by Jeff Hopper
Often you’ll find a mid-cut plumeria at a
cutting sale or given to you by a friend. A mid-cut is exactly what it sounds like: a cutting from the middle, without a tip. You might think, yeah some
great friend gave me this mid-cut, now what? Well, take that cutting
and heal the bottom cutting over, and seal the top cuts with DAP. Yep
you got it right - DAP, caulk sealant. You can buy the stuff at Home
Depot for $2.99 for a tube of white silicone sealant. One tube will
keep your sealing mid-cuts for quite sometime.
Why would you prefer a mid-cut over a
regular tip? Often mid-cuts are much thicker in girth and will much
more readily root than a small tip cut. Also the mid-cut may branch out
and produce a couple, maybe a dozen new branches that can each then be
taken as tip cuts. I like to shop for the mid-cuts as they are
generally really cheap, and you can get some really good stock. I
picked up a bunch of mid-cuts at the SCPS cutting sale for a buck each -
can’t beat that.
Here’s the first mid-cut, purchased at an
SCPS meeting for a whole $2. Me thinks its probably a Celadine but who
cares - they make great flower leis, and that keeps the ladies in the
house happy. Plus starting this beast should be fun. Also in selecting
this cutting, it's firm when squeezed, absolutely no give laterally.
If I didn’t know any better I’d think rigo had set in, it truly could be
used as a weapon. I strongly believe that means the cutting is ready
to sprout leaves, roots and get to growing!
How to get it started
Seal the tip with DAP. The idea/theory
here is that you don’t want the tip to lose anymore moisture. The more
moisture it loses through the cut end, the more likely you are to lose
the cutting. Also you don’t want any moisture entering the cut end,
rot/moisture is a cutting's worst enemy. Notice from the photo that the
leaf nodes are starting to swell? Yep, you guessed it - that's where
the new branches are going to form.
I’m getting tired of losing cuttings to
rot in the middle - the pithy part. So with this cutting I’m trying DAP
on the inside, pith ring, to seal it from any further moisture.
Hopefully no more rot in the middle, and faster roots from the outside,
cambium layer. Notice this cutting is well healed. I’ve allowed it to
dry for 1+ month. Did I say I was tired of rotted cuttings?
This tree here was started from a great
two-tip cutting. The tree fell over and became a “slingshot.” I sealed
the tips and have five new branches. I grew this beast in the green
house for two years thus the tremendous growth between leaf nodes.
And yes, it will flower again!!!
As you can see the DAP sealed the tips and
stopped any further rot and die-back from the cut end. The new
branches erupt from the leaf scars. Interestingly enough, the new
branches only share the cambium layer with the rootstock. They do not
share the pith (middle layer). Eventually I may take these new branches
and root them as cuttings.
The Beast
The beast was won at the annual SCPS
members only meeting from the raffle table. This is one of three
branches on the cutting; this branch is 2” in diameter. The main trunk
of this tree, 4”+ in diameter. It’s huge! It has a ton of life force
and is ready to go. This spring it finally sprouted and that there
branch has five new branches forming! Thank you Carl and Joy for
putting that one on the table!