 Hi, it's Nell and today I'm hanging out with my two rubber trees, rubber plants, phycus elasticas, whatever you prefer to call them, hanging out with them today because I have a fun project on the docket and that is to propagate a phycus elastica by air layering. It's a great way to propagate this plant so stick around and see how I do it. So it's all good and saturated and I'm going to tie it back up. I have that piece of masking tape because when I put the plastic back together last time I'd also taken the moss apart so it was there was a little bit of a gap and I didn't want any air getting in there so that's what the masking tape is all about. So it should be about two more weeks and then I'll be able to cut it off and plant it up a new plant. And air layering can be done on many plants both indoors and outdoors but today I'm going to talk about more indoor plants because of course the phycus elasticas usually sold as a house plant although when I lived in Santa Barbara it grew out. Doors, it grows outdoors and tempered climates and tropical climates but for the purpose of the video here it's for the house plant one but you can do it outside too. And this is my phycus elastica verigada which I love but it's in a very tall narrow column form which I love but I want to air layer it just because it's been a little while since I've air layered anything and also because I want to see what the plant is going to do after I air layer it because it's going to turn into some sort of a crazy form and that'll be fun to see. And this is a great means of propagation on house plants that have harder wood like the phycuses do. It's great to do on them. Dracenas, the monstera, the split leaf filidendrin and also the tropics snow, defembocchi of the dumb cane. So the two plants that I have air layered before are a phycus elastica, the rubber tree and also a defembocchi of tropic snow. The defembocchi that has the really big leaves and it gets really big and kind of leggie and very stemmy so these those are the two plants that I have. Air layer it so I thought it would be good to show you on this plant because I know that it air layers just fine. And air layering is great to do when your house plants are just getting too big and too out of control say they're going to hit this ceiling my rubber tree that I had before the one that died not at my hands. Somebody was taking care of it but it was just getting really wide and very spreading and I was going to air layer three of the side stems to get it to grow a little bit more upright for a while anyway so it's great to control the size of your plant or if it has gotten too leggie which means it's lost a lot of its foliage at the base then you can you can propagate it and it would be a full plant again for a while anyway. So just make sure that you are air layering a healthy plant even if it is leggie or stemmy that's okay because many plants get that way over time but you just want to make sure it's healthy and also too I watered this plant a couple days ago because I don't want it to be stressed when I'm doing this. So here are the materials that I'm using for this project you can see there aren't too many. This lovely looking concoction which smells oh so earthy is spagnomoss and it is soaking it's been soaking for about three hours because you want to make sure it's good and wet. You can also use peat moss or you can use cocoa qua or you can use cocoa qua and spagnomoss that's fine you know whichever you choose to just make sure that it is good and wet. This is the knife I'm going to use it is soaking in alcohol in water to make sure it's clean. This is what I'm going to tie around this spagnomoss you'll see and these are ties here they're actually velcro from the brand velcro they are cable ties but you could use a twist tie too. It's just that I'm going to be doing this by myself so this will be an easy and fast way to secure it on. A rag to catch the sap that is going to probably drip out when I take off the leaves since some of the leaves anyway and this is rooting hormone. I've never used this one before but it was sent to me so I thought I would try it it is a it is a biological one on natural so that sounds good and what the root hormone is is it just facilitates the rooting and it helps the roots to be stronger as they grow. I've done it without and it's been okay too but most people most people recommend that you do use it so the choice is yours. Okay so the plant is here under the patio umbrella and I'm going to take it down here's where the stem really starts about here this is really soft this you can just root and rooting mix up you know a propagation mix but I want to get further down so I'm going to go down about a foot and a half and this is where I'm going to start to take off the leaves but I want to get my rag. Oops see because here here it comes oops okay so I zoomed on in so hopefully you can see better and there's some sap coming out right there so that is what the rag is for especially if you're doing it in the house this is pretty darn sticky okay that stopped after about 45 seconds so I'm going to take off this one back here oops oops oops oops gotta remember the leaves themselves the leaves themselves also drip so I actually should have brought two rags for you know for this project but look at how pretty those are okay and why you're taking these leaves off is because you want to make room for the moss bundle the moss ball to go here and if the leaves are on it's going to be hard to tie it on and to get it really tight so because I'm going to make a cut right about there and to there right below that node I'm also going to take off this leaf here so I have the rag wrapped around there just to stop the sap from coming out because it just makes my hand so sticky get the patio floor all sticky too um some people it might irritate them it is never irritated me but just never ever get it on your face or near your eyes that's for sure um so that's about the size of the moss bundle that's going to go around just to give you an idea so this is where the leaf came off of where the new node will form or where a node was is so I'm going to start the first cut right under the node by probably about a quarter to half an inch down below it so I'm going to take this nice clean knife and I'm going to start the cut right about I'm going to start to cut right about here and you don't want to go all the way through what you're just trying to do is take off this outer bark here going to do a ring all the way around and you can see how the latex is coming out oops it's coming out here too there you go all the way around it to the back and I'm implying a little I'm applying a little pressure but not too much and it looks like I'm almost all the way around and we'll see if that was deep enough when I go to try to take the bark off okay so I'm going to wrap the rag around and let this dry or catch it anyway and then about an inch below it about here I'm seeing oh yeah it shows good I'm going to go and make another ring around just going to catch some of that sap so I can sissy what I'm doing that's the thing about doing this the sap gets in the way now all the sap is stopping I'm going to show you how I last did it but the last time I did it I just took two notches out of like the the notches out of here and say here but they were but they were pretty good size but I thought I would try the ring method too because that's another way to do it um and you can also just go in and put a slit up and that you do a little bit longer I think you do about three or four inches and that also opens up the outer bark so those roots can form but this is the way that I thought why don't I do it this way because it just seems to make sense greater surface for the roots to come out there must have been cat hair on the rag because now I have hair all over here so those of you who have cats or dogs or cats and dogs know exactly what what I'm talking about so now I'm going to go hopefully I can do this on camera I know without digging in too deep you go down and you make a cut down here and hopefully I'm going to be able to peel this bark away so I think what I'm going to do is just get there we go this would be better if I had somebody filming me doing this but I don't so you just go down and peel oh it's starting to peel away and then see this is this is what you want to do is get this part here off so I think I need to just deepen this this cut this ring a little bit more okay so here's the cut all the way around here as I said you don't want to go too deep but you want to go deep enough so you get that hard hard outer part out so that the roots can form you don't want to dig too deep because you don't want to damage the plant because it still has to bring the nutrients and the all the good stuff up to the top of the plant because this is the part from here up which is we're just going to be your new plant and this is pretty wet here so I think I'm going to let it air dry for like half hour hour it's really nice nice and warm out there's a little bit of a breeze before I actually moss it up so I have another video to film so I'm going to run and get some materials for that and I'll meet you back here in about half an hour so all right so this wound has dried some and this is essentially what this is is wound you don't want to totally injure the plant so I'm going to put some of this on right about here just gonna go all the way around oh wow oh this smells like spirulina and I wasn't gonna use this but I thought oh I had it and I got it sent to me like probably about three or four years ago so because it's organic I don't know if it's even any any good anymore but you want to get it up here especially because that's where the roots are going to come from it all seems to be falling down here but I got some on there all right so on to the moss and the plastic so if you're having a hard time you might try putting the moss in the plastic and see if that works but I'm going to see if I can just do the moss around it you just want to make a ball this nice wet moss I might end up doing the method I was just talking about and you want to completely cover it with the nice wet moss just like that nice and wet okay so here's the bag and I'm gonna put it around really tight because you want to make it as air tight as you can because you want this moss to stay nice and wet so this is tight on nice and tight right now as you can see this whole process isn't hard at all it's just a little fuzzy especially if you're doing it or the first time you're probably like oh I'm cutting into the plant but that's actually actually what you need to do to get the roots and I can feel that the moss is nice and moist right there all righty that's done so now I'm going to put the rubber tree back in the dining room it's uh an east exposure it's got three windows and right now it sits about five feet away from the windows but because it's got this going on I'm going to put it about 10 feet back it's still very bright but I don't want I don't want it to get a lot of bright light and then when it gets really warming up next month I don't want it in in that hot hot sun and I'm going to water it as usual not gonna let it be too wet nor am I gonna let it dry all the way out look at all those gorgeous roots I'm not even taking all of the plastic off I'm just going to give it a good spring it was moist not stopping wet but as I said it's getting warmer so I just wanted to make sure that these roots don't dry out because it's uh it's doing good so far I just got home from being away for eight days and I wanted to open up and make sure everything was still moist in here and it is I just watered it you can see how nice those roots are coming it's going to be ready to cut off soon and what happened was it really dried out I only had it single bagged and it dried out and I thought I I had lost it but I just soaked it really well three weeks in a row and there's some nice roots coming so here's the inside bag and the green bag goes on the outside and I have them tied tightly so probably in about a week or two we'll do the chopping off so this video was all over the place time wise I did the air layering in mid April because spring is a great time to do air layering and then the first time I opened it up to show it to you where you saw the roots that was like end of May and then I opened it up again to show you in early July and now it is I think today is September 3rd or 4th so I'm finally getting around to getting this video finished but because it is already so long I'm going to do the planting the the cutting off of the section that I air layered and the planting of it in a separate video otherwise you know this video is going to be like half an hour and I don't want that so be sure to keep your eye open for part two it should be coming up in either four days or a week at the latest so in terms of how I maintained the air layering itself I opened it up to spray it every week and then I would tie it back up but then it got a lot warmer because I'm here in Tucson in the desert it's very hot in the summer and I travel a lot during the summer and it really dried out once when I was gone so I thought I had a loss it as I said but I rewetted and I would take a watering can I have a watering can with a long very narrow skinny neck and I would just pour it over the moss and then the root started to merge again and then I ended up double bagging it you know for the summer so I have been watering it opening it up and watering it every month I mean every week to make sure it stays moist and as I said at the beginning there will be more details in the blog post that goes along with this the link will be down below and I've also done a video on vikus elastic a care the link to that will be down below also and stay tuned for part two on this video so I hope you have found this video about air layering a a vikus elastica a rubber tree a rubber plant to be helpful as I said it also what works for other house plants too and I have a lot more videos coming your way so stay tuned for those I thank you for all your likes and your subscribes I really appreciate them now let's get out in the garden or into our indoor gardens and make our worlds a more beautiful place as always I thank you so much for watching and it is about time to wrap this video up right now