets, but i eventually figured out--after about three + weeks of NO roots evident--that maybe nothing was happening. When I pulled out a sampling of different sizes and varieties of cuttings, all had no activity, for good or bad. The cuttings were perfectly preserved, if a little dry above the rubber-banded neck. So, a little rehydration, a scissoring down the top of the bag, a removal of some of the volume of the mix, another light application of Dip n Grow...and back to the bag with the cutting. It's been just about three weeks, and some are starting to show roots. Of the 21 I originally started this way beginning in early February, two just succumbed to rot in the last couple days. Most are still in that awkward "are they doing anything?" phase without roots

I strongly counsel using the slimmer size/volume bag that Mai uses for this reason. Even if I encounter additional fails among the cuttings currently of unknown status, I chalk it up to my having previously dried out the cuttings in an excess volume of near-bone dry mix that seems to have actively drawn moisture away from the cutting

As a noob, my go-to for root-starting has evolved to the orchid moss sphagnum start--either loose in plastic shoeboxes or within ziploc bags--then up-potting to the 3-cup setup. At that point, the rooted cuttings continue to reside within humidity bins until there is significant top growth, and then moved to the windowbox. That's the choke point--the window setup will accommodate only 32 of the 24 oz. 3-cup setups at a time. Currently, I will only have STARTED all of the 182 cuttings I procured this year by mid-April as a consequence (I started with the first 41 cuttings just before Christmas). Mai's/The Bag Technique would allow for at least twice as many starts in the same space, and therefore twice as fast throughput overall. And the missus would get her space back to display the various Mexican Day of the Dead paraphernalia she seems to enjoy looking at while "slaving away" at the sink. I'm the one who does the dishes, and I say I'd rather look at baby fig plants! I don't say that out loud of course. But I think it--boldly!

I've hedged my bets by trialing the bag technique only with those varieties for which I have in excess of three cuttings. For reasons of time and space, I really hope the balance of the bag starts--now totaling 31 cuttings of about 10 different varieties, some just started the last couple weeks--have a high success percentage. Intuitively, it seems like it should work just as well as the loose sphagnum setup

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