Over the last few years, I’ve been getting more and more into plants. Seeing how they grow and learning more about how each one works is so amazing! It’s definitely a learning curve but the more I learn, the better I get at growing instead of killing my plants. And the more green I see in my sun room, the more I want to add. It’s good for the air so it’s good for me, right?
Anyway, last fall I was gifted two money trees by a client who was moving out of the country. One didn’t do very well until I moved it right next to the heater right next to a window with a ton of light. On the other hand, its brother did amazing!! It grew wider and taller every day. I swear I could see the sprouts growing by the minute. But it started to grow a little too much… I noticed that some of the leaves were dying just as fast as the others were growing.
From the little I know about plants, I figured it needed pruned. If leaves are shading others, it’s hard to absorb the sunlight and they end up dying instead of growing. But I have also just gotten into propagation (taking a little bit of a plant and growing a new one) and wondered if I could propagate the leaves I was cutting off instead of just throwing them away. I Googled and found out this IS possible with money trees so I tested it out. Now that I’ve successfully propagated my first leaf cutting, I wanted to share how I did it!
Okay so first, here is my beautiful, slightly over grown money tree. You can see that there are a lot of leaves overlapping each other. For the most part, this seems to be okay. But taking a few here and there will help the plant feel better. I started by finding the leaves that were stuck behind others and didn’t seem like they were getting as much sun. Towards the end of the stem where it meets the “trunk” of the tree, there’s a bump or bulb. Using sharp, clean scissors, I carefully cut this bump off the “trunk” at a slight angle. This left me with a set of leaves and a nice length stem. Sometimes it’s easier to cut at an angle than others. The goal is about 45 degree angle so you have a lot of surface area. If the cutting doesn’t look quite right, just use your scissors to carefully cut a deeper angle. It should look like this one here.
Next, I carefully dipped the end in some root growth hormone. It’s only about $5 at Walmart and will last a long time as you only use a little at a time. Gently tap off excess powder and place in a jar with water in a well-lit space. Every week, change out the water and in a few weeks you’ll start to see some roots growing! This one took me about a month, but another one I started about the same time isn’t growing as fast. Once the roots are about an inch long, it’s time to plant your cutting. Remember to put rocks in the bottom of your pot and a drainage hole so you don’t end up with root rot! And now you are on your way to build a garden 😊 As always, if you take any fun pictures or videos, tag me on Instagram @SmileMakePeopleWonder and use the hashtag #DandelionSmiles. Don’t forget to subscribe so you won’t miss out on the next exciting idea.
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