Kitty - I have a tank, I could DO that! I'm in 9b, and we did get some nippy weather last winter (my first here, so not sure it's customary), I think we had 18 or so days where it got down to 28? No horrible storms after a big wind storm that hit the week before Thanksgiving and did lots of damage around the county, but none at my house, TG! I was relying on an online weather site to tell me how cold it was, aside from COLD, but I got myself some thermometers, so I'll see just how cold it gets here at MY house, not a mile down the road and up the hill. Last winter was quite the learning experience, as I lost a lot of plants - sob, wail! I replaced some of them, and this year I've moved some stuff into the house, and walled the cats away with chicken wire. REALLY hope it works and they don't mess with them, or eat them (and poison themselves!) Other stuff I've resigned myself to not having again while I live here.

Hi Robert, I am an expert on plumeria grafting and I am going to try to explain what is going on with yor plant and what the prospects are. In grafting plumerias there are two important things: a) making cambium contact between the scion and the rootstock so sap can flow from the rootstock to the scion, and b) maintaining the cambium contact over time. A rubber band (elastic) is generally used to make contact. A plastic tape wrap is used to maintain the cambium contact. Sometimes in plumeria grafts the cambium line contact between the scion and the rootstock is broken for different reasons (no sap present, scion surface has dried, etc.). What happens then is that the scion acts like a cutting trying to develop roots. It center soft white core swells out to form a callus. If the graft wrap stretches some, it pushes the scion and rootstock appart and cambium contact is broken completely. Eventually the wrap stops stretching and the soft center cores of the scion and rootstock fuse together. In the picture below I show an example of this. I used clear fruit tree grafting tape, which is designed to stretch on purpose to avoid girdling of the graft. As you you see the scion was pushed away from the rootstock by more than 3/16". I eventually put a cable tie on it to keep it from stretching any more. To prevent this from happening I use a thick green tape that does not strech much. I use duct tape to secure the end and two cable ties for safety (picture below). Luc at FC uses a similar green tape but puts a rubber band over the green tape. The rubber band (special elastomer for grafting), is design to disintagrate in a few weeks. He does this so he does not have to go around to remove all the tapes. This is what typical grafts look like. Note how the cambium line is completely healed and filled with callus all the way around. There are no gaps in good graft unions. These are some grafts from Florida Colors, when I received the plants. Luc's tape stretches a little like mine and creates a small scar. As you can see, typically Luc does a pretty good job grafting plumerias. After I remove the green tape, the gap between the scion and the rootstock continues to become bigger. I have tried to put cable ties to hold the scar from getting bigger. It helps some but the ends deform and grow out (not very pretty). That growing callus just exterts a huge force. I developed a new technique that gets around this problem and makes pretty grafts with very small scar every time, as the picture below shows (two weeks after grafting). Note how the cambium line is completely healed all the way to the bark in just two weeks! Now your plant broke the cambium line contact and the swelling soft white center of the scion pushed the rootstock away and broke the cambium line contact. So the grafting has taken but it is healing slowing from the center out. It will take a while to fill the gap. When this happens, it is possible to leave a gap somewhere in the graft. I would take a thin flat metal piece and go around the graft and measure the depth of the open area, to see if there are any open areas, especially at the top of the graft (generally heals last in this type of graft). The rubber band that is on the graft is not the original rubber band they used in grafting. It is a new one (much thicker and stronger than used normally for grafting) and it is used to hold the graft union together until it heals fully. Do not remove it. The rubber band stretches and the scar will become bigger. If it was me I would put two cable ties on the ends of the graft cut to secure the graft union. Now, what are the prospects for this graft? It is bad? The next picture shows a one year old graft with a large scar. It looks fully healed from the outside. The next picture shows a cut-away view of this graft. The top tip is still open, it has not fully healed. However, the bottom part has completely healed and new wood has formed over the scion and rootstock original woods and has connected the two. The cuts have line up with solid wood and the bottom half of the cuts have fuse together. The bottom line is that it takes time to heal but when it does the graft union will be the storgest part of the plant (it will be solid wood). Here is a more extreme example of a really large graft scar. The angle was too large and the scar kept on growing. On the surface it looks weak. It looks like one can break it appart easily. The next picture shows the cut-away view of this graft union.The cut is fused together with solid wood. The scion and the rootstock are connected around the perimeter with solid wood. This graft union is the strongest piece on the whole plant! It cannot be broken appart. The bottom line is that your plant will be fine. Eventually it will make a very strong connection. However, it will take time. The fact that the plant is growing leafs shows the graft has taken. Now, do not get me wrong. I would prefer a plant with a "normal" graft that has healed at the cambium line first rather than this one that has fused at the soft white centers because the graft union heals quicker and makes a much stronger union much faster. I hope I have answered all your questions. Good luck Robert. Regards, George

Your plant is a Peperomia obtusifolia, aka 'Baby Rubber Plant'. But that name is a bit unhelpful as 'Rubber Plant' usually denotes Ficus elastica and until I saw the picture I thought you had a baby one of those ;-). They are very easy to propagate just by cutting pieces off at a node and inserting in growing medium, or even a glass of water. You'll find plenty of help if you have more questions over on the House Plant Forum which is much livelier than this one. Here is a link that might be useful: House Plant Forum

When you said, "..... on my cuttings some of the baby leaves either shriveled and died or fell off". Maybe if I cut one mature leaf at that point it would have grown instead", did you mean some of the leaves that were on the cutting when you took it shriveled and were shed, or was the reference to new leaves that occurred after the cutting was taken? After cuttings are taken, they need to be prepared by reducing the leaf surface area; this, because the cutting often just collapses and fails if it can't keep up with water needs of the leaves. Note how I reduced the leaf surface area to insure the cutting would be able to supply enough water to the foliage: If you look carefully at the second image from the top (Ficus benjamina), you'll see a leaf at the base of both branches. These are the leaves I referred to in my post above - that should be removed as soon as the branch is pushing growth. It's the first thing I did after the cutting struck (rooted). "I was considering combining all of these plants into one pot or putting the small one with one of the bigger. I am starting to wonder if that may be too much for one pot. Thoughts?" My experience with group plantings has been that you're going to end up with roughly the same increase in plant mass, no matter how many propagules you have in a pot. IOW, all else equal (especially pot size/ soil volume), a single plant will grow faster than individuals in a group planting, and there won't be much difference in the total vegetative mass between the 2 plantings. And, in most cases you can achieve the same degree of fullness with a single plant as you can with a group planting. It just requires a little bit of attention to pinching. One thing we hobby growers often forget is, we aren't obligated to keep every bit of mass a plant produces. That's a less pushy way of saying, if we don't take control over what the plant is doing in terms of growth, we might be less apt to end up with Beauty, and more apt to end up with The Beast. The concept behind why we prune is a simple one, so I urge everyone that grows a branching plant to learn how to control and shape it. Not only is the process extremely rewarding, it's FUN, and definitely adds to the personal satisfaction we get from the growing experience. Al