eggs & tea blog

Here is the results after one month, the percentage of each test case that still appears alive:

Overview:

1. Every single cutting in the soil/manure mix died.
2. The dip’n'grow vs. peroxide cuttings are doing about the same.
3. The potting soil is keeping the cuttings green and alive looking, but i think they aren’t actually rooting.

I bought a small temperature/humidity logger, and clipped it inside the tent.  Here is a typical 11-day period in September, while the cuttings were being misted a few times each day to keep them moist:

As you can see, temperature can dip down to 11ºC at night or spike up to 35ºC on hot days. Humidity it pretty much the inverse of temperature, around 92% at night, dropping as low at 40% on hot days. But the article on the HTS website says: “Propagation of tea plants needs a facility where constant temperature 23-29ºC and humidity (80%) are maintained.”  Daytime temperature seems OK, but nighttime is way outside this range, and humidity is almost never close to 80%.

Today i bought a 8×20′ piece of plastic to cover the tent, following Mealani’s shade tent instructions.  They said to add this cover for the second month, so that’s what i’m going to try.

Related posts:

1. Tea cuttings – at 4 months Out of 424 tea cuttings started back in September 2008,...
2. Cuttings in shade structure, update After adding the plastic sheet over the structure, as expected,...
3. Big new batch of experimental tea cuttings Last time i wrote about cuttings, i concluded that there...
4. Latest tea cuttings – at 3 months You may recall from my previous posts big new batch,...
5. Tea update, planting and propagating There’s been lots of progress on the tea recently. Lots...

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