RIP: Petunia, Welcome Tarragon & Cat's Whiskers

Imagine that.  My once lush purple Petunia died. Unbelievable, right?  I don't know why.  Could it be the extreme heat of summer?  It's supposed to like lots of direct sunlight.  Is it because I tilled the soil?  I don't know!  But now it's gone.  I seem to be on a killing spree of flowering plants.  I killed my Aster after one week. I killed Jean's Gerbera after one week.  I killed my recently divided mums (it's a good thing I successfully propagated some cuttings). I just wish I knew why.

Oh well.

Petunia Propagation: Work in Progress 2

Over the past months, I've tried various means to propagate my petunias: seeds and cuttings.  I'm still zero.  The seeds didn't germinate and the cuttings dried up.  And so I read that honey can be used as a rooting hormone and I tried it. The cuttings dried up AND had loads of ants.  So back to the drawing board right?

Lately, I've noticed that my purple petunia has been struggling.  Just look at the before and after photos. It looks like the world has turned and for the first time, my red & white petunia is doing better.   So I took a couple of cuttings from the purple one (you know, just in case the mother plant dies) and I stuck them in soil.  Statistically, something has to succeed and root, right?  I placed two of the cuttings in small pots and covered them with a plastic container.  Maybe moisture conservation is the key.  We'll see in a week or two.

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How to Propagate Cuttings with Honey

If you read enough gardening material on the Net, you will find that a lot of plants are propagated by cuttings.  Some cuttings are easy to root like herbs.  For example, Basil and Mint cuttings will easily root in a glass of water.  Other plants are more challenging.  For example, my flowering plants (petunias, mums and hydrangeas) will supposedly need a little extra.  In most cases, I find that other gardeners dip cuttings in a rooting hormone before sticking them into little pots with sterile medium (I always see peat, perlite and vermiculite). 

But some of us don't want to spend for a rooting hormone because we're gardeners with a tight budget.  I've read that you can just boil parts of a willow tree (any variety) and that will have the same components as a rooting mix.  But then again, have you ever seen a willow tree in Manila?  So I continued searching and found that the next most frequently mentioned rooting hormone alternative is HONEY.

Petunia Propagation: How to Get Petunia Seeds

My petunias are doing okay. They bloom and grow on their own without too much effort for me.  I water heavily, leave them in medium sun, spray my soap solution and use diluted fertilizer about once a week.  The red & white one just looks a little slow because it got bumped a couple of weeks ago and I lost a couple of healthy stems.  However, my attempts to propagate my petunias by stem cuttings and by simple layering have not panned out.

Petunia Propagation: Work in Progress

In the last couple of episodes, I talked about a much awaited recovery of my red & white Petunia. I also showed a couple of Petunia pictures I got from Tagaytay and mentioned how amazingly big they got their plants there. 

In between those days, I made a couple of attempts to propagate my Petunia.   I tried:

• Stem cuttings in water - I took a 4-inch stem from a healthy Petunia, removed a couple of the bottom leaves and soaked the bottom in water.  I tried this in both a zip locked plastic bag and an open glass container.  After about a week or so, the stem wilted.  No roots.
• Stem cuttings in soil - Same type of cutting only I placed it in a pot with soil with medium sunlight exposure.  In less than a week, the stem wilted.  No roots.