can add 5 lbs to your waistline By Judy Bligh
I’ve never had any luck starting
fuchsias from tip cuttings.
Try as I might – they always
fail. Every year our Branch has
a Cuttings Workshop where we
have guest speakers who share
their successful methods for
starting fuchsia from tip cuttings.
Following the demonstration,
everyone is invited
to make a couple cuttings and
take them home. Mine always
died. I take copious notes and
follow the instructions to the
letter, but the cuttings die.
Some used heat lamps under
furniture in the house or
on shelves, while others used
heating pads under the cuttings.
Aha – heat must be the
key. So I purchased an entire
starting setup, complete with
low watt light bulb for continuous
warmth. I put in the special
seed starting soil, moistened
the soil, added my cuttings,
put the lid on to insure the
right amount of moisture and
turned on the light. The first
set molded – guess I left the lid
on too long? I removed the lid
early on the second set, only
to have them wither and die,
too. After many years of trying
every routine that I heard
about, I found the way to be
successful was to have someone
else start the cuttings for
me. When they were in a 4 inch
pot, I could take them home.
I’m still attentive during our
annual Cuttings Workshop and
I still participate, but I no longer
believed that I would ever
find a method that worked for
me. That is until our last Workshop
when I successfully – yes,
I did say ´successfully´ – started
a fuchsia from a tip cutting.
So I had to put this method to the test. A tentative one, but I had to find out if it was a fluke or for real. On a Saturday, I took my family to Carl’s Jr. for lunch and told them they all had to have a milk shake with their lunch. This was certainly the key I had been searching for – a milk shake.
I brought the plastic containers home and cleaned them. Took a small stryrofoam cup, poked a hole in the bottom with a pencil and added some regular potting soil. Put a shaft in the soil with the pencil and put my tip cutting down in that hole. Pushed the dirt around the cutting, placed the cup into the milk shake container and added a bit of water to moisten the soil. I snapped on the round top and put a piece of plastic wrap over the round hole in the top. I placed the container on the sill of a Northfacing window. A day later I checked the containers to see if there was condensation on them, so I would know if I had added enough water.
After a week or whenever I remembered, I removed the plastic wrap for a day and then replaced it at night. I’d wait a few more days or a week and remove the wrap for good. All four of the cuttings produced signs of growth. When the little plants grew through the hole in the top, I removed the top and put them in an Eastfacing window.
Based on this success, I took my family back to Carl’s Jr. and bought them lunch with milk shakes again. I repeated this for a couple of weeks before I pruned back my fuchsias this year. I’m happy to report that I’ve only had one fatality using the milk shake method. Not only can I start fuchsias from tip cuttings, but I have stumbled on an activity that involves the whole family.