I want to tell you about a (as of today) happy ending on my salvia crop.

I had 6 beautiful plants. all cuttings from the same initial sprout I received almost 1.5 years ago. My cuttings already had one summer and they were all nifty and dandy when we approached this last July. All had beautiful leaves, many with 25-30 cm long and some plants were about 1 meter high. Not all plants were very sturdy but all in all I was pretty pleased with my little green fairies. But when this year's summer came it was too much for the little ones. It was very dry here, really really dry - about 10% humidity generally. Even though my plants were indoors, the lack of humidity was clearly killing them. It may not have been the humidity but possibly a virus they got, because of them being weaker, that one by one all lost their leaves and the stems began to rot.

In late September things were quite desperate as all plants have lost almost if not all their leaves. I had to do something, so I cut the leafless stems into 20-25 cm pieces and put them into a jar with water, hoping they would gain roots and/or leaves. I still left the plants in the vases some of them untouched. All of the stems that remained in the vases died. Also some of the cuttings died, even though all gained leaves; what was difficult was gaining roots. Eventually 2 of my "last hope" cuttings gained roots and after 2-3 weeks I put them on a new vase. One of those cuttings took almost 2 months to gain roots!

Now I have 2 little "new" salvias. They look a bit strange and not on their prime as we are in the coldest time of the year and, even indoors the temperature is not great. But they are there and alive: the leaves look swollen and the stems seem healthy, so I foresee a positive outcome of this ordeal.

So to the many of you who have seen your crops die without apparent reason, fear not and use the stems (even if leafless) as new cuttings and put them into water. Tap water is fine, btw. Also I exchanged the water every week. It has worked for me!