plant propagation trick

Nothing new here.  But here's a trick if you didn't know it.....



note the strings at the bottom of the cups.  They go all the way up through the soil.  All I have to do is keep the 'reservoir' full and the strings will 'wick' up the water and keep the soil moist in the cups.  Makes taking a cutting that requires constant moisture more easy to manage. 

The bigger issue is I took cuttings today about 7 hours ago, right before this near blizzard.  In the dead of winter.  So they all will suffer severe transplant shock.  We'll see how my herbs do.  Nonetheless, this is a good technique to add to your root cutting repertoire if you didn't know it already.

Hydroponic without moving parts!About 15yrs ago I was growing  plants indoors using this method.I would wind thick nylon rope through the pots with a foot or more of the rope coming out the bottom.The pots were placed on cinder blocks in kiddy pools.I would fill the pools with a water /nutrient solution and be able to leave the plants unattended for 1-2 weeks!The rope wicked up as much moisture as the plants needed.

I've used this trick.  The "wicks" I use are Rayon mop strings (I found the cotton mops didn't wick the moisture as well due to the natural oils in the cotton.)  Anyway, The cheap GoodWill mop heads (I get them at the grocery for less than $3 I think) work great for this.  I usually pull apart the binding at the middle of the mop head and then I get a nice size bundle of strings that can be cut in half or even quarters for small cups.

Fantastic idea, first time I've seen it.  Could work for seed starting too?

I actually use the wicks to be able to start seeds directly in the plant cups in the NFT pipes or floating rafts for my Aquaponics system.  Otherwise I would either need to start the seeds separately and transplant them or I would have to remember to top water all the time till the seedlings got big enough to reach the water.  With the wicks I save a huge amount of effort (transplanting tiny seedlings into cups of gravel is very tedious and many seedlings don't survive the treatment if you are not very careful and gentle.)

It will definitely work for planting seeds in small plant pots, just make sure the seed is touching the wick and that the wick material is able to lift the water far enough to keep the seed moist.  (The rayon mop string is probably only good for lifting moisture 4-6 inches from the water source so it really only works for small pots not for huge ones.)

If you want to keep larger plants watered this way, use lots of strings and you only need to lift the water as high as the roots of the big plant, not the surface of the dirt in the pot for the big plant.