Cutting Care

Here are some tips to help your cuttings thrive once they have arrived at their new home. 

The day your cuttings arrive: 

  • Unwrap your cuttings carefully and try not to break any foliage or roots.  
  • If you have a week or more before you can plant your cuttings, they will be happiest if you transplant into a 3-4" pot.  
    • If you want to remove the root cube, do so very carefully!  It is easy to damage the roots by doing this. 
  • Give your cutting a little water, but be careful not to overwater.  
  • Your cutting has been in a dark place while in transit so it needs to slowly adjust to light.  Place it in a window sill with no direct sunlight for a day.  Do not place under grow lights right away.  

Day 2:

  • Your cutting can be placed under a grow light (or in a brighter window) until you are ready to plant.  

Other Tips: 

  • If the leaves of your cutting get a little crispy, you can lightly spritz with water or place under a dome for a bit. 
  • Cuttings love to eat!  Feed them weekly or bi-weekly is fine too.  They love a fish emulsion or kelp fertilizer. These are great fertilizers: 
    • Fox Farm Grow Big
    • Gaia Green All Purpose (this is slow release granular)
    • Alaska Fish Fertilizer
    • Super Thrive (micro nutrients)

Planting: 

  • After the risk of frost has past, you can start hardening off your cuttings.  This will help them acclimatize to being outside in the elements.  For more info on this google "hardening off west coast seeds". 
  • When planting, dig a hole deep enough so that when you place your plan in the hole, you can cover a few leaf sets.   This will help tuber production. 
  • Add some all purpose fertilizer granules, alfalfa pellets and/or worm castings in the hole.  
  • Add your cutting in the hole and cover it all up.  

 

Tips for Getting Tubers from your Cuttings:

  • In our experience, time in the ground makes a difference!  Plant your cuttings as early as you can (without risking them) and dig them up as late as you can.  
    • there is a rumor (that may be more than a rumor) that less than 12 hours of sunlight is when the tubers develop the most so the longer you can leave them in the ground, the more time they have during the shorter days. 
  • Later in the season, fertilize low on the nitrogen and heavy on the phosphorous and potassium. 
  • Keep your plants deadheaded and don't allow them to go to seed.  
  • Planting your cuttings deep helps a lot.  Tubers will develop from buried leaf nodes.  Not only that, these tubers from leaf nodes almost ALWAYS have eyes! 
  • If your cutting develops tubers but they don't seem to have visible eyes, don't give up!  We have had eyes appear on clumps after 2 months of being planted in a pot!