[sunnyjohn]

Hi all, Ages ago I bought (several times over several years) pots of gel for rooting plant cuttings. The pots were yoghurt sized, and the gel looked like wallpaper paste. It was magic! You could watch the roots grow, soft-wood cuttings or anything, and when they were ready you could plant them on, etc. Now I can't find any, and I'm planning a lot of softwood cuttings. So I looked on the www.

Besides oodles of the usual Google mis-matches , hair restoration products and instruction on how to clone Marijuana plants  , I found 'Gel2Root' which sounds like the same thing, maybe in a different wrapper. But I can't find anywhere to get it locally, and postage would cost as much as the stuff itself.

I also came across various 'recipes' for home-grown rooting compounds, most notably to steep some cut-up willow stems in water for 24 hours, to make an infusion of rhizocaline. That's apparently responsible for willow's legendary self-rooting capacity, and is the chemical used in proprietary Rooting Hormone preparations. I also read willow contains 'Auxin', and I wonder if that's another name for rhizocaline? Another source suggested dissolving common Aspirin in water (Aspirin is Sodium Salicylate, and the salicylate is an extract from willow), but how that helps rooting evades me . Various sources suggest agar flakes (from seaweed, via an Asian Grocer's), gelatine (vegetable or animal origin, I wonder ), or even wallpaper paste made from plant cellulose, as a base for a suitable gel.

I rather suspect that amongst our fraternity there are some clever people with all sorts of chemical/biological/practical knowledge who may be able to advise? Can anyone help fill a few gaps or add any information that might help a struggling plant-grower? I do I have to either pay a fortune for the 'real' thing and its' postage, or trust to luck and lose half the cuttings? By the way, I'm NOT growing Marijuana. No-one's yet made me an offer worth all that bother!

Thanks for listening, and any info or suggestions would be welcome.

Sunny John