By Liz Olson, Editorial Assistant

Two weeks ago my co-worker, Melanie, let me take pieces from two of her coleus plants to try and propagate in the office. I tried Coleus ‘King Kong’ and ‘Big Red Rudy’. They both have beautiful leaves so I was excited at the prospect of having my own. Melanie propagated the plants (pictured) that I took leaves from and they grew beautifully.

Unfortunately, the leaves I tried to propagate have looked progressively worse over the past week. This morning they both looked dead so I decided to toss them out. ‘King Kong’ was definitely dead, but it turns out that ‘Big Red Rudy’ had started a root system and probably would have sprouted at some point. I didn’t realize this, though, until I had already wrecked the roots. I feel terrible that I killed it, but I’m going to give it another try next week.

Also, I’m really excited because Melanie and I are going to order some coleus plants from a nursery in Minnesota called Color Farm (www.colorfarm.com). We’ve never ordered from them before, but they have gotten good reviews so we’re going to try them out. I’m going to try ‘Fireworks’, ‘Buttercream’, and ‘Lime Frill’.

Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:44:23 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]