have you been getting the leaves wet? foliar feeding will prevent a cutting from rooting. if its getting what it needs through the leaves it wont feel the need to root.

new growth is a good sign. hang in there! it takes a long time using this method.

i prefer an aeroponic cloner or a rockwool cube and some rooting hormone.

Use moist potting mix and buy a rooting hormone. Or gather some willow twigs (Salix) and use them for a root stimulator.

I reproduce frequently by cloning.

I clone in aero/hydro with rockwool and my success rate is way above 90% and I use no cloning ammendments of any kind.

Just mak a cutting and put it in hydro. New roots in 7-21 days.

I have had mixed success with cloning. I normally do it in a glass of water. Sometimes I have roots in two weeks, sometimes it takes two months or more.

The neighbor kid gave my daughter a cut Flox flower last spring in like May. I put it in a glass of water for my daughter. Funny thing is, the flower died off, but the leaves stayed green. About two weeks ago, after about 6 months of sitting in the water, I noticed what looked like a single root shooting out. I have since transferred it to a small container with potting mix and it is still looking good. I am not sure if the root is still viable, but at this point, I plan to just let it go until it either dies, or starts thriving. I dont have the heart any longer to give up on it.

here's my first successful rooting of a thai pepper stem cutting, taken from a plant that had germinated about five weeks before topping. i situated the topped portion in coco coir and used no rooting hormones. the cutting and the coir were placed in a plastic cup with the lid on to maintain humidity, though i removed the lid almost daily to let in fresh air.

after roots poked through the coir, i placed the cutting in miracle gro potting mix. within weeks, the clone's stem already appeared thick and sturdy.

i'm going to experiment further by trying to make a clone of this clone, and next year, i'll compare the pepper production of the parent, the clone, and the clone of the clone.

Good idea and keep us posted on the process.

It looks like you have the cloning process down.

thanks, esox, for the encouragement. i still have much to learn! i've got another thai pepper cutting that's started to show roots under similar circumstances, and i'll upload some pictures when i get the chance.

trying to root cuttings in water alone didn't work for me. the experience was literally rotten, my first attempt at rooting peppers, and maybe the deaths (which occurred well before any rooting) had something to do with the cutting being from an older plant. besides, word has it that roots formed in water don't always perform so well once moved to soil, another reason to pursue this method no more.

but i'm having some success with coco coir. two rootings so far, and another couple cuttings are presumably working on it. no losses to date, unlike my blackberry propagation record.

In my opinion, trying to root anything in water is not ideal. Some people root some things in water, but...in my opinion, only the easiest things will root.

GW botany forum on water and soil roots

a third stem cutting is showing roots. time from cutting to first root poking through the coir pellet: 20 days, 22 days, and 19 days.

I just purchased some coco coir pellets like the pic in erect and thornless last post. I'm going to give it a try I still have a few varieties Aji and rocoto peppers in my garden that are alive that I will clone from with these pellets.

good luck, nick. some additional techniques I forgot to mention:

• using young, green stem cuttings.

• scraping the stem near the cut; by removing some of the epidermis and cortex, one hopefully increases the surface area from which roots can develop.

__________

an update: the cloned plant pictured above (in my december 3 post) developed a bud sooner than I expected. given that the clone came from a topped plant, I suppose the clone started its existence away from its parent with some degree of maturity, hence the thicker stem and the development of a bud at such a low height.

after spotting the emerging bud, I worried that flowering would decrease the plant's vegetative growth, so I was eager to remove the bud with the rest of the apex. i topped the clone with the additional hope of growing a clone of a clone, but there have been some issues so far; if these issues progress in severity, then I'll regret having disturbed the clone.

problem 1: the clone top, which includes the emerging bud, was placed in coir a few days ago and has a somewhat wilted look. the longest leaves look droopy, and sufficient moisturization of the coir doesn't seem to be reversing the wilt. it's not dead, at least if the deeply green leaf coloration is any indication, but the cutting's survival is definitely in question. one possible solution: if the two wilting leaves don't perk up, I could cut them away and leave behind two other leaves which haven't yet gone limp.

problem 2: the cloned plant (seen in the december 3 images) hasn't burst forth with lateral bushiness since the topping. maybe because it already suffered injury when it was severed in october, and already responded to the stress by growing roots and new leaves and a thicker stem and a budding bud, it's not going to respond to topping the way a younger plant would. it could still bush out in the coming days, but so far it seems unenthusiastic, almost dormant. I wonder if the colder weather has also affected it.

will report back in this thread on the fate of the clone and the clone of the clone.

based on these concerns, I'm not going to top the clone pictured in my december 6 post. that plant is flourishing.

the clone top is perking up after i changed its water. i gave the coir a bit of a rinsing, emptied the standing water in the plastic cup where the coir+cutting reside, and nestled the cutting a little deeper into the coir.

huzzah! or houzzah. now go make some roots, you partial plant, you.

I have never really found changing the water. In fact, that Flox cutting I had in water since last June was in the same water the whole time aside from adding water every so often when it evaporated. About three or four weeks ago, I transfered it to potting mix as I finally noticed what looked like a root. It is still quite alive, but not looking like it wants to start any new growth yet.

I have done it both ways with pepper cuttings and have never really noticed any difference that way either. Some times the water has gotten almost to the point I couldn't see the stem any longer but eventually put out some roots.

One key with cuttings is to make the cut just below a node. That way, the node is submersed. The node is usually where any new roots will form. Some say that scoring the stem at or just below/above the node will promote roots as well. I have not found that to help at all though with peppers.

thanks, esox. you have way more experience than I do, and I appreciate your sharing it. I haven't changed the water or rinsed the coir before, but I gave it a try because I was slightly desperate.

the cutting's doing so much better today than it did yesterday, and maybe the rinse had nothing to do with it—maybe it was the fact that I pushed the whole cutting a few millimeters deeper into the coir, and that allowed the cutting to draw the water that it needed to puff the leaves back into happyland.

yup, the cutting was taken near a node.

question: of my 30 or so seedling and cuttings I've grown this year, a couple plants were neglected just a little and have slightly shriveled developing leaves at the nodes. they're not as green and tender as the corresponding parts on healthier plants, and no healthy leaves seem to be replacing them even after some days have passed. do you manage this problem by pruning or will there be some sort of growth & self-correction in the warmer months?

I suggest you keep experimenting with your cuttings. Try different things. Sometimes, it is just what works best for you. You may be right and the water change had something to do with it the cutting finally rooting.

I wouldn't prune any seedlings or cuttings until the leaves were clearly dead. Peppers are pretty resiliant and as soon as conditions improve, they get back to growing just fine.

One more thing on cuttings is to make sure that you have small leaves on the cuttings and very few of them. If the leaves are big, the top half of the leaves should be cut off. The cuttings don't need a lot of photosynthesis going on and peppers (all plants) perspire through their leaves which strains the cuttings which don't have roots yet to uptake water.

thanks, esox. some of the baby leaves, only a few millimeters long, are dry and a brown-green color, and they fall off at a touch. i don't know whether they'll be replaced with green leaves at a later time; i guess i'll find out in 2018.

If the leaves falling off are ones that formed before taking the cutting, that is OK, but if they are new growth, then it might be a problem.

This is a tepin clone using a fruiting branch and put in aeroponics with a minerwool substrate; no amendments.

nice, willard. please update us on its journey.

interesting. three pepper stem cuttings have rooted so far, and the clones all grew nicely, at least initially. two continue to do well. the one clone that's struggling was healthy until it was topped, and now it has stopped growing and its nodal baby leaves are dry. maybe being both a top and a toppee (I just made up the word) was way too much stress for the little bugger. this is the plant I mentioned in a previous post; I'll keep taking care of it well into 2018, but if it doesn't thrive by the late spring or early summer, I'll bid it farewell.

the top taken from that clone is also struggling. I was hoping to produce a healthy clone of a clone, but now the survival of both seems uncertain.

Your post sounds like one of those wild life documentaries by Mutual of Omaha from back in the 70's. :)

i remember those programs. and i just dated myself (at least approximately) by that admission, haha.

Err, I really loved that show...but I was a tot back then.

I wasn't old enough to understand insurance at the time, so "mutual of omaha" was mysterious yet cool-sounding.

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nodes are where the biological magic happens, so perhaps the more dormant plants will see some better activity at the nodes once the weather gets warmer. I've noticed that most of my seedlings grown in november & december have had some dry-leaf issues (despite adequate watering); this wasn't the case back in the warmer months.

one young plant is bucking the trend and is green and growing well, for whatever reasons. perhaps it has a better combo of genes than its siblings. this hearty one is designated to be given to a friend.

a fourth pepper stem cutting is showing roots. time from cutting to first root poking through the coir pellet: 20 days, 22 days, 19 days, and 31 days. i suspect the colder weather had something to do with that 31-day interval.

will post pics once i have a few days off from work.

*snicker*

you young pups

I strongly suggest rooting them in soil instead of water (keep them out of bright light for a while after you first take the cutting). You don't need to watch for roots to grow when rooting in soil. Watch for leaf/stem growth. Anyway, it's a lot easier, IMO. Use clean seed-starting mix, and take measures to avoid damping off disease.

If you keep it in water for the first day or two before putting it in soil, that might help to remove the initial light sensitivity that comes when taking a cutting and rooting it in soil (but I still haven't tested that, yet).

having roots grow from every pepper cutting gave me beginner's confidence, but seeing many of the cuttings wilt has taught me some lessons. many of the cuttings wilted to a deathly state, and others are hanging on by their metaphorical fingernails.

the stem cutting that has not only survived but done so in good shape was placed outside at a fairly early stage (when only about an inch tall), even though one would think that the warmer environment indoors would be comfy for plants. perhaps the favorable factors outdoors are the greater amount of sunlight and exposure to natural day/night cycles.

i suspect that during the colder months, the plants and cuttings are trying their best to be dormant, and perhaps this allows all manner of stressors to be amplified.

Yes, I would have thought that indoors would be best for newly planted cuttings as well. In fact, I try to keep them out of direct sun for a while after planting them. I would think the varying temperature conditions and direct sunlight cycles outside would be "stressors" as you call them.

Regardless though, once I get a cutting to root, I have never had a problem after transplanting them into potting mix as long as I keep it fairly moist for the first week or two and that has always been indoors.

for the first few weeks, sometimes the first couple months, my seedlings and stem cuttings thrived indoors. but after a certain point, they did better if they were outside, or they protested by trying to die.

if they went outside as healthy plants, they tended to stay healthy. once they started to wilt, transferring them outside didn't consistently stop them from getting sicker.

(i suspect the situation is different for those who have set up indoor grow lights and other ways to optimize the inside environment.)

a comeback story: