up potting cuttings

[Clyde]

I have had great success with the three cup method up to a point. When it is time to remove the top cup my plants go from terrarium to desert and seem to give up. How do you transition to get plants used to real life conditions without inducing suicide?

[CoolClimateFigger]

I think I would make holes in the cups a few at a time and a few days apart to get them used to room temperature air over a period of time. I have an old fork dedicated for this purpose that I heat up and poke holes with, but a soldering iron is preferred. If they start drooping it will likely be because they got too much room temperature air too fast.

[Bluemalibu]

It's humidity rather than temperature that requires the acclimation.

[CoolClimateFigger]

Yup, Blue, you are correct. It's the humidity that needs to be slowly lowered.

[eboone]

A thin pointed knife or awl works well without the odor of melting plastic for poking the holes in the cups.

Eventually taking off the cup for an hour for a few days, then 2, then extending it helps as well.

[cis4elk]

I perforate all my cups by melting holes in the sides to start with, none of them are ever entirely sealed. In the start I put a small piece of clear tape(like Scotch tape) over some of the perforations and am able to remove them after I get roots and some growth. As the cuttings progress I start to slide the top cup off center a bit and secure it to the cup under it with a couple pieces of longer tape so it doesn't tip, this gives a little more air-flow. Another option to the next step is to cut some disposable chop sticks in half and put on piece on each side of the cup (2 sticks) and then set the top cup on top of that..which can also be moved off center for even more air-flow. When I did cuttings every year, I saved my cups and had a good variety of top cups to work with(different sizes and varying amounts of holes) and when you add the tricks I mentioned above transitioning to open air is really seamless.

[WillsC]

Best way to transition them is NOT yo have them in all that humidity in the first place

[eboone]

Without the top cup I worry about some slow cuttings drying out before rooting...but maybe they would not have rooted anyway. The top cup does slow down the drying out of the medium and reduces the need to keep adding water.

[figwood1]

I thinks Wills is right, when I had the humidity on them then switched I lost most of my leaves. Now I dont even use a top cup only time I loose leaves is if they die.

[WillsC]

A good though brutal way of weaning them off that high humidity is simply let them grow big enough then just take them out of the humidity in one shot. The plant will defoliate but will then regrow new leaves that are use to ambient conditions, or die.......if they are strong enough they will grow new leaves. Problem is all that takes a LOT of room. I started out using the high humidity program for growing plants it is a PITA........now they get started in ambient. When I grew them in the house in low humidity it worked fine but you will lose some weak ones but frankly the weak ones will probably die while trying to transition anyway. Outside in the GH as I start them now the humidity is higher and they do fine.

Far as watering and the need to do so more often in a lower humidity grow out, start bottom watering ONLY. Bottom watering while a pain is the best way to go for a few reasons but the biggest reasons are it keeps the upper soil surfaces drier and it does not compact the soil the way top watering does. That compaction of the soil drives out the air and leads to a greater chance of rot. This is a do as I say not as I do moment as mine get top watered by the irrigation system in the GH but I have so many I have little choice. Eventually I am going to put in an auto water flood table system in the GH but looking at my current to do list it should happen about 2019 lol.

[Backyard_Fig]

Agree with the bottom watering. That is something that I just started doing doing and regret not doing earlier on. I think it also helps inexperienced people such as myself from over watering

[WillsC]

Yes it sure does. The roots will dive deep for water and they can handle that excess moisture a lot better than that new trunk can. Just in a couple inches of water MAX.....capillary action is a wonderful thing. The best % of success system I ever tried was wicking the water up a piece of cotton yarn to the rooted cuttings. The wick sat in water 24/7 and the plant just pulled up what it wanted. Once you worked out the right soil mix but it is a fine line, too absorbent soil got a bit too wet and if soil mix wasn't absorbent enough the soil wicking chain would break and no water would wick up. Still for small scale it worked quite well.

[jrdewhirst]

Once I see roots through the side of the plastic cup, I remove any covering that promotes humidity. I figure that it's the job of the roots to supply water to the leaves. As soon as there are roots, I put them to work. I've never noticed a problem with this approach.