How to Propagate a Leggy Rubber Plant: Air Layering

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Do you have a rubber plant that lost many of its lower leaves and you want to give it a new lease on life?  Or maybe it has reached the ceiling and you don’t know what to do with it? 

If so, the air layering technique would be a perfect way to save and propagate your plant!  It is easy and quick to do, and only requires a few simple steps.

Air Layering Technique

What is Air Layering?

Air layering is a propagation technique that is often used on older plants that have become woody and would be difficult to propagate otherwise. 

This technique allows your cutting to actually form roots while it is still attached to the parent plant!  This technique minimizes the shock that your cutting will endure while it is rooting, and maximizes your success!

Materials You Will Need

Sphagnum moss

A bowl with water

Scissors

A sharp knife

Garden twine or a thick string

Rooting Hormone

A toothpick (you’ll want the sturdy round kind with pointy ends)

Clear plastic wrap

And of course, your plant!  Below, I will show how I air layered this Ficus elastica (rubber plant) at Agnes Studio in Cleveland, Ohio.

How to Air Layer Your Rubber Plant

Prepare the Sphagnum Moss

Take a handful of sphagnum moss and soak it in warm water for at least a couple minutes. You will be using this as the medium that the roots will be growing into.

Make an Incision

Take your sharp knife and carefully cut about halfway into your stem.  I don’t think it really matters what direction you slant your cut. 

Some people do it perpendicular to the stem, but I chose to do it on an angle as you can see from the picture below. 

You can see some latex oozing from the cut and this is normal if you are air layering a rubber plant. If you get the latex on your hands, wash them with soap and water so you don’t get skin irritation. You can use gloves if you’d like.

Another step that you can take is optional (but very beneficial) is to gently take your sharp knife and cut off maybe a half inch thin strip of the bark all the way around the perimeter of the stem in the location where you make the diagonal cut.

Prop Open the Incision

Next, you will prop the incision open with a toothpick and dust both the cut that you made and the band of stem that you debarked with rooting hormone.

I like to use the following rooting hormone, available on Amazon:  Garden Safe Take Root Rooting Hormone. The rooting hormone will speed up how quickly roots will grow on your

Take the tip of a toothpick (you can also use a Q-tip or the edge of a knife), dip it in water, and then dip it in a rooting hormone. Then gently apply the rooting hormone to the incision that you’ve made (as well as to the band of bark that you removed around the perimeter of the stem.)

Then take the toothpick and gently insert the center of the toothpick horizontally into the incision so that it can hold open the cut while the roots are growing. 

Then take your scissors and cut off both ends of the toothpick.  You’ll want to do this so that the points of the toothpick don’t pierce holes into the plastic wrap once you wrap it in Step 5.

Wrap with Sphagnum Moss

Take your sphagnum moss that you have soaking in water and squeeze out all the excess moisture with your hands. 

You want it damp, but not dripping wet otherwise your plant may rot.  Then gently wrap the moss around where you cut the stem and gently squeeze it into a ball so that there is proper contact between the moss and the cut that you’ve made.

First I placed the moss behind the stem.

And then I wrapped the moss around the stem into a ball.

After you have a nice ball of moss surrounding your cut, take some clear plastic wrap and wrap it around the moss a few times.

Secure the Plastic Wrap

Finally, firmly tie both ends of the plastic wrap with garden twine.  I like to tie it like I’m tying my shoe laces.  This way, you can easily remove it when the cutting has rooted.

Wait!

This is the hardest part…waiting!  It may be a few months before your cutting roots, so it’ll require a little patience on your part.

Separate your Cutting and Pot It Up

After a few months, you should be able to see the roots growing through the moss inside of the plastic wrap. 

At this point, you can cut the cutting off of the parent plant and pot it up.  This actually has two benefits:

1. You’ve propagated a whole new plant!
2. The stem on your original plant should grow a new branch (or maybe even two) and your parent plant will get more full. See my blog post on pruning rubber plants to get a bushier plant.

So try it out!  Have you tried air layering your rubber plant?  Comment below!