Back in 2017 a Chinese friend gave me some Okinawa Spinach (Gynura crepioides) which I was able to propagate, grow and use from a concrete pot at the front of our house, (the original article on how I did that is available here) but over the last couple of years it has become leggy and not very productive. I decided that the best thing was to again take cuttings, root the cuttings, remove everything from the pot and totally repot it using the new cuttings. So that’s what I did!
What it looked like when I originally potted it up
What it looked like a couple of months ago
I used two techniques to root the cuttings, both of which basically consist of keeping them wet. I did not use any materials to encourage the formation of roots like hormone powder, willow water or honey and they all formed roots remarkably well.
The first technique consisted of filling a jar with water, placing the cuttings with the leaves removed from the lower part of the stem in the jar and waiting (super-technical, I know!). After a few weeks they send out plentiful roots.
The second technique was to use my pot-in-pot plant propagator, and without even bothering to cover the cuttings with a bag to improve humidity. The process (assuming you have one of these propagators, if not check out how to make one here) is to remove the leaves from the lower portion of the cutting, push them into the coarse sand, and the keep the central pot full of water for a few weeks.
I didn’t really notice a lot of difference between the two sets of cuttings, except perhaps that the cuttings from the pot-in-pot propagator were a bit greener and healthier looking, but only a bit!
Once the cuttings had grown reasonable root systems, I removed everything (soil and plant material) from the original concrete pot, gave it a wash over, replaced the olla in the centre and then refilled it with potting mix. I then added a layer of sugar cane mulch, pushed some holes through it into the potting mix and inserted the cuttings. I then firmed the potting mix around the cuttings, refilled the central olla and watered them all in.
They now all seem to be quite happy and healthy!
Here we are a couple of months later, after an initial battle with snails and slugs, we are doing much better after they were evicted, now definitely doing well!
