Hi, plant friends. Time to propagate my Raffa D'Auffra Tetris Burma. 🎵Bloom & Grow🎵 Okay, plant friends. So this is Raffy. My Raffa D'Auffra Tetris Burma. I received him as a cutting in the mail from my plant friend that I met on the Internet Baffani. And now, since I'm in quarantine, I'm going to pay it forward and make a cutting for my plant friend Casey, who I also met on the Internet. And he's an OG listener of the Blue and Grow Radio podcast and just a killer plant friend. So Raffy has grown prolifically since we got him. He is actually pretty far from our Southern Facing Windows, but he's loving Bright and Direct Light. I built a mospole for him that he loves. He climbs up the mospole and actually, if you can see, he has climbed onto my fiance's desk. And at first, really wasn't a fan of that, but now I think that he's grown to like it. So I'm going to cut Raffy back and when I cut him back, I'm hoping that it will instigate him to grow maybe a little bit busier because he's pretty much on two different main stems. So I thought that I would do also a fun experiment and propagate him in four different growing mediums to see which rooted best. So I'm going to do water, standard water. I'm going to do lecha, semi-hydro. I'm going to do spagnum moss, which I've heard works great for erodes like this and then soil. So I am going to, he, we cannot move him because he is kind of attached to the desk. So I'm going to take some cuttings of him and I'll see you in a minute for the propagation time. All right, so I've set up my little potting tarp here. I just wanted to show you I have a mason jar of water. I have pre-rinsed lecha balls in a little semi-hydro setup. It's actually a glass from my National Tour of Cats. I also have a mason jar of dampened spagnum moss and some dampened soil, just normal organic potting mediums. So I took this really nice cutting of the raft. There's actually, it's separated. So there's two nice stems that we're going to cut and I'm going to take some node cuttings and do a little zoom in for you to show you what I'm doing. So I'm going to start here. Each of these is a node where a leaf grows out and then the other side is where the root will come. So you want to leave at least one or two nodes in each cutting. So you have the opportunity to have roots grow and then a leaf attached. So I'm going to hack these puppies up. Now it's just about getting, I want to get a few different specimens in each pot to make sure that we can give them all the opportunity to root. So we've got that one going on. That's going to have one, two options and then we'll put this one in there. As I was preparing the cuttings, I had to remove some of these absolutely gorgeous leaves. My new thing that I'm doing, my bathroom has no light. So I put these leaves in a little bud vase of water and it's like a little fake plant. It's like a little real fake plant, but it's basically a floral arrangement with raffa d'affir leaves. But I put them in a bud vase of water and I keep them in my bathroom and they keep for like two to four weeks. I've got some filled and real Brazil cuttings in there that are like killing it. So fun fact, you don't just have to compost these beautiful leaves. You can repurpose them and get a couple months out of them before you have to throw them in the compost heap. Alright, so it is April 11th. I've got my cuttings one in soil, two in moss, two in lecha and two in water. And we will see. So today is April 11th. We will see as the month progresses and by the time these are all fully rooted and ready to send. Hopefully the quarantine will be over and it will be the perfect reason to start spreading the planty love. So stay tuned. So it's been about a month and a half and I wanted to show you that the stem in which I cut. Where's it? This is where I cut to make the cuttings for Casey and I wanted to show you that new growth is coming from the bottom two nodes, which goes to prove that when you cut the top, it is going to instigate more bushy growth. Okay, so it's been almost two months, a little bit over a month and a half since I did this experiment and I'm up close and personal with you to show you the results. I'm honestly, I thought that these would propagate much faster. I thought they would root much faster than they did, but it's been a very interesting learning experience. So let's go with the simplest first. Definitely a successful water propagation. If you look at those juicy roots, they're super long and healthy. Casey is going to be very excited about those. After water, let's check the lecha. Now the roots are going to have attached to the lecha. Oh, wow. Oh, the roots are going to have attached to the lecha a little bit. So I'm going to have to take them out, but we got a lot of juicy roots in here, plant friends. Yes. I hope you can see there are roots galore out of these lecha. So I'm going to have to peel the lecha apart. Interestingly enough, the plants that rooted in semi-hydro have their roots are much more complex. So they have a lot of little roots growing off of the larger roots, lateral roots. So the root system is actually much more complex from the lecha than the roots that grew from the water, but they're both super good. I'm very happy. So sometimes I feel like when you root stuff, you need to like forget about it for a minute, because I had forgotten about it. Okay, next up we have soil. I kept the soil very moist to the best of my ability, and it has not rooted at all. Oh no, there's a tiny little root growing. Yeah, there's the tiniest little root growing in that soil. So damn, compared to the water, this is like barely anything. I don't know if I might stick this in sphagnamas to hope that to kind of coax that root to grow a little bit more, but that's very interesting for soil. And then we also have sphagnamas. Now everybody says sphagnamas is like the way to propagate, but this was relatively unsuccessful. This did not root this one. I don't know if it was a node thing, but there's no roots on this guy in the sphagnamas. And he was a nice juicy node. Then we have this guy also barely freaking rooted. There's a tiny root, a tiny little root growing out of that. So I'm going to stick him in water and hope that he grows a little bit more. And then this has definitely rooted because I can feel it's I'm having to tug it away from the bottom of the pot. Ooh, you're very strong. Okay, here we go. So this has one large root that has sphagnum in it. And it's just one straight root. So I would say, although from my research, sphagnamas has been more successful with propagation for eras like this. Water and semi-hydro definitely won in my little experiment, but how interesting. Honestly, after I've seen how semi-hydro has done to root stuff, I pretty much am exclusively rooting stuff in semi-hydro now, but I've still got some experiments and stay tuned for my what's propagating video. So I realized that I don't know how I'm going to send all these cuttings to Casey because they've all been in different mediums. I think I'm going to consolidate them to water for a few days to let them establish. And then I'll send them to Casey. The way that I like to send plants is I wrap the roots in a wet in some sphagnamas, a wet paper towel. And then I put that in a plastic bag to make that nice. And then I put that whole thing in a hard box. I've actually been saving little boxes that I've gotten shipments in because I have several, several plants to send plant friends. So that's the plan. Casey, my little cuttings of raffi are coming to you. And I hope this in for this video was helpful. And until next time, plant friends, keep blooming and keep growing.