That said....

This is what you will need.
A plastic shoebox, with a lid. They come in various sizes, any will do.

Soil less potting mix, half peat, half perlite, or whatever is your favorite medium.
A little clay pot, with the drain hole plugged with caulking or silicone. If this is a new pot, scrub it with some steel wool to be sure it doesn't have a sealer on it. You want the water to seep through it.
Rooting hormone powder or liquid, or salix solution from the willow tree.
Plant material, snippers. I am going to pot some Plectranthus (a tall swedish ivy) and a Joseph's Coat, 'Red Thread'. I already have some succulents rooted in this box. I will take them out and pot them up later, DH has a new cacti pot he wants to put them in.
You can see here, I hope, that I fill the clay pot to the top with rain water, well water, or distilled water. I just don't use our tap water, too much chlorine and a ph that is out of sight.

I pour a little of the hormone powder out on a paper plate or a piece of paper, so that I don't contaminate the whole package of powder. And these little 'snippers' are the best for taking this kind of cuttings.

This is about right on the amount of hormone to use. I try to get 2 nodes per cutting, if I can. Knock off the excess. It is better to have a little too little than to have too much.
Then, with your finger, or a pencil, or stick, SOMETHING, poke a hole in the potting mix and insert your cutting. Pull the potting mix up around the cutting good and snug.

When your box is full, and I always like to pretty much fill the box, just put the lid on it, and set it in the shade. You don't ever put this box in the sun. You wind up with boiled cuttings. YUK!

Check the cuttings every few days, and refill the reservoire as needed. Don't let it dry out. If you happen to get too wet, just prop the lid open with a pencil for a little while.
This is a very good method of propagation, but I don't do roses in these. The thorns just make it hard for me, with my big fingers, to pack the box full. All kinds of other things can be done in these. Just try it!

Janie

I use wick watering and grow under lights so my process is designed to fit those factors.

First I'll start with the wicking method:

You need the following: a 6 inch pot, a covered plastic bowl, and a nylon cord.

The cord will be pulled through the bottom of the pot and through the top center whole of the bowl lid (when you start using it). This picture is just to illustrate how it all fits together once you start using it. Keep in mind the cord just hangs out the bottom while the seeds and cuttings are getting started.

To start off, the cord is put in place in the pot with about 6-8 inches hanging out the bottom. The pot is then filled half full with potting mix and the wick placed around the other side of the pot as shown. The pot is then filled with soil to near the top. When starting seeds I leave about an inch of space below the top of the pot. With cuttings it doesn't matter.

For starting seed I use a plexiglas cover over the pot until the seedlings hit it. Once they reach the cover I remove it and attach the wick and bowl under it. Here is an example of some new seeds comin gup.

This next pic is an example of some tip cuttngs of Balloon flowers I took when they got too tall under my lights.

These cuttings are 4 days old and are being grown under a plactic 100 CD cover to keep the humidity high.

This last pic is some 10 week old Balloon flower seedlings using this method. They are grossly overcrowded but at the moment I have no place to transplant them to so they will just have to survive :) The above cuttings were taken from them. I do have several buds on them already.

Note the wick in the bottom of the plastic bowl.

One lesson learned is don't put too many seeds in. :)

John

Since I have some grossly overcrowded Balloon flowers growing in a 6 inch pot and drinking around 20 oz a day with wick watering I have begin to wonder if maybe one of the major faults of growing is insufficient water on a 24 hour basis? I do know that top watering is often the source of rot since a lot of plants don't like wet necks.

I have used wick watering on several plants over the years and all have done well with it. One plant that loves it is African Violet. One of my plant clubs several years ago had a professional AV grower as a guest speaker. I recall her stressing that AV's like crowded roots, even moisture, light fertilizer, and light.

So as an experiment in one of my offices I put 3 AV's in 2 1/4 inch pots with wicks and a continer of water under them. She had said to only water them with 1/4 strength Liquid fertilizer so that is what was in my containers. It so happened that the overhead cabinet in my office cubicle there was under some always on security lights.

So with these perfect conditions I started my experiment. My 2 1/4 inch wick watered pots did awesome. The AV's eventually got to be about a foot across and had profuse blooms mostly year round. When vistors would view them few believed they were doing so well under those circumstances.

I finally gave them away from being bored with their constant performance and continual bloom :) Growing them had ceased to be a challenge any more :)

Any one else done wick watering?

John