Day 1
6/1/13

I received 2 psychotria alba leaves in the mail this morning. They were packaged well. They had no signs of damage other than a slight browning of the tip on one of them. The other one was flawless. The vendor wrapped them in a moist thin paper towel of sorts. So far I am satisfied with my purchase.

After looking at ringworms leaf cutting tek and asking a couple questions I decided to use a mix of sand and cactus soil, as per his instructions.

I mixed coarse western sand with cactus/succulent soil by eye. I did not use any ratios. I would have prefered to use pine bark based soil but I didn't have any on hand.
Ring told me to 'put in a good bit' of sand so that's what I did. If I had to guess, I would say I made a ratio of 5-1 soil to sand. I then layered a square bucket with 1-2 inches of the substrate and thoroughly watered it. It held the water and did not drain well despite having drilled 4 holes in the bottom prior to layering. I should have added more sand. It does not matter much, all that means is that I will have to water it less than I would have if I added more sand.

I then put in a very thin layer of my soil/sand mix- just enough to soak up the water and laid my leaves in bottom side down. I covered both of them up to their 'necks'(leaving about an inch of the tip exposed) with about a half inch to an inch of my soil mix.

I was using a mini seed greenhouse to start my other seeds for my garden. Unfortunately there is no top to my bucket. So since I am no longer using the top on the greenhouse because it started to get moldy due to excess humidity, I decided to cut it to fit the top of my bucket. This worked quite well actually and I am happy with how everything is set up.

I put my leaves at more of an angle, leaving more of the leaf exposed to light (in that humid environment them leaves will stay green for a year), making the rooted pieces easier to separate without damaging the roots. My leaves will sprout anywhere from 1-10 plants, and then it'll keep sprouting more continuously (I've had leaves sprouting plants for a year now, one leaf w/ over 30 shoots). If you plant the leaf at too step of an angle, the plants will grow straight up into a cluster. I've had best luck w/ placing the leaf almost parallel w/ the soil (the entire bottom of the leaf touching the soil, and 90% of the top exposed to light). These are very fun plants to grow and propagate, good luck, I'm sure them leaves will shoot in no time the way you have them!

Wow really cool thread, ill be following it closely as I'm about to do the same once the leaves arrive!!! Good work so far.

-2j

I can't wait to see how it turns out for you.

side note- I got spring water to spray them. Like legit water from a spring. I plan on adding a squirt of lemon juice to the spray bottle next time I spray them.

It takes 3-4 weeks for root growth, then another week or 2 before they shoot.

Thats not bad at all. I hope it sprouts soon so it has some time to grow before winter comes around.

Haha sounds good ill let ya know when I get started!!!

Also once they sprout you may want to adjust your water to 6.2 ph ish my other psychotria viridis seems to really enjoy that ph (I just use distilled water with cal-mag and just adjust the ph with ph up or down

I figure it would be better to use lemon juice to lower ph because it will also keep mold at bay.

Mold is typically not a problem at least for me. The plant seems to have a built in mold inhibitor. The substrate though, depending on how clean it is to begin with may grow some of the nasties, but the leaves should do fine.

That makes sense. If it grows in the tropics with high humidity it has probably developed some sort of mold repellant over the years. Thanks for letting me know. I'll use the lemon juice mix to spray the soil and regular water for the actual leaves. I have a lot of mold problems here for some reason. My seed starter greenhouse had a bad outbreak a few weeks back. I've been airing out the psychotria container 5x a day to help prevent it.

They seem to be doing good. Its only been three days. They haven't changed much but at this point no change is good.

I've been misting them and airing out the tub 5-10 times a day. I went to go mist them 5 minutes ago and noticed a small piece of something on the leaf. I went to wipe it off and right before I did I realized it was a small jumping spider. It made for some cool pics.

Just got mine in from an awesomely generous member of the nexus, whom I will not name as he can make him self known if he wants to

All in all iv planted 24 leaves 2 being out side in a pot just to see how they fare. Also some I used rooting hormone on to see if it will make a difference on how fast they root.. So its a big experiment!! And lastly the leaves I had left I decided to send down to another few people so they could get the experience of growing viridis also and hopefully they too will send someone leaves one day

Here are some pics

Wow nice. Thats a shit ton of leaf cuttings. Do you know for sure if they are viridis?

Yep, I checked the nodes on underside of the leaf and the leaf extends al the way to where it was attached to the plant, and the member here that sent them to me is very knowledgeable and said viridis hopefully I can get some little plants or leaves out to some other people !! generosity makes the world go round (not scientifically haha)

It looks like some of those leaves are getting crinkly. You should mist them ASAP.

I downloaded the pic with the one thats upside down and I can just make out the little spikelets or whatever they're called coming from the middle stem. Those are DEF viridis.

Yea they sat in the postal service for a week but I planted those last & the nicest ones first, the smaller leaves don't tend to have nodes I didn't take a pic of the big leaves

Notice how the leaf kind of curls down? So if you hold it in your hand with the top of the leaf touching your palm it kind of forms a cup. If you dropped the leaf, how do you think it would fall? What side do you think it would land on?

I think 99 times out of 100 it would fall with its top side facing down. I think this is why the nodes form on the bottom.

Thoughts?

Oh, and what soil mix are you using?

Wow that's an interesting thought !! I may have to test that out and see how it lands in a controlled test? And I always use a mix of 60% perlite & 40% vermiculite when trying to root anything & I also grow almost every plant I own in that mix be cause its basically ph neutral so at that point all I do is just ph my water and my run off always comes on on point. For my little viridis and other plants from the same area I run a ph of about 6.2 because the water/soil they normally receive tends to be more on the acidic side(in nature)

its never given me an Issue that way, even one of the pickiest growers does very well in this mix.... Marijuana,now I do not grow this cause I no longer live in an area that I can grow it.

Also another plus about and intert soil is you control any and all nutrients that go into your soil and plant, and not to mention if you over shoot on nutriants this mix will flush very easy . I also noticed it encourages more rapid root growth, here's my theory on why . Since this mix tend to dry out faster and need water more, then that means that the roots stretching for water more than say, and mix that contains a large amount of peat that drys much slower and less often

If I'm wrong about the above I'd love someone to correct me ^

Let me know the results of your experiment. I plan on buying some pine bark fines to sprout the new viridis leafs i'm getting. I plan on trying several different substrate mixes to see which one works best.

Perlite
Vermiculite
50/50 perl/verm
potting soil
50/50 soil/perlite
pine bark fines
1/1/1 perl/verm/soil
1/1/1/1 perl/verm/soil/fines
etc...

now thats a great idea!!! im very excited to see what works best for viridis!!