My experience with air layering has not been the most successful, although I confess I was excited because apparently everything was going well and I had found an effective way to reproduce my adenium.

After watching a few videos I thought I had mastered the technique, it actually seemed like a simple method, so I took the plunge and did some air layering on my Desert Rose plant. After about three weeks, I checked one of the layering and to my surprise it had a well formed root, so I proceeded to separate it, but after a short time it rotted, however I had two more layering left on the plant.

A few days later I noticed that my plant was losing its leaves, they had a yellowish colour. Every day I watched it, but I thought it was just going to change leaves. One day I happened to touch the stem and to my surprise it was full of water, I almost had a heart attack because the plant had been with me for years and was rotting.

I immediately proceeded to cut all the rotten stems, trying to save it. More than a month has passed and my adenium has not recovered. Subsequently I made a second cut, but now only the root and the base of the stem are left. 😞

I honestly think it wasn't a good idea to do the layering on it, maybe the soil infected the plant and hence the rotting. At least I should have had a younger plant to test and not put my plant at risk.

See how my plant looked before the layering and in another photo in full bloom.

Maybe it was not the best season to reproduce it by layering, because in my country it is now the rainy season and this year it has rained very often. Although the plant was indoors it got some rain from the sides but very little sun.

This has been a lesson learned not to put my plants at risk when I go to practice new techniques. I recommend having a plan B for these inventions. For now I am trying to save it in many ways, hopefully I can do it because this plant was one of my favourites. My adenium now looks like this: 😭

If anyone has any ideas to help save it, I would be very grateful. Greetings fellow gardeners. 🤗

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✨Credits:✨

The content is my authorship, the images are my own and the digital editing has been done by me. The original text has been written in Spanish and translated using www.DeepL.com