Starting Baby Plants from Cuttings

I love plants. And I love growing them—both in my home and outside. And it's fun for me to start new plants, whether from seed or cuttings. When you propagate from cuttings, it takes more patience.

I am interested in plants that are beautiful, but also clean your air, and I had heard that sanseviera (snake plant) does this. It's a succulent, slow growing, and doesn't like direct sunlight. It was a bit tricky finding them locally as a plant, and I wanted to try growing some sanseviera from leaf sections. I put an ad on kijiji asking if anyone would be willing to give me some leaves from their own sanseviera, and I was fortunate in finding someone who gave me many leaves, and even a baby plant that had started growing outside the pot. Her momma plant was 25 years old! The baby plant that she gave me got roots pretty quickly when I put it in water, and I potted it.

I decided to start the leaf sections in water first, until they had roots. At that time, I didn't know how long it takes them to grow, so as soon as the first section had roots (this took several weeks) I planted it. Then I waited, and waited, and waited...  Nothing seemed to be happening. 

I did more online research and finally found a video of a woman starting them in water outside. At one point in the video, there was a note saying "5 months later"! Then she started pulling the sections out of the water, and there were little babies growing at the base of several of them, all differing a bit in size. She broke these off, put them to the side, and put the leaf sections back in the water. Then she planted the babies in potting soil. So this gave me a much better frame of reference. And it really makes a difference what time of year it is, and the temperature. 

For me it took much longer than 5 months. I was beginning to give up, so when I saw that first baby plant coming up in the section I had potted, I was totally thrilled! And here is a pic of that first success. You can see the leaf section on the right side of the pot, and the baby on the left side. It's already grown quite a lot. I'm thinking I should repot the baby by itself.

Sometime after that (another long time), more of the leaf sections in water started growing babies - again, it was so exciting for me!

I also started some African Violet babies from leaves that a friend gave me. First I tried putting the leaves directly in potting soil, and keeping the soil moist. They weren't looking so good, and they eventually rotted. So I got a couple more leaves from her, and switched to putting the stems of the leaves in water. The article I read claimed roots and babies in 2 months. Again, it took much, much longer than that. The leaves had many roots, but no babies, so I decided to pot them up and see what happened. A few months later, it was exciting to see the babies finally coming up out of the soil. 

It's true—I take pleasure in these small things. But there is something so wonderful about seeing new plants starting in your home when it is winter outside.