Multiplying your plants by cuttings and offsets is a major part of the hobby for many growers, and often seems to be the way newcomers to the hobby get started in building up their collections. Personally, the vast bulk of my propagation is done through vegetative means, so I thought that now that we are coming into warmer weather and the plants are coming out of dormancy it might be good to share some tips and techniques.

I'm currently trialling rooting some Trich cuttings and Loph pups in fine, sifted scoria. I'm curious about non-organic mixes to aid in rooting slow growing mexican miniatures as I have seen some good results online a couple of years ago. I also like the excellent drainage afforded by this medium. I figure that once roots emerge, a low dose of diluted soluble fertiliser and some seaweed extract will provide some nutrient without overfeeding the plants.

Who else has some tips?

Faucaria are apparently hard to get to root, but I've had excellent success using sand or coconut coir. Individual leaves can be rooted, but I don't yet know if they do anything after getting roots.

Can anyone share tips on rooting Myrtillocactus? I seem to have a terrible time of it.

I think sifted scoria is best for rooting media but I use sifted clay base cat litter.
The strength of cat litter is not good enough but you can get it very easily.
I shift 3 sizes and use medium size for rooting.
Fine one is used for seed germination and coarse one is mixed into normal cactus potting mix.

Cat litter rooting media is used 2 cm on top only. Bottom is normal cactus potting mix.
I set cuttings in spring and repotting next spring.
Hanazono

I do much the same as Hanazono but use a thicker top layer of about 5 or 6cm and my regular mix underneath. This way once the roots form they will head underground and find the nice soil below. I find the thicker top layer will help the cuttings stand up and also prevents the cutting face from rotting.

I use either fine Scoria, Coarse river sand or a nice crushed rock mix I found at my local landscaping place.

Never had any problems rooting this way, I have most recently used it for some astrophytum degrafts and it worked nicely.


As for Myrtle I think Lachy is correct they like heat and can take a while to throw out roots depending on the plant anywhere from 1 month to 6 months is possible.

I use a different way for small Mammillaria.
When you bury soft body in soil for rooting, rotting will start quite easily.
I use a normal cactus mix and stand up cuttiongs on the surface.
Fill up coase Zeolite to support cuttings.
I did about 100 of Mammillaria luethyi cutting last summer. This is the result in this spring.
Hanazono

I tried the HN/Hanazono method this afternoon for some Rebutia heliosa pups... Let's see how this works...

I've got a number of cuttings going using the above tek now:


The abovementioned Rebutia heliosa pups. I love this particular Rebutia.


Some Copiapoa hypogaea pups... don't have any experience rooting offsets of this one. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

And here's one I prepared earlier:

These are some cute little loph pups. I'm keeping these in pure scoria for a season. They get a little water and a hint of dynamic lifter now and then... and seem to love it. The scoria is gold for establishing good roots on this particular genus.

I love what looks like a crest starting on that loph. Nice work lachy thats one thing that got me interested cacti and succulents the ease at which you can propagate them. I would love to be able to get scoria that size the smallest i can get here in SA is 10mm.

Cheers for that CC... the scoria I can get here can be a bit hit-and-miss in terms of quality, and there's certainly a lot of dust packaged with it. I usually buy bags of seven- or ten-mil scoria and then run it through a couple of different grade sieves until I'm happy with the resultant product.

I've also found bags of 2-5 mil grit (looks like quartz to me) that I reckon I may try in some non-organic mixes for slow growing mexicans.