Propagators

Rooting kit

The tabletop propagator, the sphagnum to root in, the root booster and the pipettes.

The COMPLETE minimum for rooting your first cuttings on a windowsill: the propagator, the medium to root in, and what goes in the water. Those are the three things it takes, and buying two of the three is how you end up with an empty propagator.

The dome holds humidity above 80% with no equipment at all, which is the condition in which a cutting roots in three weeks instead of eight — or does not root at all, if the air is the dry air of a house in winter. Long-fibre Chilean sphagnum is what we root in ourselves: naturally antifungal, and with a water retention that forgives a forgotten watering.

Root Complex is not a fertiliser: it is what you give when roots still have to form, and it pushes rooting without forcing growth — which is the opposite mistake, and the more common one. It is dosed at 5 ml per litre in the rooting water, and it is the one point in the process where a wrong dose takes the whole batch with it: that is why there are two pipettes and not none.

What's in it

• 1× Propagator S — Box only Tabletop greenhouse with adjustable vents, for a few cuttings or a small sowing.
• 1× Chilean long-fibre sphagnum 300 g — 300 g pack Chilean long-fibre sphagnum up to 15 cm, sustainably harvested. 300 g yields 10–12 litres.
• 1× HESI Root Complex — 500 ml Root booster and recovery tonic for cuttings, young plants and repotting.
• 2× Graduated pipette — 2 ml Graduated pipette for measuring concentrated feeds instead of guessing.

Bought separately €55.25 · You save €5.50

How it goes together

1. Rehydrate the sphagnum for ten minutes in warm water and wring it out well: damp, not soaked. 300 g yields 10–12 litres — a tabletop propagator needs a handful, and the rest reseals and waits.
2. Fill the pots without pressing and put one cutting in each, with the node below the surface of the sphagnum: roots come out of the node, not the cut.
3. Water with Root Complex at 5 ml per litre. It is not a fertiliser: it pushes rooting without forcing growth, which is the opposite mistake and the most common one on an unrooted cutting.
4. Dome on and vents closed for the first ten days.
5. Then open the vents a little at a time over two weeks, and only afterwards move the cuttings into pots. Skipping the hardening off is how you lose cuttings that had already rooted.

What else you need

• The cuttings, and a clean blade. If the room is below 20 degrees, bottom heat: we do not sell it.
• The pots to move them into afterwards. The Ø 10 is the size for a freshly rooted cutting. — Anti-spiralling aroid pot Ø 10 × 12 cm · 0.5 L €1.25
• The propagator with the LED bar, if there is no windowsill or it is dark. This bundle carries the box on its own. — Propagator S Box with LED light €5.95

All equipment · The plant catalogue