Life for a mum begins as a cutting that is sliced off a stock plant usually located somewhere in Central America. The cutting is packaged in plastic bags with its brothers and sisters and shipped to us.
Upon arrival the cuttings are unpacked and the tips of the stems are dipped into a rooting hormone powder to stimulate root growth.
With in a few hours of unpacking, the cuttings are stuck into plug trays, placed on tables and rolled into the greenhouse.
Once in the greenhouse the cuttings enter their most critical stage. They are sprayed by an overhead watering boom about every 5-10 minutes to keep the foliage saturated until the stems become calloused and are able to take up water from the soil. If the cuttings are allowed to dry out for an extended period of time they will burn and/or die.
We stuck about 55,000 cuttings today between stocking and loading. The rest of our cuttings should be here on Tuesday.
Here is a video of part of the process. I need a better video camera than my smart phone. The video looks like they are moving in slow motion. They aren’t but they are not moving very fast either.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgkEG8-tHE&hl=en