{"id":38,"date":"2007-05-01T00:46:56","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T10:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/?p=38"},"modified":"2008-08-17T14:43:45","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T00:43:45","slug":"tea-cuttings-not-making-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/2007\/05\/tea-cuttings-not-making-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea cuttings not making roots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like many of the tea growers on the island, i&#8217;ve attempting to start my own tea from cuttings, with not much luck.  So far i&#8217;ve tried 13 batches of cuttings, from 10 different sources.  So far, only one batch (from Eliah&#8217;s plants) had a decent success rate.  All of them from random (non-cultivar) sources have done very poorly.  I keep a spreadsheet and do an inventory each month.\u00c2\u00a0 Out of around 1000 cuttings, i have had to cull around 600 so far.  This is a lot of work.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve noticed one thing, though, about the cuttings that don&#8217;t make it.  Some die quickly, others die slowly, and some take a very long time, holding onto their green leaves for weeks or months until finally giving up.  When i pull these out of their pots, many of them have what appear to be &#8220;root balls&#8221; on them.  Some pictures to illustrate:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01351_root1.jpg\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"style1\" src=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01351_root1_small.jpg\" alt=\"root1\" width=\"201\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01354_root2.jpg\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"style1\" src=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01354_root2_small.jpg\" alt=\"root2\" width=\"88\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01357_root3.jpg\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"style1\" src=\"http:\/\/washedashore.com\/blog\/07-2\/DSC01357_root3_small.jpg\" alt=\"root3\" width=\"138\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It looks like these branches really <em>tried<\/em> to make roots, but each time it just made a short root and stopped, resulting in these &#8220;balls&#8221;.  What could cause such a thing &#8211; plant disease? lack of nutrients? nematodes? too much or not enough water?  It doesn&#8217;t seem to be systemic &#8211; some plants, right next to a failure, with the same potting mix, did great with lots of healthy roots, so it&#8217;s probably not the soil composition.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone have any idea?  <a href=\"mailto:ben@vterrain.org\">Email me<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many of the tea growers on the island, i&#8217;ve attempting to start my own tea from cuttings, with not much luck. So far i&#8217;ve tried 13 batches of cuttings, from 10 different sources. So far, only one batch (from &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/2007\/05\/tea-cuttings-not-making-roots\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crops","category-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ahualoa.net\/eggsntea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}