The Thrill of Propagation

I enjoy plants more when I grow them from seed or from cuttings. I can just easily buy, but it's more challenging to sow seeds and watch a cutting thrive.

Growing cuttings is really challenging. My Mom told me it's easy. Just stick it in soil and it'll grow. My Mom had a very green thumb. I'm still a work in progress.

A few weeks ago, I embarked on my fourth or fifth cycle of propagating my Mom's bougainvillea collection. As far as I know, she never bought bougies. She exchanged cuttings with neighbors. 

After a few cycles, I think I'm finally getting better at it. Let the cutting drink water with liquid rooting hormone overnight. The next day rub the bottom with aloe vera and wrap it with her leaf, then stick in soil mixed with chicken manure and perlite. Let it slip water from the bottom and leave it in an area with indirect light. I covered it with a bottle with holes for a week and then removed the bottle cap. 

Water everyday and I found out by chance that watering with rice water and orange peels help give it a nutrition boost. Just make sure to dilute it. I only remove the bottles when the leaves are bigger already. 

And the reward comes when you continue to care for it. Prune every so often and feed it with complete fertilizer. It will produce flowers even when it's in a small pot. I haven't repotted any of the bougies I propagated. I'll wait until they outgrow the pot, besides I still have some of those Mom propagated. I'll re-pot those first.

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The Flowers that Love the Sun

The change to hotter weather has been horrendous. I've had to figure out how much water to add to my plants because of the heat. I have to be careful since I don't want to cause root rot or over watering. 

Well, there are some plants that thrive during sunnier weather. The kalachuchi (desert rose) I rescued from Mom's garden is so happy. It's been producing flowers non-stop.

The bougainvillea cuttings I propagated last year have been producing flowers too. I'm amazed even the smaller ones are flowering too. Bougainvillea truly thrives under the sun.

I have two santan plants I've been meaning to fix, but they've been producing flowers lately. I'll just probably add some nutrients to it. I'm scared it might get shocked if I re-pot it under this crazy heat.

My Gumamela plants are slowly recovering and showing signs of flowering again. I hope they will produce flowers again soon!

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Can I Still Save My Mom's Bougainvillea Collection?

The front lawn of my childhood home evolved through the years. From my younger years I remember we had santan plants, palm trees Mom used for fireworks, then a santol tree and then the past decade Mom planted a smattering of plants and she grew a huge bougainvillea tree.

The past few months I saw different varieties of bougainvillea bloom. I've been getting cuttings to try to propagate it. I was told it will likely not survive due to the construction. I've had some success, but I honestly don't know what varieties grew. In my haste, I just propagated them without labels, hahaha.

One has produced flowers and another one is starting to produce flowers too. I think they're the same color though. We dropped by my childhood home today and with the summer heat creeping in, I'm worried the plants might start dying. I got some cuttings again and I'll try one more time to propagate. This time I'm labeling them, haha.

Wish me luck!

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Successfully Propagated Mom's Bougainvillea

I've been trying to propagate Mom's bougainvillea trees. She was really proud to have several variants of it and told me she just propagated them from cuttings. I would always catch her trimming them in the afternoons. 

I asked her once how she would propagate bougainvillea. She told me, just cut a step and stick it in soil. She had a magical green thumb and could grow anything. She mentioned though that the white variety was the hardest to grow.

Everytime I visit my childhood home, I take a few cuttings of the different colors. They were always blooming, so I'd just cut the stem with flowers. I tried it several times and followed online tutorials. I even got river sand to see if it would help. River sand is expensive though, so I'd mix it with loam soil. 

I managed to successfully grow four pots. I have no idea what variants I managed to grow. I've been waiting for flowers to come out and one finally bloomed one! I guess it likes rice water because I gave it some last week. 

Ohhh! I'm so excited! It's just one flower for now, but there are tiny ones growing. I made another batch to grow to make sure I complete all the colors. I'm doing this because I'm not sure if the tree will survive the construction. 

Cheers to more gardening achievements!

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How to Successfully Propagate Bougainvillea

My Mom told me you can easily propagate any plant. Just get a cutting and stick it on soil. Mom had magical green hands (not just thumb). She managed to grow anything, even the wheat Tita Rose gave her because she couldn't grow it.

My Mom has huge bougainvillea trees in different colors. She grew it from cuttings and she was so proud of them because they always had flowers. Since I couldn't just dig and move the trees, I've been working on propagating them. 

I cut several branches last summer. I only successful grew two out of the 8 stalks I tried to propagate. I was already happy then, but I want to make sure I get all of the colors Mom has in her garden.

I cut several branches again a few weeks ago. I got thicker branches this time and cut longer sticks to propagate. Aside from using rooting powder, I added more perlite in the soil. I didn't see any new leaf growing yet after two weeks, so I watered it with garlic water. Few days later it started producing leaves! Aha!

More perlite + garlic water will help propagate bougainvillea faster 🥳

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Propagated Mom's Bougainvillea

My Mom has a very bushy bougainvillea tree in front of the house. During summer the tree produces flowers of different colors, fushia, pink and orange. I'm not sure if it's from one tree or several. She also has a white one of the side of the garage.

The frontage has seen several changes. It used to have palm trees and suntan plants. It also once had a fruit bearing tree. If I remember correctly it was a santol tree. Eventually Mom changed it to low maintenance plants and it's thrives through the years.

One of my projects is to propagate her plants, especially the ones I can't bring to my home. I took some cuttings and made a soil mix with some river sand. Its been over a month since I propagated the cuttings and some have grown new leaves. Yay! I'll probably give it another month to grow more roots, then I'll transfer it.

Let's see where this goes :)

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Propagating Bougainvillea and Rescuing Plants

I took cuttings of Mom's huge bougainvillea tree. She has various colours which I hope to propagate. I made several pots out of the cuttings. Mom told me before you just need to stick it in soil and it will grow. I hope it will be successful.

We got another set of Mom's plants. The summer heat has been making them crispy and I can't rely on the caretaker to water them properly. I've been learning a lot about plants since I have to research before I re-pot and organize them.

I saw a pot of snow white aglaonema and I was ecstatic. I told Sweetie the other night I didn't have other varieties of aglaonema and wanted the white one. I didn't actually notice that Mom had a white one, so I was really happy when I found one in her collection. It looked so sad though, so I dunked it in water for 30 minutes. It's recovering well now.

Other plants I got: yucca (I think) -

A bromeliad

And orchids -

I'm still working on re-potting them. I hope I'll be able to save them :)

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