Welcome to Grow Tent Kitchen — where we grow things in tents, in the kitchen, sometimes by accident, and definitely without a horticulture degree.
So you wanna propagate some houseplants? Cool. Let’s do it the *lazy-but-effective* way.
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### 🛠️ What You Actually Need
Forget the Pinterest-perfect setups. Here’s what I used:
– A healthy-ish mother plant (mine was a Brasil philodendron, but pothos or snake plants work too)
– Clean scissors or a knife (or your kitchen shears, I won’t tell)
– Some 4″ nursery pots (cheap plastic ones work fine)
– 70/30 coco-perlite mix — it’s airy, drains well, and I already had a bag
– Ziplock bags (yes, really)
– Clonex rooting gel (optional, but feels science-y)
– A semi-decent light setup or a windowsill that doesn’t suck
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### ✂️ Step 1: Pick a Victim
Find a healthy stem with a few nodes and at least one leaf that looks like it’s paying rent. Cut just below a node. If it bleeds — good, you’re doing it right.
Bonus points if you whisper “I’m sorry” while cutting. Makes you seem well-adjusted.
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### 🌱 Step 2: Dip It (If You’re Fancy)
You can dip the cut end in Clonex rooting gel. Totally optional, but it makes you feel like you know what you’re doing, and sometimes that’s half the battle.
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### 🪴 Step 3: Pot It Up
Stick the cutting into your 70/30 mix. Press the mix gently around the base. Don’t pack it like you’re making a snowball — you want air around those roots.
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### 🧼 Step 4: Humidity Dome, Dollar Store Edition
Top the pot with a Ziplock bag. Done. You now have a DIY humidity dome that costs approximately $0.07.
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### ☀️ Step 5: Light It Up (But Not Too Hard)
Bright indirect light is your friend. My grow tent is a bit too intense for fresh cuttings, so I stuck mine under a houseplant LED in a bright room. No crispy tips so far.
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### 🧘♂️ Step 6: Chill and Wait
Check on them every couple of days. Don’t overwater. Don’t poke the cuttings. Just… let them root. Plants don’t grow faster because you’re staring at them. Trust me, I’ve tested this.
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### 🎉 Results?
If you did everything *mostly* right, you’ll have rooted cuttings in 2–4 weeks. Then you can repot, share, sell, or hoard them like a plant goblin. Your call.
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### 💬 Final Thoughts from the Tent
Propagation doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. You just need a plan, a few tools, and a borderline concerning obsession with plants.
Got questions? Wanna show off your baby plants? Hit me up on [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/u/growtentkitchen) or TikTok (coming soon).
And if this helped you, send it to your planty friends — or that one person who keeps asking for a cutting and never brings snacks.