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Summary: What do you do when your house plant overgrows its space? Follow along to learn how to make air-layers of stem cuttings… (in this case Aglaonema), make new plants, and propagate more houseplants.
My Aglaonema “Silverado” out grew the space it was “assigned.”

Normally, I would simply cut the tops off, dip the stem cuttings in rootone, root the cuttings and once rooted plant them up in new “pots” (soda bottle planters) and finally give them away.

It’s fun to watch someone “discover” how easy it is to grow plants when you can take the headaches out.

This time I did things differently to show you how easy it is for you to make air layer stem cuttings indoors and give you some ideas.

Below you can see an image of a favorite indoor plant of mine – Aglaonema “Silverado”. This plant has been growing in my office for over a year and was starting to get a little wide.

The pot is a simple, soda bottle planter, which makes indoor plant care easy.

I “air-layered” the stems – basically doing the following…

• Stripped a few leaves off to expose the stems more
• Took some moist potting soil – African Violet mix works fine.
• Cut 3 pieces of aluminum foil
• Put a handful of moist soil on the foil
• Wrapped the stems with the foil
• Waited about 4 weeks (depending on the plant it could take longer)

The image below shows each of the stems wrapped with foil with the soil inside. No rootone rooting powder was used. Just moist potting soil.

This project started on October 15.

In a little over 4 weeks (November 14th), of the stem cutting being air-layered and the plant sitting indoors in my office the foil was removed.

Here’s a close up of the newly forming roots on all 3 stems from left to right.

Each of the stems were cut off.

All cuttings were planted in “soda bottle planters” using 1 quart bottles.

Two of the rooted stem cuttings were planted in one “pot” and one rooted stem cutting was placed in another “pot.”

The pot with two stem cuttings was placed back in my office. The pot with the single stem cutting was placed in my garage under a a simple fluorescent grow light systems.

The “mother” plant was placed under grow lights in the garage. After roughly 6 weeks, the mother plant where the cuttings were taken now has 10 new sprouts coming on to produce new plants in the future to play with and decorate.

Today, on December 28th here are what the air-layered stem cutting plants look like. Each of the plants are putting out new leaves and roots.

The whole process is simple to do with materials found in most homes with the exception of a bag of potting soil you maybe need to pick up at the garden center.

This process in not limited Aglaonemas… Ficus, Dracaena, pothos and a host of other indoor plants can be grown or propagated by using the process above.

What have been your experiences in propagating indoor plants?