I’m in Hawaii – Molokai to be exact – to visit my mom for a few days. Hanging with her friends, going to the beach, and gardening are the events on the schedule.
One of her friends wanted to collect plant cuttings from a bush called Naio to create a hedge at her new home. Naio bushes are hard to find but there are some along a road down by one of our favorite beaches so we headed out to take cuttings. This is one of the roughest roads we drove down on our hunt!
Here is some Naio on the roadside. It’s been a bit traumatized from the drought conditions, but we took cuttings from the strongest plants. The appeal of Naio is that it is an indigenous plant in the Hawaiian Islands.
We cut about 60 cuttings and headed back to the house to prep and plant the cuttings. We cut them down to about 6 inches and removed most of the leaves except at the very top.
A mixture of Vermiculite and Perlite was the planting medium. We filled the planting cups about 3 inches deep with the mixture.
The cuttings were placed in the cups and the lids were fastened. A little eco-climate that will be spritzed to keep just moist enough to, hopefully, get the cuttings to root.
It looks like a little frappuccino forest! A good morning’s work.
Hopefully, I can get a report in a few months on the results. Aloha!
