If you've ever propagated a beautiful
house plant like this selection of pothos that I have right here, only to transplant it into soil and have
it die a gruesome and pathetic death, then this video is for you. Kevin
Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help
you grow a greener thumb. So I've got a bunch of
these pothos cuttings here. They've been rooting in water
for quite some time now. I've got a couple of varieties that I
didn't really even know about until about a month ago or so. So it's gonna be exciting to kind of
look through some of these varieties. But we're going to
discuss in today's video, how to take a cutting like this one,
look at all these roots. I mean, it's pretty gnarly. And successfully get it into the
soil and have it thrive once that happens. Because there's a lot
of things that can go wrong. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button for
Epic transplanting success, and let's get into the video. Before we get into the planting process
let's just talk about these water-rooted cuttings and why they grow a little
bit differently than something that you might root in soil. So I'll
show you the underside here. Here are all of the different root systems
of the cuttings that we've created. You can see every single one has
them. Some of them didn't make it. Those ones are not here anymore.
Rest in peace. But let's take a look. Let's just pull one out. So here's
a satin style pothos variety. This one has taken quite a while.
There's almost no root growth. We have this one tiny guy here and
this even smaller one right here. Is this still a candidate for
putting in soil? It certainly is, because remember you could have just
rooted this in soil in the first place. And some gardeners really think that
this is about as much root growth as you want from a water propagated
cutting before you put it in. And you'd want to avoid
something like this, which is a bit monstrous and
actually has a stem piece right here. Very, very odd. Nevertheless, you
can actually plant both of those in. Now here's a variety that again, this is the one that I didn't
really know about beforehand. This is called global green.
Again, nice root growth. So the real question is how does a root
develop differently in water than it would in soil? You can kind of think of a water-rooted
cutting as like the trust fund baby of the plant cutting world, because it didn't really have to work
to get these roots. They just develop. It's being bathed in a perfect mixture
of oxygen and water. And so these roots, I mean, it really wouldn't look
like this if it had grown in soil. It wouldn't look like this
if it had grown in soil. You'll find that the water-rooted
cuttings will have these longer, more frail and slender roots that you
do have to baby a bit when you get them into the soil. Let's pull a couple more of these and
just take a look at what we're dealing with here. So here's
another satin style variety. This one's got a great
amount of root growth. I'm pretty pleased with this
amount. Nice, it's spreading out. It's not too crazy, too
overgrown. Good candidate. Let's pull out this snow queen here. This one has one extremely
long and just sort of unruly root. It looks like another
one's coming out right here. But this is the one where you kind of
want to baby this a little bit when we put it in the pot. So I'll show you how
to do that. Let's pull this guy out. Again this is, look, you've
got some browning on here. I'm going to see if we can get a little
bit of that off, but it's still alive. It just is a little bit less likely,
at least in my opinion, to do well. It has the tendency to rot quicker if
you see this type of material on there. Next up we got this guy here, another
really long, thin slender one. Next up. Good amount of root growth here. Nothing
too crazy. So look, these are two thin, long roots. They're going to need more
time to establish in soil
than something like this. It's just a much more
developed root system. Here's another one of those global
greens. Great root growth. I mean this is, this is kind of ideally
where I want to put it in. They're just starting to fork
and branch out. We've got five, six different roots coming
out and we're in a good spot. Over here. Is another one of our Hawaiian's.
Another great one. That's looking good. And then a couple more of
these satin style varieties, one huge root. Okay. Let's talk about
how to get it in the soil. Okay. We have our rooted
cuttings. What kind of soil? What kind of pot do we put
them in? And then finally, how do we actually put them in that
pot? First of all, the pot size. I prefer going larger rather than
smaller early on, because first of all, I want enough space for this root
system right here to grow and expand. I don't want to cram it into some small
pot and kind of wind it around into the pot. So I've chosen one that's roughly
as tall as the root system here. I might put a couple of cuttings in
here and make one of those multi-planted pothos pots that I really like to
do. And then as far as the soil, remember these all existed in just
water and oxygen AND they're tropical. Pothos are a tropical plant. It's going to depend on the type of
plant that you're growing, of course, the soil mix that you will use. In today's video we're going to be using
the Organic Moisture Mix from Espoma Organic, who are the sponsors of
the video. What I like about it, number one it's good for
potted plants in general. But number two it's going to retain more
water than your average potting mix, which is great for a water-rooted cutting
that's used to living in pure water and air. So that's what
we're going to use. Now I want to show you at least my
method for getting them in successfully. So I've selected a few different
varieties here that I'm going to be multi-planting in. So I've
got a satin style variety. You can actually see right here, this is a little bit lighter
than you would want it to be. And that's because there's really no
nutrition in the propagation machine. So I assume once we put
this Espoma Organic mix in, it's going to actually establish itself
and then will start drawing nutrients and these will green up really nicely.
But these are all roughly the same size. We'll put them in something like
that. But what I want to do first, let's grab this little scoop here, is put down a base layer of this soil. You're kind of trying to get the
roots in AS IF they grew in soil. So you want to put a little
bit of a layer down at first. And then from here what I
like to do, first of all, we're going to have to remove these little
collars because we want to make sure we seat them correctly in the. Soil. We'll get our little
neoprene collars off. Oh, this is interesting. Look at that!
It grew right through the collar, the power of roots. So
I'm going to very gently, I want to preserve that root if I can,
very gently make a tear in this collar. There we go. Surgeon, plant surgeon. All right. Final one. Okay. So what I want to do now is I'm going
to suspend these in the air and sort of float them at the level that I would
want them to be. Just like that, somewhere like that. And then see
how these roots are just hanging? They're going to hang and
be back-filled around, which is the method that I
want to use. Because again, I don't want to coil the roots up and
just like smash them in there because then that is just not even close to the normal
pattern with which they would grow. So we're going to try to mimic as
close to that soil as possible. So it's a little delicate, especially if
you're planting three at the same time, but I'm just going to hold them like this. Let's grab a scoops-. Worth of soil here. Can get a
little messy here, but that's okay. Just going to backfill. Come in on this side. This might be the least messy
I've ever done this to be honest. And then I just spilled. One
more scoop should be good. Okay. So now they're, they're roughly in place so I can
start kind of shifting them around and mixing up the arrangement. So
we'll get this satin guy over here. Put this guy right about there.
This guy right about there. I actually have space for
one more, but you know what? If I have space for one more,
I'm going to add one more. But I'll do one with a smaller root. So
here's one with a smaller root system. What we'll do is we'll place this
one right here and we'll backfill just right there. So that's kind of a good way to fill
out the container without actually having to redo it. What's nice too, is if you miss, if you sink
these a little too low, you don't want to sink them super
low, then you can just gently firm the soil, just snug them up
just a little bit. There we go. That one's in. We'll snug
this guy up just a little bit, right about there. He's in.
And this one right here is in. We've left a little bit
of a lip here too. So now it's on to the next step. Our
first batch of cuttings is in. We've got four of them - focally
planted, a little multi- plant action. These actually aren't even
the same type of satin pothos, although the names are
escaping me at the moment. But what we have to do here is we have
to actually water this soil in pretty liberally, because again, they're
used to growing in water only. So we need to make sure
that we moisten this up. What this is also going to do is it's
going to firm up the soil around the root system that's now in there. And so
that's just another little benefit. So I like to be somewhat liberal, throw a drainage hole in your pot
if you don't have one already. I would recommend just buying one with
a drainage hole and then throw a saucer down here so you can start to
see as the water comes out. You can soak this quite liberally. And then what we'll want
to do here is remember, just because they have roots doesn't mean
that these roots are used to being in this medium. They need some sort of acclimation time
also known as sort of the transplant shock time where they've been ripped
out of their home and then put in a new home. They need some time to plug
in to that soil. In that time, it's almost like, not quite, but almost like they don't have a
root system and so good moist soil. And then in a second, we'll throw some humidity domes up or
a humidifier to increase the actual ability of the leaves to take in water
while the roots are getting established. Okay, we've got water running into the
saucer down below. So first of all, I'm going to pot a few more of these
up and I'll see you in a second. We have. All of our pothos cuttings
in their forever homes, or at least for now their homes. Because
I'm probably going to let these grow, take more cuttings and then I'll have
as many pothos as I'll ever need in my life. But what do we need to do now? Well, there's really two steps and one of
them is this little guy right here, but we'll talk about that second. The first thing you need to do is give
it a little bit less light than you would normally give an established plant of
the variety that you're propagating. So for these pothos, I'm going to keep them in a slightly
shaded area while they establish themselves. That's because you want them to actually
focus on plugging that root system into the soil, instead of just
like growing more and more leaves. You don't want them to do that. And
so cut the light down a little bit, that will decrease the amount of energy
and water that they're going to need. It gives them time to put
those roots down into the soil. But you also do have to keep
that root system nice and moist. And so there's two ways to do that. We just already touched on making
sure that that soil is nice and moist, but the second way to do it is to
increase the humidity in the air. And that's where something like a
humidifier would come into play. Now I've done a whole video on how to
use a humidifier featuring this one here from Tao Tronics. So check
that one out if you want. It's not that expensive of a piece of
equipment to get if you're doing a lot of propagating, but you don't need one. What you could do is you could
take a Ziploc freezer bag, some sort of humidity dome,
some sort of plastic dome, put that over the top of your cuttings. That's going to lock in a little bit
more moisture and the plants will be able to take in some water from their leaves
to supplement while the root system is established. That's more or less THE secret
for successfully transitioning a water-rooted cutting into the soil and
having it not undergo a lot of shock and not die a terrible death. So
thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this, share it with
a friend. Like the video. Subscribe. And until next time,
good luck in the garden. And keep on growing.
