How important is the "humidity dome" concept?

[silveradocanman]

Hey all, being my first year rooting cuttings I have a question on just how important is the whole 'humidity' concept for new cuttings? I had a lot of free cuttings from friends family and some that I took off a couple of my existing trees to play around with over winter, they all seemed to work fine without having anything to trap humidity in. Is this normal? What is the point of having such high humidity for starting cuttings? Is my success isolated because most of the cuttings I took were from my climate already?

I ask because I finally bit the bullet and pay some money for some cuttings that I don't want to take chances on. Should I start worrying more about humidity? Or should I take the advice of "if it aint broke, don't fix it". Oh, Im in SoCal, zone 10

Any advice from those more experienced would be much appreciated!

Mike

[growcrazie]

I have taken cuttings and stuck them in big pots filled with pro mix and left them out all winter and had most of them root. If I get a new cutting that I have limited amounts of I want to increase my chances of rooting so I use a humidity box, I still loose some but the % is higher. This year I lost more cuttings than in the last 2 years but I think I kept them too wet. I don't know how they would do in z10

[growcrazie]

yes I left them out in the weather all winter in z6 and more than 50% rooted. I would only try it if you have a lot of extra cuttings but it will work. I have a big LSU purple and Brown Turkey that I can take a lot of cuttings of

[fitzski]

ok, so if i put them in an unheated GH in early March I should have a pretty good chance they will root.

I have a dozen or so "extra" large cuttings that I'm going to try this with.

thanks

[growcrazie]

its worth a try, it worked for me

[fitzski]

Many folks including commercial fig growers like Tim Clymer at Three Fold Farm do not use humidity domes. He roots his cuttings in his low heat and low humidity basement.

I have been going without this winter and my success rate is much better than last year when I used humidity domes.

The problem most people run into with humidity domes is how the acclimate the cuttings to "normal" humidity and that's where I lost a bunch of cuttings last year.

Here's Tim Clymer's method that I've been following this year.

http://www.threefoldfarm.org/blog/simple-fig-propagation

[Rewton]

I have went back and forth about this in my own practices. Sometimes I add moderate humidity and sometimes I don't. To get a cutting to form roots to begin with, and to "wake up" and start growing, at least the lower part of the cutting needs to be in humid conditions at a reasonable temperature. Once a cutting with decent roots is potted up I'm not sure if added humidity is necessary or beneficial. One issue I often have with cuttings is that decent roots form but the cutting fails to break bud. I have tried to coax this to happen by adding more humidity but haven't really noticed that this helps so far. Some of my best success is to root outdoors (in the shade) in the late Spring when the weather is warm and somewhat humid. I put cuttings (with no pretreatment) into tree pots with well draining moist potting mix and no added humidity. They do great.

[DBJohnson]

So far, I'm seeing a higher success rate with Tim Clymer's direct pot method than 3-cup, plastic bag, Spagnham moss, or coir methods. I plan to give the "lasagna method" a try, but I'm seriously leaning toward direct pot for use in the future. Honestly, acclimating cuttings for lower humidity is a pain in the tuchus and where I have lost the majority of my failures.

Direct potting using Tim Clymer's method seems to work really well. Why fool around with what works?

[WillsC]

Acclimating cuttings from high humidity to low is not hard at all. Just make sure the plant is growing fast is very well rooted and has at least 6 palm size leaves. Fertilize it, wait a day then trim off 75% of each leaf and wait another day then just in one step take it out of the high humidity and park it in the low humidity ambient environment, in the shade. It really is just that simple. It will sulk a few days then take back off again with new leaves acclimated to ambient conditions.

[Rafaelissimmo]

I have to agree with Wills, I've not had too much difficulty transitioning cuttings from humid to ambient, but I am a little more hands on, if leaves droop, instead of cutting I put them back into humidity and shuffle constantly for a few days. If you don't have that kind of time available then cutting leaves as Wills stated also helps.

[silveradocanman]

Great, thanks for the feed back!

[Harborseal]

I never use humidity although a lot of people do. I just get mold if I use it. Different people have different results using the same methods due to the many differences in where we live, among others. I asked him to give us an idea of the temperatures involved, since that can be a key issue.

[paully22]

In my zone, it is Important for newly rooted cuttings & up-potting

[Taverna78]

When i transition is normally in 1gal pot and i use 2 liter bottle cut off bottom as dome. When I start transitition I just drill little smaller than pencil size hole every other day in bottle leaving cap on and in tact. Once I see the leaves are getting breeze threw bottle holes I known is okay to remove bottle. Tis way no cutting no flip flop just 2 second hole.

[cis4elk]

For me in Colorado, our ambient humidity is very low so doming is needed. I take a different approach though and never have complete closure of the "dome/cup" and slowly increase the air exchange as the roots and leaves dictate. If the leaves look stressed(which they almost never do, unless I have a root rot problem) I decrease the air opening.

[IamKriya]

I've had the most success with higher humidity. I've also experienced too much humidity, which worked against what I was trying to accomplish. Definitely, more humidity is better but there is still a balance that has to be maintained. Good luck!

[Sarahkt]

I have the best results with using a plastic bin near a space heater to maintain high humidity and warmth during the initial root forming process. I air it out once or twice a day when checking for mold, roots, leaves, etc. When there are roots touching the sides of the cup, I add a secondary opaque cup with a little water inside to maintain humidity and moisture levels between the outer cup and the internal cup with holes on the sides and move to the heat mat. I believe the little bit of water between the two cups helps prevent some of the heat mat forcing bottom moisture up (and harming roots on the bottom). If lots of leaves form before I see roots, I usually move out to the heat mats before the leaves get big, and don't notice any adverse effects due to the change in humidity.

Washing the cuttings with dilute bleach helps prevent most but not all mold issues in the humidity bin, and wrapping the tops with Parafilm and waxing the tops helps prevent desiccation when the cuttings get moved to the normal humidity + heat mats near a window. I used to have trouble with mold occasionally forming under the Parafilm (usually on/near green buds), but making sure to dry the cutting completely to prevent moisture from being trapped under the Parafilm seems to have solved it.

[Harborseal]

Acclimating cuttings from high humidity to low is not hard at all. Just make sure the plant is growing fast is very well rooted and has at least 6 palm size leaves. Fertilize it, wait a day then trim off 75% of each leaf and wait another day then just in one step take it out of the high humidity and park it in the low humidity ambient environment, in the shade. It really is just that simple. It will sulk a few days then take back off again with new leaves acclimated to ambient conditions.

To a Floridian, "low humidity" is anything under 92%.

[WillsC]

The high humidity is just a summer thang. It is 52% here today thank you and about 19 degrees, well feels that cold anyway. Actually a bone chilling 56 degrees and 30 mph winds.

[timclymer]

Glad to hear that others are having such success with the method I've written about (I won't claim that it's mine originally but I've tried to do a good writeup on it).

One other thing that I like about a direct-pot method with parafilm: no need to "prep" cuttings (beyond any trimming you want to do). I haven't washed or disinfected a cutting in the past 2-3 years and have no issues with mold or fungus. Just another way to save a little bit of time and hassle.

To answer the originally question, humidity itself is important, but doesn't need to come from a "dome". The parafilm does the trick for me without some of the drawbacks associated with a high humidity rooting chamber.

Anyhow, thanks for the mentions and the reports. It drives some traffic to our little site :-)

[bahamadan]

Since my first ever roll of parafilm recently arrived I'll definitely be looking into this. It is incredibly humid here, but we also have a very high rate of evapotranspiration that exceeds our precipitation so I still have to bag cuttings but because it's overly humid they rot fairly easily.

[Coop]

I have become anti humidity dome. I've used it in the past and have had good results, but you have to baby the plants much much more in the transition and that transition can do them in! I'm all about ease of operation. Ive also found no difference or adverse results using no domes in my extremely dry warm basement.
Say NO to the dome!