Repurpose An Old Butter Dish Into A Simple Propagation Setup

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You may be surprised by the number of pretty plants that only need a little bit of water to propagate. The issue that you'll quickly run into with a simple jar full of clear, life-giving liquid is that keeping your stems upright is awkward at best. There's a far greater risk of them falling into the water and rotting. Instead, fill a butter dish with small, smooth river stones and water, and gently ease your cuttings into the pebble pile. They'll not only stand erect; they'll thrive in their new stony home.

In fact, plants and stones have a unique co-evolution, whereby plants originally evolved to grow on and take nutrients from rocks before soil became their preferred medium. However, in this particular propagation project, the pebbles act primarily as stabilization, keeping your freshly cut stem upright in the dish. Plus, there's no denying they add to the aesthetics of your planting station.

A glass butter dish free from chips or cracks is ideal because it's easy to clean and unlikely to harbor bacteria that could infect the fresh cuttings before they have a chance to sprout roots. If you don't have one already, get to know the glass patterns you should always keep an eye out for at the thrift store and snag something vintage, or buy one new, like this Gemco Multi-Function 6-Inch Clear Butter Dish for about $12. Marble chips, white quartz stones, and gravel all work as pebbles. For example, a 2.4-pound bag of CJGQ 1-inch Mexican Beach and River Rocks costs about $12.

Prepare some stems for propagation. Summer is the prime season to take softwood and semi-hardwood cuttings, while you should snip tips from hardwood plants in fall or winter. Cuttings should measure no more than six inches if you want to avoid leggy seedlings; remove new growth from the parent plant with sharp, sterile pruners, slicing just below a leaf. Strip all but the top leaves from the stem, revealing the nodes where the roots will sprout from. Remove any full blooms or buds, too. Quickly dip the end of each cutting into rooting hormone — a 2 ounce bottle of Gardentech RootBoost Rooting Hormone costs about $10. Remember, a little goes a long way.

Work quickly once you've prepared your cuttings. You want to get them into their root-growing nursery while they're at their freshest. Remove the bottom tray from your butter dish and flip the deep-set lid over on its back. Fill the dish to about the halfway mark with your choice of stone. Set one or two prepared cuttings into the dish up to the first set of leaves and pile up the stones around them, forming a gentle mound. Adjust the pebbles as needed until the cuttings stand upright by themselves. Using a thin-spouted watering can, like the Qilebi Green Watering Can for Indoor Plants, gently fill the butter dish with fresh, clean water. Set your mini propagation setup in a spot that receives bright, indirect light for much of the day.

Can't find river pebbles or don't want to use them? For a slightly less aesthetic but highly practical replacement, look to a hydroponic garden, where plants are grown solely in water with added nutrients, sometimes on clay balls. The balls hold moisture much better than river pebbles without becoming soggy like soil, providing the humid environment root-producing cuttings thrive in. Rinse the clay balls in fresh water, then soak them overnight before adding them to the butter dish as you would the river rocks and filling the container with water. Get a 2.5-pound bag of Harris LECA Expanded Clay Pebbles for about $37. Other similar porous rock alternatives include lava rocks, Turface, shale, or pumice. Add them to the butter dish in the same way you would the other mediums.

Once your cutting has sprouted a decent root system, indicated by the presence of numerous roots at least an inch long, it's ready to plant out into a larger pot filled with the plant's preferred growing medium. Expect the process to take somewhere between two and six weeks from setting the cutting in water. This method works best for woody stem succulents, softwoods like forsythia and lilac, semi-hardwoods like holly, euonymus, and azalea, and hardwoods like privet, willow, poplar, honeysuckle, juniper, and yew. Common houseplants that root easily in water, like pothos, philodendrons, begonias, and snake plants, are also ideal candidates for this method.