Fuchsia Propagation
Ron & Debbie Monnier
Monnier’s Country Gardens, LLC.
Many of you know that our nursery is a fuchsia collection that got out of hand. As the collection grew, so did the need to sell plants to enable us to care for the collection. The more we collected the more we had to sell. The more we sold, the more we were able to collect. It’s been a vicious circle and truly an illness. Today the collection has grown to include about 1300 varieties.
We propagate varieties in the collection from cuttings. Seed from a variety would give a different kind of plant. Over the course of a year we end up starting around 150,000 fuchsias. We might start as few as 3-4 of some lesser known varieties or as many as 2000-3000 of the popular ones. With that many cuttings to stick, we try to make sure the process is as streamlined as possible and the success rate is as good as we can get.
We have the best luck starting plants in early to mid-September, just after the summer heat is starting to subside. When we find the daytime temperature consistently below 80 degrees and the evening temperature around 55 degrees we shift to high gear. We have found that fleshy young growth makes the best cutting material. We have to manage the mother stock to get that kind of cutting material in the fall. Six to eight weeks prior to needing cuttings, all the mother stock is drastically pruned. This allows us fresh cutting material from the re-growth at a time when un-pruned plants would normally be getting woody. We also harvest cuttings from our display garden, but find the cutting material isn’t as good to start. It is typically quite a bit harder. Also, it seems like we always bring disease and bug problems out of the field as well.
Cuttings are harvested in the morning while they are cool and crisp. They are kept in a cool dark spot until they can be stuck. Many people will strike their cuttings in perlite or pumice, then transplant to a growing medium. We dip the cutting in “Vitagro”, a rooting hormone, then direct stick in a 2” pot that contains a soil media consisting of fine bark, fine perlite, and fine peat. We feel that the labor savings on direct sticking into a 2” pot offsets the cost of cuttings that do not survive. For the most part we propagate a whole flat, or 49 x 2” pots of each variety. The flat of fresh cuttings is placed on a bed of sand heated to 70 degrees.
The first 3-4 days are critical. If the sun comes out and wilts the cuttings in the early stage of rooting, we can experience loss rates of 50-90%. By keeping the beds shaded combined with regular misting, we can hold that loss rate to 10% if we should get a hot spell right after sticking. As the season progresses, days get shorter and we have more cloudy days, the chance of wilting diminishes. I get cranky if I see a loss rate greater than 2%. We are going to experiment this year on our early cuttings by covering them with remay cloth. Remay shades as well as acts to hold in moisture. I know a couple of growers that swear by its use.
When all goes well the plants will start showing roots in 7-10 days. The best starts are made when the air temperature is slightly cooler than the root temperature; root temperature 70 degrees with 60-65 degree air temperature. It is really important during the growth stage to have enough water for the new plant, but not so much as to cause botrytis above the soil line or phytophtera, pythium and rhyzoctonia below. We want the plant to grow, but not aggressive rank growth. There are products we can and do spray, but the first line of defense is always good water and fertilizer management.
It’s not uncommon for the leaves that are touching the soil to die. We will go through every flat and remove all the leaves that might be dropping to prevent disease problems. While we have the flat out, we will pinch the new growing plant. We try to have everything pinched at the 2nd or 3rd node, depending on its growth habit. All that pinched material makes excellent new cuttings and we start even more. It always reminds us of the loaves and fishes story. One can make an abundance when starting from very few.
If everything has gone well, we will have starts ready to use or ship in 8-10 weeks. I’ve seen a lot of propagation operations. Everybody has their own way of doing things. This way works for us, but it’s just the way we do it….