Rooting Experiment

20 years ago

I thought I would share with all of you the results of an experiment I recently did to find out if the medium used to root AV leaves made a difference in how quickly the leaves rooted and produced plantlets. I used an old ice cube tray and filled eight of the holes (2 each) with the following mediums - my soilless mix (1 part each of peat, perlite and vermiculite), plain vermiculite, plain perlite and water. I put four leaves of two different varieties (Little Sweetheart and Royal Cluster) into the ice cube tray. After several weeks, the leaves in the soilless mix and plain vermiculite had roots, but the others didn't show any signs of roots. The Little Sweetheart leaf in the soilless mix produced babies first, with the Little Sweetheart leaf in the plain vermiculite following shortly with babies of its own. The leaf of Royal Cluster in the soilless mix produced plantlets next. After 4 months, the remainder of the leaves have yet to produce plantlets, and all the leaves in plain perlite and water have only had roots on them a short time.

I thought the results of my experiment were interesting, knowing that some people swear by rooting leaves in water before putting them into soilless mix. Based on these results, I will continue to put all of my AV leaves straight into my mix. After sharing this information with the members of our local club (Central Arkansas African Violet Society), I was told by a member that if I cut off most of the "mama" leaf when putting it down, I will get plantlets even faster. I am now going to do a little experiment with 2 leaves of a couple of different varieties to test this theory! I'll let everyone know who it goes.

Franki in Hot Springs

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Comments (4)

jon_d
20 years ago
Nice experiment.

I find interesting the differences between rooting AV leaves and chirita leaves. With AV's, old leaves are often useless; but, with chiritas, old leaves will root and produce plenty of new plants. With AV's I have heard but not experimented with cutting off the top portion of the leaves. With chiritas, the leaves can be cut into wedge shaped cuttings and both the top and bottom portion will root and produce about an equal number of new plants. An early experiment by another grower, using only a few chirita leaves, found that the top portion produced new plants faster than the bottom portion. But, I have found no difference. On chiritas, though, I do cut off most of the petiole from the bottom cutting, leaving just the portion where the petiole widens into the blade.

Another experiment you might try, is to test out the theory of the age and size of the leaf having an effect on AV rooting. I have heard that smaller baby leaves will produce new plants faster than larger leaves.

When the Gesneriad Society had their convention in Nashville, we had a tour of Holkamps, where we saw millions of leaves put down for new plants. Mr. Holkamp gave us a personal tour wherein he took a pot of rooted leaves and showed us how they take them apart and pot up to the next stage. The leaves were medium sized, with one or more plantlets per leaf.

Jon
frankiokc
Original Author
20 years ago
Jon,

Thanks for your informative response. I am going to try cutting some of the AV leaves smaller for my next experiment.

The 2 strep leaves I put down are doing well. One is in moist sphagnum moss (rooted within a few days!!) and the other is in my soilless mix. Both are doing very well.

I sure wish I could get to the Holtkamp nursery. I bet it is really cool!

F
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robitaillenancy1
20 years ago
The reason some growers cut the tops of their leaves when producing babies is that sometimes the rooted leaf starts getting larger and you don't want growth in the leaf but rather with babies. Cutting the leaf makes the leaf not grow larger and puts the energy into the baby production.

I would imagine a tour of Holtkamp would be extremely interesting.

Nancy
korina
20 years ago
Thanks so much for the information, Franki, it's fascinating! I've always used my soilless mix, and it's never caused any problems; probably 99% success rate, which is good enough for me. I had one noid standard leaf give me *nine* babies, and it tried to keep going, but it was so sad and worn-out looking, I put it out of my misery. Now I have to figure out what to do with nine rapidly growing babies.

I'm going to link this thread to the AV forum, they'll love it.

Korina