Coleus: how to take coleus cuttings, 1 by tigerlily123

tigerlily123 wrote:
this is the tray with all the cuttings-you can see that they are very close to each other-you don't have to spread the cuttings out. You can see the stem cuttings are somewhat apart from the tip cuttings. In the back, I showed 3 plants-on the left is a cutting that got transplanted a week or so ago and I have taken the tip off so it will start to branch. I just left one node above the dirt -I will get 2 branches from that one. The middle one, I took the tip off and left 2 nodes to get more branches ( It depends on the amt of space between the nodes as to whether I left one or two nodes-if the plant is leggy (2" or more between the nodes, then I will only leave one node-because if you have that much space now, it will only get leggier as the plant grows)
The plant on the right has been cut back several times and is low and full and ready to go.

Water the cuttings in the am every day-just once, keep in as much light as possible-I keep mine in the greenhouse in full light. The more light and warmth it gets, the faster it will root. They will go thru a wilting phase for a few days and then perk back up. On average, they should be rooted in about 10 days or so-with good bottom heat, proper moisture and light.
I personally don't use a rooting hormone. The cheap kinds that are readily available ( like Rootone) I don't think make any difference. I did some experiments this winter with dragonwing begonias, lantana, purslane and coleus where I did half the tray with and half without and I didn't see any difference at all.
The one problem you might have is if you don't remove the bottom leaves and they start to rot-that could become a problem because it will spread-but using rooting hormone won't prevent that as it is above the soil. If that happens, just clean up the rotted parts and the rest will root. Don't overwater and you should not get a fungus. I have been doing this for years and never had one.
If anyone has any questions-please ask-this is easy to do, but until you have successfully done it a few times-like anything, it can be confusing.