How to use honey for you gardens purpose

Introductions
1

Hey All. :grinning:
I as many support the nature and the pretection of it and the animal within.
I saw on “Green Renaissance” that honey is surpose to be a good substance to protect your plant cutlings, and have been thinking of trying to make some experiments with this.

I have bought some Root Gel to use when i make cutlings, i have triede Root powder also etc.
Now i am thinking of making a homevideo of honey cutlings vs. root gel cutling, both in honey water and in soil etc.

I hope to do it over the next year, since here in Denmark it is Winter soon, and i am moving to Lithaunia to help a orphanage for a half year, so wont have much heat, sun or time - but maybe i try it our with the kids, and we can film or take pictures of the process…
Anyway - i just wantet to share the idea, hear you opinions and share the movie i saw, that gave me the idear.

Maybe some of you have tried it already??

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsF8UXwBy38

My finest regards to all your bees and the keepers :wink:
Mia Qvist - Denmark

2

Please do, that’s something I’d really like to see.

3

Sounds like a great idea, I am keen to see your video. The honey is used for plant cuttings to prevent cross contamination from the securities as well as provide an antibacterial barrier on the exposed cutting and give it a fighting chance to take.

5

Thank you guys :smile:

I have now finish this experiment, and tried it out 3 times.
The results are the same. - The honey dipped cutlings, are not working.They keep rotting and decompose.
The one with the cemical “Root it” - worked out in 3/4 of the cases, and the ones with not rooting substans applied, nigther honey or “Root it” worked our about 2/4 of the time.

  1. I first tried out with Wine cutlings but alle the cutlings died – they are so difficult to get to root, and mine was quite old and had not been kept in correct storage.
  2. I used cutling that are easy to set roots. “Cuban Oregano”.
    I made 4 with honey, 4 with “Rootit” and 4 without anything.
  3. I did the exact same as the above.

Every time the finish cutling were put into a “greenhouse” box, with “water beeds”(Magic soil) in the buttom. The cutlings grew into dirt mixed of 50% cutling dirt and 50% Vermuculite. All the plants were plantet into a hole, i had stuck out with a wooden needle.

After one week the ones with honey, has rotten, both ion the plant usually and also in the dirt. The other cutling were somewhat still alive - only some of them looked a bit sad - but no roots.
After 2 weeks, the score was 50% of the ones without anything was dead, and the rest along with the ones with “rootit” still lived, but some looked a bit pale.

after 3 weeks, the one with “rootit” seemed to getting stronger, exept for one of them, that were dead.
The onces with nothing on, didnt seemed much different from week 2.

Week 4. - the first signs of roots on the remaining cutlings. The “rootit” cutlings is growing and looking more green, but the Neutral ones, use their energy so much, that they are getting roots, but the plant above the dirt seems a bit week.

So conclusion - i have had more success using “Rootit” then the other methos, but since it is quite expensive when you put a lot of cutling during the year, i would perfer only to use it on the more expensive cutlings like Wine etc. or the really needed cutlings.
The honey experiment failed completely.

BUT i have not yet tried to compare honey-tapwater and regular tap water – I'll try that next, during the next year, and return with results

6

@Mia_Qvist Some cuttings don’t actually require rooting powder and are better left to their own divices

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7

Rose and Willow and lots of other shrubs will root if you just stick a hard wood cutting in the soil and forget it. Lots of other stuff layers itself…Rhododendron and nettle spring to mind.

8

Hey girls.
Thank you for your comment, i now that they dont actually need it, as my first informations in the title says, it was an experiment based on the youtube clip i linked at the top.

Have a nice evening :smile:

9

@Mia_Qvist
But if we don’t experiment then how will we ever know

10

Correct you are :smiley: And thats how all good things, and bad things are discovered :wink:

11

I’ve used honey instead of root gel previously and it is very successful in general. There were some cuttings which failed to take, I can go back to notes & check which ones, I think from memory it was those with harder ‘wood’ when mature. Success rates were comparable with root gel, more successful than root powders.
If cuttings are rotting they are too wet, poor drainage, the growing medium is important too.

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