How to Properly Propagate and Grow Tuberous Cyclamen

Cyclamen is a beautiful fragrant flower to grow during the wintertime. The best time to plant them is during the late fall season. Most of the plants you will purchase growing in garden centers and nurseries will have cyclamen growing from bulbs, corms or tubers.

Ask someone in the garden area which one of these three you are buying from the store. Hopefully you are buying the tuberous type. This will allow much easier propagation for you in the long run.

As soon as you get home, prepare an area with the tools and materials you will need to start your new plants. Here are some simple suggestions as to how to get you started.

MATERIALS & TOOLS:

A sheet of poster board

Garden scissors ( not shears )

1 ½" to 2" square pots or a seedling tray

Grainy soil that is more alkaline than acidic

Pencil or thin dowel rod

Spray bottle with water in it

The best way to propagate a tuberous cyclamen is to cut off the lower leaves, which are not dying off. These leaves will usually take root quicker and faster than the other ones. Make sure you cut the stems of the leaves somewhere between a 30 to 60 degree angle. Cut them off as close to the main stem as possible.

Some gardeners like to set the leaves on the edge of a shallow drain pain with the stems dipped down into lukewarm water. Other gardeners like to go ahead and plant them directly into the soil. The latter is usually the better way to go since the leaves will also have the benefit of the soil's nutrients. Do not add plant food to the water if this is the choice you made.

A sandy type soil is okay, but cyclamen prefers growing in loose soil that drains well. They do not need all that much water. One could say they are as close to being a bromeliad as one can get.

Pour the soil into the pots or seedling tray. Use a pencil or a thin dowel rod to create a hole in the soil for each leaf. Carefully place each leaf into each hole, and gently but firmly press the soil around them to keep them in place.

When you are ready to clean up the mess, you can take everything off the poster board and easily pour the excess soil back into the original bag or container.

Once the leaves are planted, mist the soil to stimulate root growth from their stems. You do not need to feed these all too often. Once every three to four weeks is enough.

Should nothing come of your cuttings, either you may have done something wrong or it just wasn't meant to be. Try this again at a later time when your established plants have grown a few more sets of leaves on them.

Do make sure that these cuttings are getting partial sun during the day. Four hours of direct sun may be okay, but six hours of diffused sun is better.

Try not to let the plants get root bound in their containers before repotting them. Leaflets that are growing in a seeding tray should be replanted once two or three new leaves have grown from them.

Be patient and wait until your plants have at least two sets of leaves growing off the central stem. This does not mean two leaves on the entire plant. As the plant matures, more leaves will grow in a stair step pattern, and the plant will resemble the limb pattern of a Christmas tree.

Cyclamen does come in various colors. There is white, red, and many shades of pink. This winter flower is a showy accent to almost any partial sun to shade garden. The leaves are a deep green with an almost silver vein look on them.

Growing cyclamen indoors may be more of a challenge than outside. Should you decide to keep them inside, have them near an east or west window. This will ensure the partial sun hours they receive.