Hi Steve & All
I found Steve's couple-months-old-discussion in the rec.gardens newsgroup this AM while searching for answers to a similar problem. How goes your plumeria, Steve?
My situation at least started like yours - anemic plumeria plant grown from a cutting for several years finally fell over early January after its roots rotted away. I just let it lay their for a month or so until I decided to give it another try.
Here we are four months later in our warmest most humid month and the upper part of one cutting has grown appreciably but still no sign of roots. I'm looking for experiences or tips others might have that will let me get this out of the water and into some soil mix where it can become a real plant. Some details on what I did to get this far follow:.
I cut the apparently healthy upper foot part of the "plant" into several double node sections and stuck all but one in small pots with about a 50 - 50 peat+clay mix and watered.
The last section was placed in a glass. The glass is watered to keep about 1/3 inch of tap water in it and sits on our sink next to a West facing kitchen window.
All the potted sections rotted and died. The section in the kitchen window, rots also (at the base) but at a minuscle pace.
All I do is add a little water occassionally and completely change the water about once a month. After a couple months the top began to bud and that bud has now grown and has four recognizeable lealets, the longest is about an inch. Still no sign of roots. On seeing the first sign of a bud I remembered a plant phys. class I took about 30 years ago where we were told roots don't like light and putting tinfiol around glass rooting containers is a good way to keep the light out. I did that.
A San Diego County CA Fair exhibitor a few years back told me that tropical plants (I think she was showing mainly plumeria and tuber rose) need a special fertilizer high in phosphorous. I do have some 30 yr old experience with hydroponics and I still have some aggie grade phosphoric acid etc. I figure that a milliliter of the acid to about
5 gallons of water makes a decent phosphate cocktail for plants in or out of soil and I'm contemplating trying a 50-50 mix of this phosphate with salt peter (KNO3) until I get it out of the jellyglass. I may alternate with some solution that has micros like Iron, Manganese and Boric acid. Our tap water probably has plenty of Calcium and Magnesium.