Can quick rooting powder really promote rooting? The final chapter of the gardening freebie experiment
More than 20 days ago, in my article "One jiao per packet, quickrooting powder, decrypting the king of gardening freebies," I introduced some information about quick rooting powder and made some inferences, and in this article I will continue to verify its real effects through several small experiments.
In the previous article, a reader suggested that the main ingredient of quick rooting powder should be glucose powder. I tried tasting it, and it did not taste sweet, so it seems it does not contain sugar. I only tasted a tiny bit, but I still felt a slight irritation (a burning sensation).
In the previous article, one of the inferences was that its main active ingredient should be naphthaleneacetic acid. Naphthaleneacetic acid dissolves in alcohol but not in water. A reader suggested testing with alcohol, so I mixed 95% purity alcohol with a small amount of rooting powder and stirred it thoroughly, but found that it does not dissolve in alcohol either!
After pouring out the alcohol, I found a large amount of sediment at the bottom of the beaker. This stuff does not dissolve in water or in alcohol, is grayish-white and odorless, and I suspect it is lime. Since I had no way to verify whether it really is lime, this can only remain an inference.
In the previous article, some readers suggested that I mix rooting powder into water and use it to water flowers, so I opened another packet of rooting powder, mixed it into 4 liters of water, then added 2 grams of "Huaduoduo No. 2" to the water and shook it well. Then I found two petunias and watered them with the above mixture once every 5 days. Over 20 days I watered them a total of 4 times. In the end, I found that the petunias showed no adverse reaction. From this experiment we can know that even if this rooting powder has no effect, it will not harm the flowers.
In addition, I carried out a comparative experiment by separately rooting two groups of plant cuttings. One group was soaked in the rooting powder mixture for 30 minutes before rooting, and the other group was rooted directly. More than 20 days have passed, so let's look at the results below.
a. Cuban oregano, the green propagation cup was soaked in the rooting powder mixture, the white propagation cup was not. It can be seen that both cuttings grew roots, and the Cuban oregano in the white propagation cup grew a few more fibrous roots.
b. Indian borage, the green propagation cup was soaked in the rooting powder mixture, the white propagation cup was not. The Indian borage that was not soaked in rooting powder rotted partway through, while the cutting soaked in rooting powder grew roots normally.
c. Rosemary, the green propagation cup was soaked in the rooting powder mixture, the white propagation cup was not. There was little difference between the two.
From the above, if we exclude the Indian borage with the unknown cause of death, the effect of the rooting powder is not obvious. In addition, more than 20 days ago I bought five fruit seedlings online, namely mulberry, blueberry, and raspberry. On the second day after planting, I watered the roots with the rooting powder mixture. As of before publishing this article, only the blueberry had produced new buds, and the other four seedlings had not clearly sprouted. But I was not surprised that the blueberry sprouted first, because it was the only fruit seedling shipped with soil and fibrous roots (bottom left corner of the image below).
Conclusion: the main ingredients of quick rooting powder are unknown. It does not dissolve in water or in alcohol, is odorless, has no obvious rooting effect, and will not harm plants. Anyway, they are all freebies, so those who like to use it can keep using it, and I am the same. Readers who like this article, please subscribe and follow "Huaguoyan." Your support is my motivation to continue. Wishing everyone a happy weekend!