Dracaena Propagation Update from Seattle

So, for those of you that are regular readers of the HSNY blog, you may remember a story from February of a woman dealing with her Dracaena about to poke a hole in the cieling of her apartment out in Seattle, WA. If you need a refresher, here is a link to the original piece.


This week I received a fabulous update from Angela that really made my day. Sometimes I get nervous when I am advising people thousands of miles away, so to hear that her propagation efforts were a success I was so thrilled. Here is the update from the west coast as well as my answer to a new question that came up. Enjoy.


Hi Alex,
I just wanted to thank you again for your help earlier this year. I wrote to you in February asking about my Janet Craig. Here is an update:
At first I tried air layering, but that only lasted about a week, because the top got too heavy and snapped off where I had made the incision. I was too busy to deal with it, so I took the top and stuck it in a vase of water for about two weeks. Finally, I cut the top into two separate pieces and planted both in peat moss like you said. Now, about 6? weeks later, there are two little baby plants with great roots (see photos), and there is also new growth on the bottom plant as well.
Awesome! Now I have a Janet Craig family. Just one question, when can you transfer the plant to regular soil? They seem to like the peat moss - can I leave them in that?

Image 1005 shows the papa plant...

...and image 1010 shows where the papa broke off and where there is new growth.

Image 1013 is baby#1 and image 1014 is the baby#2. Image 1018 and 1019 are the new roots of baby#2.

To the update I replied:

All the cuttings look great and you are right, you have a good amount of roots there. So glad my advising worked - phew! To answer your question I think this would be a fine time to repot them into a mix of regular potting soil, perhaps amended with a little extra peat moss. The reason you used peat moss was to anchor them and provide water to the cuttings to get them to root without tons of extra organic matter that the cutting would not have been quite ready for. Now that you have good roots, the plants can begin to be situated in pots with increased organic matter and that will provide them with the nutrients and water retention they need going forward. If you were to keep them in just peat moss you would probably find that they would become weak over time. When my cutting here in the office established roots much like the ones you have I repotted it in regular soil and it is doing just fine now.