Journal January 17, 2014 Cloned jasmin sambac

The way I got into tissue culture was by bidding on a kit on eBay.  As usual, I bid low and did not win, however, the person who did win backed out apparently thinking: this is not for me.  The seller wrote and offered me the kit for what I had bid, so I snapped it  up.  After all, it was going to be a long cold winter and I needed some distraction.  And, as usual, I was skeptical about the claims made regarding tissue culture, but I am now a believer.

The photo shows a single node of Jasmine sambac, Maid of Orleans, that I place in culture eight days ago.  From the single node there are now several new plants beginning to grow.

Further, I noticed this morning that a single node section of Taggiasca olive placed in culture three days ago is showing signs of growth.  Consider that I have been trying conventional cloning methods for almost a year with little success.

The Taggiasca section is in one of the blue vials shown in yesterday's post.  The red culture contains a combination of hormones I found in an abstract from Portugal.  To that combination I separated 480 ml and added .5 ml IBA, and three drops of Super Thrive.  Like, who knows what they put in Super Thrive?

So far, none of the other olive varieties have started to grow, but the Taggiasca may simply react differently.  To say I am delighted would be putting it mildly.

There are two people with sites that I found to be extremely knowledgeable and helpful, so if you have an interest you might like to visit them:

Plant TC  and Kitchen Cultire Kits

Additionally, there are several videos on YouTube that I found useful.