Hokay, so, I’ve been doing pretty well for a couple of years now making cuttings of my mint, ivy, and most recently basil, all indoor plants that I’m doing the cuttings from and moving out to the yard in various places. I’ve got an *awesome* patch of mint in the backyard, all from just one tiny plant, I loves me some cuttings.
But, for some reason, I’m now getting “slimey” cuttings now.
What I always do is take a cutting from a plant, strip the leaves from the bottom few inches of the cutting, put it into a glass of water and in a week or so, there’s roots and I can plant the cutting. I prefer the water instead of using a starter soil, so that I can see exactly when a good root system is going.
Right now I’ve got a batch of cuttings all taken on the same day, put into the same kinds of glass, and all the same glasses I always use for my cuttings (actually a set of wine glasses that I never use for wine) and all with the same water and all relatively close together, so they’re receiving the same amount of air/light each day. The cuttings are two basils, a mint and an ivy. One basil and the mint are growing roots just fine, just like normal…but the other basil and the ivy…they’re getting slimey.
The bottoms of the stems are just…slimey with a kind of white-ish fuzz and the water takes on that “rotting water in a vase” bad smell and gets slimey. I started changing the water (and cleaning the glass) as soon as I see any hint of slime, but it just comes back within a day or two. The ivy is still mostly alive, despite the slimey stems, but the basil is pretty much dead at this point.
Any ideas on what could be causing it and how to fight back?
Thanks!
