Welcome to the plant growing hub! In this section of our site, you can find guides and tutorials on growing your own plants from various starting points. Seeds, corms, cuttings, and air layering are just some of the starting materials that we’ll be growing plants from. Whether you’re thinking of starting your plant journey or adding to your plant collection, starting plants from the very beginning is quite rewarding.

How to Grow Plants From Seeds

Most plants start their lives from seeds. A plant seed is a perfect vessel for a plant to start its life. The seed has all of the nutrients required for the plant to effectively grow up until it has developed its second set of leaves. Its first set of leaves, known as cotyledons, are the first leaves to develop.

Once the second set of leaves are developed, the plants root systems is, ideally, developed enough that it can start to assimilate the nutrients needed to continue growing from the soil (or other growing media) it’s growing in.

Learn more by reading our in-depth guide to growing plants from seed here.

How to Grow Plants From Corms

Certain plants grow, not only from seeds, but from a structure similar to seeds known as corms. Corms are semi-large (much larger than your average seed) structures that contain enough stored nutrients for a plant to re-grow from. Alocasia, a genus of flowering plants from the family Araceae, are perfect examples of plants that are able to re-grow from their central corm (the large underground structure just below the surface).

If a corm-forming plant is stressed to the point of loosing all of its leaves, given the right conditions, the plant can re-grow from it’s corm. For example, Alocasia that encounter rot-rot and loose all of their roots, if treated, and exposed to the correct conditions, can recover completely from the nutrients stored in their corms.

Plants that produce corms will produce them as they mature. Once formed and allowed to develop enough, the corms can be collected and used to start entirely new plants. When left on the parent plant, these corms will also form new plants, generally referred to as ‘pups’.

How to Grow Plants From Cuttings

Sometimes the easiest way to start a new plant is to start it from the cutting of an existing plant. A cutting is a piece of an established plant that is cut from the parent plant, usually a branch or stem, exposed to a hormone that encourages rooting, and kept in a controlled environment until roots form. 

Cutting propagation is convenient as it allows you to quickly establish a plant as the starting material already consists of plant material that is differentiated and matured. As a bonus, if you’re starting trees or shrubs from cuttings, these plants produce many shoots from which a cutting can be taken.

How to Grow Plants From Air Layering

Air layering is a fascinating reproduction technique that is safer than taking cuttings and can produce promising results with very little chance of failure. The actual process of air layering can take some practice but the science behind why it works is very simple and, at the same time, quite fascinating! 

Air layering involves removing the outermost bark layers of a stem without severing it completely from the parent plant, covering the area with a rooting media (moss is easiest), and wrapping it to ensure moisture is retained (this is usually done with plastic wrap). The removal of these layers of epidermal tissue triggers the plant to “think” it’s newly formed and needs to start growing roots.

The moss wrapped in plastic wrap serves as an ideal media in which new roots can form. The stem will begin to put out new roots just like a cutting; however, unlike a cutting, an air layered stem has one distinct advantage. Since the stem was not severed completely, the parent plant is still able to support the stem with water and nutrients while it puts out its roots. This way, the stem has a sort of ‘life support’ system that cuttings do not have.

How to Grow Plants From Tissue Culture

Tissue culture, also known as micropropagation, while not a new exercise (it’s been performed since at least the 1890’s), is a moderately new way of growing plants for the average plant enthusiast. While the actual process of tissue culturing plants is fairly involved, growing plants that have been reared from tissue culture samples is much easier. 

Since tissue culture plants have been grown in sterile conditions with essentially 100% humidity, there is an acclimatization period that needs to occur before your plants (they are referred to as plantlets when grown from tissue culture and before acclimatization) are capable of surviving in the average conditions present in most homes or offices.

Tissue culture, whether you’re doing it from scratch as a laboratory would or whether you’re growing plants started in this manner, is an incredible way to start growing plants and allows you to start growing rare and expensive plants for a fraction of the cost of getting a mature plant.

Transplanting Your Seedlings

Whether you’ve started growing your own plants from seed, corm, or tissue culture, at some point, you’ll need to transplant your seedlings (young plants). For some plants, transplanting is not a major issue and can be done with relative ease. For other, more sensitive plants, care must be taken to not over stress the plant. Over stressed plants, especially at a young age, can easily succumb to death if you’re not careful.

Knowing how and when to transplant seedlings is very important. The timing is important, as is the new pot size, the new growing media, the addition of fertilizer and other additives, and how the roots are handled during transport. Another consideration is the type and species. Some plants tolerate transplanting as seedlings much better than other plant species.

Hardening Off Your Seedlings

Hardening off is the process of acclimating the seedlings to conditions that are dissimilar to those in which they began growing. Vegetable seeds started indoors that will be moved outside for example.

To accomplish the task of hardening off your seedlings, the young plants are exposed to their new conditions for short intervals of time. As time goes on, the time intervals are gradually increased until the plants can safely tolerate the new conditions. At this point, the seedlings are hardened off and can survive in their new growing locations.

Tissue culture plants are especially susceptible to changing conditions and usually require a stricter hardening off protocol. Since these plants are kept in nearly 100% humidity to start, they need to be exposed to new conditions very gradually.

How to Grow Your Own Plants, Final Word

Growing your own plants is a fun, rewarding, and (mostly) cheap way of increasing the number of plants in your collection. With such a wide variety of starting material (seeds, corms, cuttings, etc) available you are spoiled for choice when deciding how you’d like to grow your own plants.

Each starting material has its own process and unique steps to take to ensure you end up with a healthy plant in the end. It’s important to pay attention to what process you are using to grow your own plants and tailor your efforts to that process. With patience and some effort, you’ll be rewarded with your very own healthy and happy plant to enjoy.