One of the most fun and satisfying aspects of raising houseplants is being able to propagate them to get more. But some houseplants are easier to propagate than others. To share the need-to-knows of houseplant propagation, Lindsay Sisti, the author of “The Ultimate Guide to Houseplant Propagation,” joins me on the podcast this week.
Lindsay is based outside of Chicago, Illinois, where she grows and hybridizes houseplants that she offers on her website, AllThePlantBabies.com. She says her most important role is mother — to three incredible children and far too many plants.
Lindsay Sisti checks on houseplant propagations. (Photo Credit: Kat Schleicher)
Lindsay grew up in northern New Jersey, right outside Manhattan. It was a suburban environment with no space for a large garden. She says houseplants were her family’s primary means of connecting with nature, and she grew up in a jungle-like environment — but indoors.
“My parents were tremendous nature lovers, and so they took us hiking whenever possible. However, I learned my love and appreciation for nature within my home,” she says.
Lindsay always knew houseplants were going to be part of her life.
“As I got older, I would just continuously purchase houseplants,” she recalls. In her teens, she wanted to have an indoor jungle, like her parents. “And I would just kill plant after plant after plant, and what I soon discovered was that I was not born with this green thumb that my parents had, or at least that I thought that they had. And I quickly realized that I just did not have a talent for plants. And it was very sad for me, but I am extremely stubborn and I persevered and I constantly read about plants and learned more and more about horticulture and botany and indoor gardening.”
She gravitates toward growing tropical ornamental plants rather than edible plants outdoors.
“The beauty of pushing the boundaries of how beautiful of a plant that you could grow within the confines of your home was what interested me,” she shares. “Because I always saw it as the ultimate challenge. How can we grow this extremely rare tropical specimen that belongs in the middle of the Borneo rainforest in my house in New Jersey?”
When her parents grew houseplants in the 1980s, they grew the common houseplants of the day: spider plants, corn plants, rubber plants.
“I became interested in the more challenging, difficult to grow plants, and not just because they were difficult, but because their beauty is just unmatched in this world,” she says. “And there are things that you cannot see unless you’re traveling to these islands in Indonesia or to these rainforests in South America that are frankly too dangerous to travel to often. It’s amazing to be able to walk into your living room, and you have this terrarium light cabinet, and you get to see these plants every day. So it’s pretty incredible to be able to do that, and I feel very honored and lucky to be a part of this hobby.”
Lindsay always wanted to live in “jungle.” Photo Credit: Kat Schleicher
Houseplant Propagation
Propagation is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to gardening. Because I do so much outside and so much of the inside of my house is filled with seed trays and propagation equipment for what will eventually be planted outside, I don’t have the room to propagate houseplants as well. That being said, I really enjoyed Lindsay’s book and found it to be a great roadmap for houseplant propagation.
If you are an outdoor grower with experience in propagation, you will be ahead of the curve but will still benefit greatly from this book. If you have no growing experience indoors or out, this book will quickly get you up to speed.
Tissue Culture
Tissue culture is generally done in a laboratory, factory-like setting, and it is highly productive. Someone in their home could take 50 cuttings and grow 50 new plants while at the same time someone in a lab can make 1,000 plants to sell to retailers for $1.50 each, Lindsay explains. This makes certain houseplants very affordable.
“A lot of plant shops that opened and were making money back in 2000 through 2003 by selling cuttings cannot compete,” Lindsay says. “The way that I personally am able to still stay profitable in this market is that I specifically am breeding my own unique hybrids. And that is something that you cannot replicate through tissue culture, because tissue culture is creating the same plant over and over by the thousands. It’s cloning; tissue culture is literally creating clones of something that is existing.
“Whereas I am taking a mommy plant and a daddy plant and making them do the deed and having unique babies. And so I’m essentially inventing new plants. And at that point, I could send those new plants to tissue culture.”
In fact, she has a few contracts with laboratories in the works, but it will take a few years of testing before anything comes on the market. She also has patents on hybrids, including Alocasia sp. “Green Unicorn,” a hybrid of Alocasia azlanii and Alocasia baginda “Dragon Scale.”
She is fortunate that Anthurium is difficult to propagate via tissue culture, because mass producers can’t copy her plants and undersell her.
“Tissue culturing is something that almost is akin to cooking in that each specific plant species requires a recipe, and that’s why certain labs specialize in certain types of plants because they have the specific recipe for that specific species of plants,” she says. “So some tissue culture labs specialize in alocasia, some in philodendrons. … There are only a small handful of labs in the world that are able to successfully replicate anthuriums with a good enough success rate to be able to bring these to the market.”
Opportunities for small businesses still exist.
“There are plenty of small businesses still open that propagate plants and still sell them,” Lindsay says. “The profits aren’t there that they used to be, but you can still have a plant shop and propagate some of these ornamentals that are less common, that are not in tissue culture yet and still make money.
“If we were in this for the money, we would be bankers, we would be lawyers. … We’re in plants because we absolutely love nature. We love the environment. We love connecting with all that is natural and with the people that are also in love with nature.”
An anthurium stem cutting. Anthurium is difficult to propagate via tissue culture.
Photo Credit: Lindsay Sisti
Understanding What’s Growing Underneath the Foliage
For people who get into raising houseplants having had no outdoor gardening experience, there is a learning curve. Outdoors gardeners are familiar with bulbs, tubers and rhizomes, but a new houseplant owner may go to repot a store-bought houseplant and have no idea what they are looking at when they expose the soil and roots.
“People who are strictly houseplant growers, especially when they first start out, are not so familiar with these often strange-looking structures underneath the soil,” Lindsay says. She notes that online message boards and social media groups dedicated to houseplants are full of people asking, What the heck is this alien-looking nugget underneath my plant? When they think they might have found an insect pod, they are really looking at healthy roots and underground storage structures.
These storage structures — be they bulbs, tubers, rhizomes — typically provide the best means for houseplant propagation.
“If you understand what your plant has beneath the soil, you can understand what you’re supposed to do with it.
Looking for Alocasia corms in the root ball.
Photo Credit: Lindsay Sisti
Corm Propagation
Alocasias, for example, produce little teardrop-looking bulb-like structures underneath their soil. These are commonly referred to as corms, but are also called bulblets.
When you find corms underneath or within the root ball of your alocasia, you can either leave them — and eventually they may grow up into another alocasia plant within your pot — or you can pull them out. “You don’t have to be afraid of pulling them out,” Lindsay says.
The tough outer layer of the corm can be peeled off, and then the corm can be planted. That stimulates the corm to grow into a plant quickly.
“That’s a fun and easy way to propagate these plants or share it with friends,” Lindsay says.
Division Propagation
“A lot of houseplants are sold as bunches that are not even attached to each other,” Lindsay says.
Multiple plants stuffed together into one container may be easily separated by gently pulling the plants apart. But this is not true division, as the plants were all really separate in the first place.
Houseplant division involves cutting the underground storage stem, which is often a rhizome. Some alocasias and snake plants, for example, will be connected to another sprout by a rhizome. “So you simply cut that in half. Or if you’re kind of savage like me, I am notorious for just snapping things in half,” Lindsay says. “And then, you have two plants.”
Lindsay’s lighted shelves for baby plants.
Photo Credit: Kat Schleicher
Cuttings Propagation in Water
Houseplant propagation in water, in its most basic form, involves taking a cutting from a plant and putting it in a container of water.
“That is the simplest, most intuitive form of propagation,” Lindsay says.
Many plants, like climbing philodendrons and monsteras, love to grow roots in water. Spider plant “pups” will root when put in water.
Water is an excellent medium to propagate in for numerous reasons, Lindsay says. It’s transparent, so you’re going to be able to see the roots grow, which is key because when the roots are one and a half to two inches long, it’s time to move the cuttings to soil. And if you can’t see it, it’s difficult to know when that time comes.
“It’s nice that it’s transparent because if your cutting is starting to rot and it’s in something like soil, sometimes you have no idea until it’s too late,” she adds.
Water is also more sterile than soil, which has a lot of living bacteria in it, which contributes to root rot. On the other hand, algae can grow in sitting water and all the oxygen can be depleted in time. That makes changing the water every few days necessary for the best chance of success.
“By dumping the water out and pouring fresh, oxygenated water in, it refreshes the oxygen molecules in the water, and that helps with respiration of the plant roots and helps roots to grow,” Lindsay says.
String of hearts propagating in water.
Photo Credit: Lindsay Sisti
However, she also learned that plants emit rooting hormone when propagating. “When you change the water, you’re also dumping out all of that natural rooting hormone,” she says.
People who have experimented with not changing their water over the course of propagating found that even though the water was filled with algae and looked pretty nasty, their cuttings rooted faster. They theorize this is because of the natural rooting hormone present in the water. And propagators who applied rooting hormone powder won’t wash that powder by changing the water.
“There’s more available rooting hormone that builds up in the water over time by keeping the water as it is,” Lindsay says.
Rooting powder or rooting gel can be used in water or soil. In water, some will cling to the roots and some will dissolve into the water. If the water is not changed, the dissolved hormones will still be present and help the rooting along.
If you are rooting an expensive plant in water, like a $100 monstera, you don’t want to take risks. Lindsay advises using an airstone and an aquarium pump to keep the water moving and oxygenated. It will speed up rooting and prevent root rot.
Roots formed in water will be structurally different from those grown in soil.
“When you transfer your plants from water to soil, the roots are going to not be able to uptake nutrients and water the same way because they’re physically different,” Lindsay says. “Therefore, it’s really important that you take extra care when transitioning your plants that have water roots to a medium like soil.”
To make the transition from water to soil successfully, Lindsay recommends taking a few precautions. First, keep the humidity high and the temperature relatively warm for a couple weeks, like in a grow tent or propagation box — or use a humidifier. Some studies have shown that the ideal temperature for houseplant propagation is between 75° and 80°.
A propagation box — just a clear plastic tote with a lid.
Photo Credit: Lindsay Sisti
“It will just help ease that transition and help these roots shift structurally,” she says.
Some plants are not super sensitive to transitioning from water roots to soil roots, such as pothos, philodendron or hoya. Others are sensitive, like monstera, and may rot when added to soil.
“You have to kind of learn which plants freak out and which don’t,” Lindsay says.
Rather than transferring a monstera or another fussy plant straight from water to chunky aroid soil, Lindsay takes the in-between step of transferring the cuttings to sphagnum moss or perlite. These are sterile like water, but like soil, they are solid. Giving the cuttings’ roots a couple of weeks in sphagnum moss or perlite before transferring them to soil has given Lindsay a 99% success rate. “I have found that there’s almost no issues when doing it that way,” she says.
The roots form in the voids between the media — the air space. Sphagnum moss is a light, fluffy physical media that has tons of air space. Perlite likewise has a ton of air space so the plant can breathe where the roots are forming.
Propagation heat mats that have a thermostat to control the temperature and indicate that the mats are actually working are the way to go. Some heat mats are very inexpensive, but you get what you pay for.
Lindsay had a bad experience when a heat mat “cooked” her string of hearts propagation. After a second similar incident, she gave up on heat mats altogether. “I can wait,” she says. “Even if it takes them a little longer to root, I will no longer use heat mats.”
Anthurium seedlings kept under a humidity home to maintain moisture.
Photo Credit: Kat Schleicher
Potting Mix for Propagation
Cuttings can’t just go back into the same pot that the mother plant was growing in.
“Your cuttings need different care than your mother plant,” Lindsay says. “It has a different watering schedule, and when you’re watering your mother plant, it’s not going to need the same frequency of watering and care, obviously, as a small little cutting that doesn’t have roots yet and cannot absorb water.”
The mother plants generally don’t enjoy as much humidity as a cutting needs in the delicate early stage of growth, and the existing potting soil harbors microbes that can cause the cutting to rot.
“Sticking it straight in soil has a high failure rate because a lot of potting soil, — even indoor house plant potting soil — has beneficial microbes and beneficial bacteria added to it and compost added to it,” Lindsay says.
The organic material in potting soil is not sterile, which will contribute to bacterial growth.
“In an ideal propagation situation, you have a sterile medium that is very porous, has a lot of oxygen molecules, and with a lot of humidity surrounding the cutting,” Lindsay says.
Houseplant potting mix can result in fast growth because of the nutrients available in the mix, but the risk of failure is high, Lindsay warns. “There’s other substrates that are often more ideal to propagate in, other than soil, even though soil can work very well when managed correctly.”
These include sphagnum moss and perlite — sterile, porous substrates that will absorb water and provide space for air.
Fluval Stratum is a compressed soil from the Mount Oso volcano in Japan, and it’s popular for aquarium plants but can also be used for certain houseplants.
“People are using it like crazy right now for rare plant propagations because plants go nuts in this stuff,” Lindsay says.
When it comes to propagating cuttings, divisions, corms or bulbs in soil, one size does not fit all. There are many different options of media and substrates.
“I am a big proponent for making the soil mix that is specific for the type of house plant that you are growing,” Lindsay says.
A general common houseplant from a big box store like a rubber tree, fiddle leaf fig, pothos or trailing philodendron will do well in a tropical houseplant mix. Uncommon houseplants are more fussy, so look for a product that is designed for the species of plant you have.
Obliqua nodes in sphagnum moss.
Photo Credit: Lindsay Sisti
I hope you enjoyed my conversations with Lindsay Sisti on houseplant propagation. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
What are you tips and tricks for houseplant propagation? Let us know about your experience in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 081: Growing Indoors: The Basics of Houseplant Care and Maintenance
Episode 083: Gardening Indoors: The Science of Light, with Leslie Halleck
Episode 108: Easy Ways to Make More Houseplants, Vegetables and Flowers
Episode 139: Houseplant Myths: The Facts Behind Caring for Indoor Plants
Episode 178: Selecting and Caring for Houseplants, with Jane Perrone
Episode 263: Growing Joy: How Plant Care Can Be Self Care, with Maria Failla
Episode 337: Legends of the Leaf: The Secrets of Well-Known Houseplants, with Jane Perrone
Episode 346: Winter Houseplant Care, with Maria Failla
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Lindsay Sisti on Instagram | @alltheplantbabies
Lindsay Sisti on YouTube | @alltheplantbabies
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“The Ultimate Guide to Houseplant Propagation: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making More Houseplants . . . for Free!” by Lindsay Sisti
Propagation heat mat thermostat
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Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
