How to Propagate Houseplants from Stem and Leaf Cuttings
The first time I ever propagated a stem cutting, it was by accident.
I was throwing a party, and I didn’t have time to run to the market to buy flowers for the table centerpiece. So I cut a few stems off my overgrown Swiss cheese plant and stuck them in a vase filled with water.
The leaves stayed lush and healthy, so I left them in the vase for weeks.
I even left them when I went on a week-long vacation. I came back and checked the stems, and what do you know? They had developed a mass of roots.
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I put the surprise plants in some soil, and years later, they still grow happily in my home. In fact, I’ve propagated new specimens for dozens of people in the same way.
I handed them out, along with some of my sourdough starter, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to friends and neighbors who had caught the houseplant and bread making bugs.
All that is a long way of saying that, at least with some species, propagation via stem and leaf cuttings is reliable, simple, and easy-as-pie. Much easier than mastering a sourdough boule.
While we can’t help you perfect your bread baking in this guide, we can help you master the art of propagating houseplants with stem and leaf cuttings.
To help make that happen, we’re going to talk about the following:
The process for either propagation method is fairly similar. It’s mostly a difference in what parts of the plant you snip away from the parent.
Let’s start by looking at some of the species that can be propagated this way.
Species to Propagate via CuttingsAll plants have something called a meristem. It’s the
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