There are many ways to propagate your aroids and everyone has a prefered method. For me, I have evolved my method to cater to specific types of plants and cuttings.
Over the past year, I started using Coconut coir as a medium for cuttings to grow in and it has been quite successful. However, I did find that certain density coir would become quite compact. This bothered me because it would not dry out quickly nor let air move down into the medium for the roots to take in. This was essentually akin to waterlogged soil. This was more common with finer coir. Overall though, using coir had been far more successful for me than any other option.
The solution became mixing the coir with course grade perlite at a rate of aproximatly 60% coir and 40% Perlite.
Problem solved and it has been very successful for me. The perlite acts to break up the coir and allow for better drainage and traps air in its porous form. The coir still acts as a moist soil like substrate but is unable to compact in on itself.
Being a lighter medium, top heavy cuttings can fall out. Especially when roots have not grown to create an anchor. I have been saving old twist ties and any off cuts to fold in half and to make little pins to help hold the cuttings in.
So, its safe to say that I am a convert to using this mix as my main propagation medium. I still put fresh cuttings in water until the first signs of roots appear. But, I have always done this. I feel it gives them a head start. Cuttings with air roots, I put straight into the coir/perlite mix.
So there it is. My go to medium for propagating. What do you use?
Thanks for reading and happy growing. Xx
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