Plant Parenting: Air Laying Propagation on Houseplants
September 7, 2019
What is Air Layering?
Root cuttings right on your plants!
Looking for a way to rehab your large leggy houseplants, and take new cuttings at the same time? You can try air layering. Air layering, or air propagation, is similar to rooting with ground layering or a stem-tip cutting, except you don’t bury the stem in soil or remove a cutting from the mother plant; you root it right on the plant while it’s growing!
Air layering involves creating a wound on the stem where you'll take a cutting, tricking your plant into growing new roots right on the stem...before you take the cutting.
My fiddle leaf fig has gotten a bit lanky. So, I’ve air layered it on a side branch. Once roots develop to the edges of the air-layering ball, I’ll cut off the entire section and pot it up as a new plant. Take off the cutting will then encourage the mother plant to grow new side shoots and fill out.
If you want to learn all the fundamentals of plant propagation, such as air layering, be sure to pick up my new book Plant Parenting.