Why You Should Be Using Intermittent Mist By Dwayne Haskell

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2 As I have written before in my article The Magic of Misting, an intermittent mist system is essential to be consistently successful with rooting cuttings. Here are 10 reasons you should be using intermittent mist 1. Intermittent mist keeps the cuttings moist, minimizing transpiration from the leaves. 2. Intermittent mist keeps the cuttings and the immediate area cool. 3. A misting system allows you to produce multiple crops per year. 4. Once set up, the system runs with minimal supervision. 5. You can concentrate on other tasks, knowing the misting system is taking care of your cuttings. 6. In the event a batch of cuttings fail, intermittent mist allows you to immediately start another. 7. You can produce 10's, 100's, 1000's, or even 100,000's of cuttings at a time with a misting system. 8. With intermittent mist, certain cuttings like hydrangeas form roots in as little as 3 weeks. 9. Using an intermittent mist system reduces the amount of labor involved over other propagation methods. 10. An intermittent mist system will allow you to produce rooted cuttings that you can plant in your own landscape, give away as gift, or sell. And how about the best reason you should be using an intermittent mist system? Selling rooted cuttings produced under intermittent mist can be quite profitable! Be warned: you will be grabbing your calculator to check my numbers at the end of this report. You should probably grab it now so you know where it is. I believe intermittent mists systems are so important I occasionally give them away! 2

3 Now I will explain in much more detail each of the reasons I believe a misting system is vital to your success with rooting cuttings. Reason 1 was: Intermittent mist keeps the cuttings moist, minimizing transpiration from the leaves. So what is transpiration? Transpiration is the loss of water vapor from the leaves and stems of the plant. Think of it as perspiration (sweat). When you get hot, you lose moisture as you sweat. Plants do essentially the same thing. As the sun heats up a plant, small molecules of water are lost through the stomata. Stomata are small pores on the surface of leaves and stems, similar to the pores on your skin. The process of transpiration cools down the plant in the same fashion that perspiring does for you. During transpiration, water is pulled up through the roots stem of the cutting, keeping it from drying out. It does this by causing negative pressure in the leaves, which draws the water up through the stem. While some transpiration is needed to cool the plant, excessive transpiration reduces can cause the plant to lose too much water and stress the plant. Light, temperature, humidity, and wind also affect the rate of transpiration. careful control of these will greatly increase rooting success. How does misting help with transpiration? Misting help control transpiration in two ways. 1. It cools down the cutting 2. It raises the humidity around the cutting Cooling the cutting reduces transpiration because the stomata begin to close, slowing down the transpiration process. Raising the humidity also decreases the rate of transpiration. The rate of transpiration is usually much greater than is needed to accomplish the cooling effect and to draw the water up into the plant. Intermittent mist is an effective means of controlling the transpiration process, which gives the cutting a better chance at forming roots. 3

4 Reason 2 was: Intermittent mist keeps the cuttings and the immediate area cool. So why does the cutting need to be cool? The first reason mentioned transpiration. To be brief, transpiration is the loss of water vapor from the leaves and stems of the plant. Cooling the cutting reduces transpiration because the stomata, the "pores" of the leaf, begin to close, slowing down the process. During the transpiration process, water is drawn up into the stem and leaves and exit through the stomata. Slowing the transpiration process allows the cutting to retain moisture, reduces stress, and helps the cutting to form roots. During the process of transpiration, mineral nutrients are also drawn into the cutting. These nutrients are very important in the survival of the cutting. With plants, a rise in temperature increases respiration. When the temperature gets too high, plant tissues deteriorate, resulting in a decrease in respiration. Keeping cuttings cool helps regulate this respiration, which helps them breathe. This breathing is the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide, a process that is vital to the plants survivability. Keeping the cuttings too cool has the opposite effect. Respiration decreases when the temperature of the plant decreases. Lowering the temperature too much affects the rate of photosynthesis, which is the ability of the plant to produce energy. This loss of energy directly affects the formation of roots. Reason 3 was: A misting system allows you to produce multiple crops per year. So how can it produce multiple crops? Using intermittent mist allows you to produce multiple crops in one growing season because the cuttings root quickly. Under optimum conditions, some cuttings can root in as 4

5 little as 2-3 weeks. If the average growing season in America is 150 days (I know, sounds short, but Google swears it's true!), you could get roughly 7 crops rooted during the growing season. So what does that really mean? Simple math will show us that if each crop had 100 cuttings and you had a 90% success rate, you would get 90 rooted cuttings per crop. 90 cuttings multiplied by 7 (the number of crops you could get in one season), produces 630 rooted cuttings of that one plant. Multiply that by however many plant varieties you have and you can now see the benefits of using a misting system. Because of this reason alone, intermittent mist is the best tool you could use to increase your plant inventory. Reason 4 was: Once set up, the system runs with minimal supervision. Once your intermittent mist system is properly installed, the only thing left is to set the program you want it to follow. Once set, the system will follow that program with little to no intervention. Depending on the type of misting system you decide on depends on how much supervising will be needed. Mist systems that use two mechanical timers (one 24 hour, and one interval timer) require a little more supervision than a misting system that uses a digital mist timer. Mechanically operated misting systems have many more components and moving parts than the newer digital ones. Below is a list of components needed for each type of system. Mechanical misting system hour timer 2. interval timer volt transformer 4. water piping 5. misting nozzles 6. assorted wire (for high and low voltage) 5

6 Digital misting system 1. digital timer 2. water piping 3. misting nozzles 4. length of wire (low voltage) The new digital misting timers replace the 24 hour and interval timer as well as the transformer. Along with replacing these components, the entire digital misting timer takes up much less space. Two mechanical timers along with the transformer will take up an area about 12 inches by 18 inches, where the digital timer will take up an area 4 inches by 8 inches and include both timers and transformer. Two other features of the digital misting timer worth mentioning are the ability to use the timer to control 6 entirely different misting beds separately and the battery backup. Mechanical misting systems generally control only one misting bed (or "zone") with only one program. Every cutting in the bed ("zone") gets the same amount of mist. Digital timers increase the number of beds ("zones") you can mist by five times as mechanical systems. They accomplish this by being able to have 6 entirely different programs, one for each "zone". Each zone operates independently of each other. The battery backup is by far the best feature of the digitally controlled misting system. In the event of a power failure, the battery will retain the program that was set. Once power is restored, the timer automatically knows whether it needs to mist according to the program, or whether it needs to wait until the next day. In the event of a power failure with mechanically controlled misting systems, YOU have to physically adjust the 24 hour timer to get the system running again. If you are unaware that the power had gone out for a number of hours, the mechanical systems program will be off by the same number of hours. Your cuttings could receive mist during the evening hours, which may lead to stress, or receive no mist at all during the hottest hours of the day, which would surely kill them. Intermittent misting systems that use digital timers require only minimal supervision to ensure the system is operating correctly, there are no broken pipes or leaks, and to ensure the cuttings are getting the correct amount of mist. This can usually be accomplished in a few minutes time, then you can walk away knowing the system is taking care of everything all by itself. 6

7 Reason 5 was: You can concentrate on other tasks, knowing the misting system is taking care of your cuttings. We all know that there are many things to do when propagating plants. Tending the compost pile, weed management, building new misting and grow beds, re-potting plants that have outgrown their current pot, potting the cuttings that have rooted, and of course, sticking more cuttings to make new plants. Being able to concentrate on these tasks can be accomplished because the misting system will follow the program day in and day out without intervention. Aside from small incremental changes that need to be done to accommodate for the lengthening and shortening of the days as the season progresses, the system virtually runs itself. "But," I hear you say, what about when it rains? I will need to turn off the mist so the cuttings don't get too wet, right? Good question with a very simple answer. Maybe. You have a few options to choose from when it comes to dealing with rain. 1. You can just let the system run 2. You can install a rain sensor Why would you want to keep letting the system just continue to run? Remember what the reason #5 is; so you can concentrate on other tasks. Physically turning the system on and of in the event of rain can become labor intensive. You would need to constantly pay attention to when the rain starts and exactly when it stops. Turning the mist system off during rain is not the critical job, turning it back on within minutes of the rain ending is. If you get caught up doing something else, and who doesn't, you may forget to turn the misting system back on. Within minutes, the cuttings may overheat (remember reason #1, transpiration?) and die. Just letting the system continue to run will assure that the system automatically continues to mist the cuttings when the rain stops. For folks who are under watering restrictions or are just concerned with conserving water, there is an option with the digital mist timers to install a rain sensor. This sensor is extremely easy to install. Simply mount the sensor near your misting timer and connect the wires to the circuit marked "sensor". That is it! Two small wires that get placed under two small screws. Worried about doing the wiring because you don't want to get shocked? No worries, the circuit is low voltage, unlike your house wiring, which means it is much safer to work on. 7

8 Once the sensor is mounted and wired, the only thing left is to calibrate it. This simply means making a small adjustment so the sensor turns off the mist timer after a specific amount of rain has fallen. You don't want to stop the misting system from operating during a very brief shower, but you do want to turn it off during a consistent rain. Most sensors require just a simple twist of a plastic sleeve to accomplish this. The instructions will explain how to correctly calibrate the sensor. To test your sensor, simply wait for the misting system to operate and press the plunger on the top of the rain sensor. This will interrupt the electrical signal going to the solenoids, effectively shutting the system off temporarily. Releasing the plunger will allow the system to resume misting. Adding a rain sensor to your misting system is just one more way to be sure your system will continue to take care of your cuttings. Be sure to purchase the correct sensor for your timer. Most digital timers require a normally open sensor. Reason 6 was: In the event a batch of cuttings fail, intermittent mist allows you to immediately start another. As previously written, intermittent mist allows you to produce multiple crops per season. The same principles given for producing multiple crops applies in the event of a crop failure. Cuttings under intermittent mist root quickly, much more quickly than other propagation methods. Hardwood cuttings take almost two full growing seasons before the cutting has enough of a root system established to be able for it to survive. The entire first growing season you really don't know if the cutting is producing a good root system or if it is slowly rotting under the rooting medium. Air layering, ground layering. and stooling all take at least one full growing season for the new plants to produce a large enough root system to survive after being removed from the parent plant. Cuttings under mist will quickly show signs of failure if they were taken too early in the season or other factors are involved. They will immediately begin to droop and never fully recover. Softwood cuttings taken too early do not have the required rigidity in the stem to hold itself up. The stem is also too soft to effectively produce callusing and form roots quickly. Although some may eventually root, it makes much more sense to start over with cuttings that have matured another week or so. Cuttings that have been 8

9 prepared incorrectly will also show signs of failure fairly quickly, allowing you to immediately start another crop. Timing is critical with rooting cuttings. If taken too early in the growing season, the cutting may not root at all, or take much longer to root than a cutting taken a little later in the season. If this happens, simply gather more cuttings and start again. See my post on an explanation of what a softwood cutting is for clarification. If the cuttings were held for an extended period of time before sticking, the stress will cause the cuttings to fail. To help reduce the stress on the cuttings, place then in cold water immediately after removing them from the parent plant until you can get them stuck under the mist. This keeps them cool and reduces the transpiration process. Reason 7 was: You can produce 10 s, 100 s, 1000 s, or even 100,000 s of cuttings at a time with a misting system. Whether you want to produce a few plants for your own landscape, gifts for family and friends, or larger quantities to sell, intermittent mist can do it. About the only limiting factors are space and time. Space needed for rooting cuttings The actual cutting doesn't take up much space at all. In fact, you can actually get a rooted cutting every 1 square inch when sticking them. So what exactly does that mean? Time for a little math lesson is what it means. I use propagation trays that are 14 inches by 14 inches square. Doing a little multiplication (14 x 14) gives us 196 square inches per tray. So I can get 196 cuttings in that one tray. I have 20 of those trays, so more math gives us a total of That is almost 4000 cuttings per crop! Remember reason #3? It showed us that it is possible to get 7 crops rooted per growing season cuttings per crop multiplied by 7 gives us 27,440 rooted cuttings! That is a lot of plants that can be given away (yeah right, do really you have 27,440 friends?) or sold. Those 20 trays take up approximately 326 square feet. Sounds like a large area, but it is actually 4 beds 4 foot wide by just a hair over 20 feet long. Really not much space at all. 9

10 Time needed to prepare cuttings Once you get the hang of it, actually sticking the cuttings can be done in just a matter of seconds. You first need to gather the cuttings, and this will actually take the longest amount of time. Depending on how many cuttings you are gathering, this could take 5-10 minutes for small quantities, to for large quantities. Lets just pretend we are doing a single cutting. We go to the stock plant and take a 6 inch cutting from the new growth. We take this cutting to our mist bed and prepare it for sticking. At this point, we dip the cut end into rooting compound to help the stem develop roots. The rooting compound can be powder, gel, or liquid form, but I prefer the liquid because I can dilute it to the concentration I need. If using powder, be sure to buy the correct concentration for softwood cuttings. Once the cutting has been dipped in the liquid rooting hormone for a few seconds, simply stick it into your rooting media about an inch. DONE! How long did that take? Very few seconds I am betting. With a little prior preparation, hundreds of cuttings can be done in mere minutes. Reason 8 was: With intermittent mist, certain cuttings like hydrangeas form roots in as little as 3 weeks. As mentioned, certain cuttings will root in as little as 3 weeks. To accomplish this, the cutting needs to be from current growth, that is, this year s new growth. The timing must also be correct. A cutting taken too early in the season will not be in optimal condition for rooting, so if it does in fact root, it will take much longer than 3 weeks. On the other hand, a cutting taken too late in the season may actually have the new wood too hard to root quickly. In this case, the cutting would have to be left to continue to root over the winter and into the spring. At that point, the cutting will have formed adequate roots. Some plants that I have had root in as little as 3 weeks under intermittent mist are: Nikko Blue Hydrangea P.G. Hydrangea Annabelle Hydrangea Black Knight Butterfly Bush American Cranberry Bush Gold Drop Potentilla 10

11 McKay's White Potentilla Forsythia A few other plants that will root in 3 weeks: Hydrangea Harmony Hydrangea Champaign Sambucus Sutherland Golden How to tell if you re cutting has formed roots There is a very precise test that is used to tell if a cutting has formed roots. It is quite involved, but I will see if I can explain it so the layman can understand. Ready? Tug on it. Yeah, just give it a slight tug. If there is resistance, it has formed roots. The only way to tell exactly how many is to actually remove it from the rooting flat and either pot it up or plant it in a grow bed. I hope I explained the process so everyone can understand. I tend to get all-technical with certain things which sometimes just confuses the whole explanation. :-D Reason 9 was: Using an intermittent mist system reduces the amount of labor involved over other propagation methods. Air layering, ground layering, and stooling were touched upon in reason #6. Here, I will go into a little more detail on each. Air Layering is the process of forcing the parent plant to form roots on a stem or branch while it is still attached. There are a few ways of accomplishing this. One is to wound the stem by making a cut about 1/2 the diameter of the stem, apply rooting compound, forcing the wound open and filling it with peat, and wrapping moist peat around it and the stem. A cover is then wrapped around the stem which holds the peat, retains moisture, and protects the wound. Rooting times vary, but it could take months for the wounded stem to produce roots. Ground layering is very similar to air layering except the stem is bent to the ground and the wound is buried in the soil. The bent stem is held in place with wire, rocks, or other means until the wound roots, again, usually months. 11

12 One thing to note with both of these processes is that usually only one plant will be produced from the layering. There are other types of layering that will produce multiple plants, but not all plants can be propagated by layering. Stooling is the process of cutting a plant off right at the ground while it is dormant. In the spring, the plant will send up multiple shoots from the cut stem. As the new growth gets to be about 6 inches or so, soil is placed over and around them. This soil is placed around them until only about 3 inches remain above ground. This process is repeated the entire growing season. When the plant goes dormant, the soil is removed from the plants. Where the soil was placed against the stems, the plant will have formed roots. When the plant goes dormant, cut the newly rooted plants off at the base of the stem and pot them up or plant them in grow beds. If you notice, these methods are labor intensive and take much longer than rooting cuttings under mist. Reason 10 was: An intermittent mist system will allow you to produce rooted cuttings that you can plant in your own landscape, give away as gift, or sell. You probably have a plant in your landscape that you absolutely love. Maybe it is in a neighbor's yard, maybe it is at a local park. If you need more plants for your landscape, what could be better than making copies of the ones you love? Simply get a small cutting of the desired plant, place it under the mist, and shortly you will have an exact copy. Exact is a very appropriate term, because that is exactly what it is, a clone of the parent plant. I was at a local dairy bar one summer and noticed an absolutely gorgeous Hydrangea that had a few variegated shoots. I was extremely excited! This is exactly how new introductions are brought to market. Someone notices an odd leaf, stem or plant, propagates it, names it, maybe patents it, and then sells it. I asked the owner for a few cuttings and she was more than happy to let me take them. She walked me around all her gardens, explaining where, when, and why she had each plant. Anyway, I took the cuttings home and successfully rooted them. It was a little late in the season to remove them from the trays, so I decided to just leave them. Well, we had a banner winter with very little snow and extremely freezing temperatures and the cuttings all died. My fault for not getting them in a hoop house, but quite disappointing anyway. Well, now that I have a small hoop house, I am going to visit that nice woman and try again. I know I can get that variegated hydrangea to live! It will be a great addition to the landscape and a great gift for friends and family. 12

13 Plants make great gifts. Who doesn't like getting a beautiful plant to place in their landscape? Every time they look at it, the get reminded of you. I gave my sister a red twig dogwood about 10 years ago and that thing is the largest one I have ever seen! By cutting the stems back every year, the new shoots are always bright red and she has a beautiful contrast to the white snow all winter long. Wait until I give here a variegated one. She will have a stunning plant all summer plus the awesome red twigs in the winter. She will love it! Told you plants make great gifts. As for selling rooted cuttings and plants that were grown from them, that will come in the next article. Let's consider that reason #11 of Why You Need Intermittent Mist. I had to save the best for last didn't I? Selling rooted cuttings. The best reason of all! Yes, I saved the best for last. Now that I have explained my 10 reasons you need an intermittent misting system, I will toss in a little more math, and you can actually decide for yourself if I have saved the best for last. Reason 7 of Why You Need Intermittent Mist gave us a small example of how many rooted cuttings we could get out of a small area. To recap: Four beds 4 feet by 20 feet can produce 27,440 rooted cuttings in one growing season. If you decide to sell these as rooted cuttings, you could get anywhere between $.50 to $1.00 each for them depending on the demand for that particular species. Lets be conservative and use the $.50 figure shall we? 27,440 rooted cuttings sold for $.50 each equals $13,720 dollars. No, that is NOT a typo, it is indeed almost $14, Not bad for a years worth of easy part time work. Now for the good news. Oh, you thought THAT was the good news? Silly you! 13

14 How about these reasons? When you take a cutting from a parent plant, the stem just below where you took the cutting will produce two shoots. When these shoots get long enough, you can use both of them as cuttings. Once again, where you cut those two cuttings from will form two shoots EACH, and so on. More math? Your first round of cuttings nets you 100 cuttings from your stock plant. As these cuttings are rooting, the parent plant is producing two more cuttings per stem. This equals 200 new cuttings for the next crop. Once again, when you cut those 200 cuttings, the stems will produce 400 cuttings for the next crop. See where this is going? Each time you take a single cutting from the parent plant, it will produce two more cuttings for you to root. So, from that initial plant that produced only 100 cuttings, and assuming you can get 7 crops of cuttings rooted per growing season initial cuttings (crop 1) 100x2=200 cuttings (crop 2) 200x2=400 cuttings (crop 3) 400x2=800 cuttings (crop 4) 800x2=1600 cuttings (crop 5) 1600x2=3200 cuttings (crop 6) 3200x2=6400 cuttings (crop 7) 6400x2=12,700 cuttings (the following years initial crop!) All these cuttings are from ONE plant! Imagine if you had 3, 4 5, or even 10 of those parent plants. That is a huge amount of cuttings. More math? From the one plant that gave us 6400 cuttings the first year, and assuming they are sold for that measly $.50 each, we would get $3,200. That is a whopping 16,000% profit! That is all from a plant that you probably paid less than $20 for if you bought it wholesale! Want another great reason? Once you have the stock plants in your landscape that you will be taking cuttings from, you will never have to purchase another one again. If they overgrow the area you planted them in, simply dig them up and replace them with a few of the plants you produced from cuttings. Now what to do with the plant you just dug up...sell it! It will be much larger than when you purchased it so it will be worth much more. So now can you see why you need an intermittent misting system? Get to it! 14

15 Visit Mistkits.com right now to purchase an intermittent misting system, enter the following code during checkout, and you will get an instant 5% discount off your purchase. Valid in U.S. and Canada only. Use coupon code: 1efc8375da Want more free articles on plant propagation? Visit Freeplants.com for articles that range from composting to rooting cuttings. 15