We always like to try new techniques, and when it comes to encouraging poorly offsetting century plants to produce offsets, anything is on the table. While we typically drill out the central core as we’ve show before, we thought we’d try a little Henry XIII action on this one. When agaves age, they often produce an upright stalk, as is the case with this Agave potatorum selection. Once that happens, we simply be-headed the plant with our trusty Ginsu bread knife. In this case, the cut was made in late October in the greenhouse. We’ll let the offsets grow a little larger before they are removed and rooted sometime next month. Once that happens, we expect more new plants to develop at each leaf axil.
Have you ever tried to apply BA (either as a spray like Configure or possibly as a lanolin paste on the dormant axillary buds) to try to encourage offsets? I did see Configure had some data at 100-800 ppm which said it had no effect but it might be worth going much higher. Maybe 10000 ppm or multiple applications. The lanolin paste trick is used in orchids and seems pretty effective by putting the hormones where they can make the biggest difference. Probably worth testing on some non-valuable plants before you kill something.
I’m not saying its a good idea but if nothing else is working it might be worth a try.
We tried Configure sprays a few years ago, but the staff member who made the treatments left us with no written records so we need to try again.
it might be worth trying on of the treatments with BA+GA as well because those seem common and it might help. Thidiazuron is another highly active chemical treatment but that one is more likely to just kill the plant I would reckon.
Whoa!
Agaves never fail to show us another amazing or crazy trait. Thanks for sharing. My ovatifolia had its inflorescence a year or so ago. When I saw this propagation method I first thought – if only I had known that back then. But I quickly realized that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the very exciting event.