Rooting Hormones |
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| I am a faithful user of rooting hormone powder, and I swear by it when rooting "suckers" and also when you have occasion to lop off the crown and re-root it. Until recently I had been using rooting hormone on my "leaves". I set a lot of leaves this past summer and decided to conduct a test. Half of my leaves were set "plain" and the other half using rooting hormone powder. These batches of leaves were clearly marked so there would be no room for error. In every case the plain leaf sent up plantlets much quicker (about half the time) and there were many more plantlets per leaf. Though not many of us care about "numbers" we certainly would appreciate anything that would speed up the "plantlet" production. Each leaf with the rooting hormone had a pot full of roots, but when the plantlets were stripped from the leaf it was obviously the leaf that filled the pot with it's own roots. The babies took longer to appear .. I assume because the leaf was busy doing the job the powder instigated "making roots" and filled the pot with roots before producing babies. The babies on the treated leaves took longer to show but had no better root system than the plainly set ones! They were not stronger or healthier but the numbers of babies was as low as one per leaf! My conclusion is SET the leaves plain..... you are much better off all the way around. The "test" also cemented the fact that rooting hormone does what is is meant to do, it grows roots and this is certainly desirable for rooting suckers and lopped off crowns. I am still a great believer in the product and will never be without it in my plant room. |
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