In my area (Zone 5a) Coleus is an annual, but it’s one of those awesome plants that keeps on giving all summer long and can live in full shade and have lots of different cultivars. Not only can you bring it inside to propagate it, but also you can pot it up and bring it inside as an indoor houseplant. It’s also easy to propagate and grow Coleus from your mature coleus plants . Coleus is a beautiful tender perennial that ranges in colors from burgundy maroon to pinks and yellows and whites. It also makes a great and fast filler for your landscaping in the ground or in a pot.
It’s also one of those amazing, forgiving plants that you can snap a piece off for use a cutting and it will grow roots easily in water if you don’t live in a hardiness zone where it can live outside all year. The trick to propagating your Coleus successfully is to take a large juicy part of the stems and pinch it off just above a joint (leaf node) where two leaflets are. I use my fingers, but you can also use scissors. The sap can cause skin irritation, so wear gloves if you have any question at all. I always wash my hands right away after handing it. Also, from what I understand the plant is toxic to pets, so use caution in your yard if you have pets.
When taking a cutting , even though if you pinch the coleus plant off too high, it will still form those leaves underneath, you’ll just have some ugly stems sticking up.
By doing this, not only will you be able to make new plants over and over again, but it will stimulate your Coleus plant to grow huge and full! Depending on your coleus varieties (and there are so many of them with amazing foliage colors!), they may need shade or can even tolerate full sun.
TIP: when you see those $5 baskets of coleus with 10 plants in them, make sure to buy them and break them a part! You can use them to fill in all over your garden! In fact when coleus get too tall and leggy, they are on their way to setting seed. This is a great time to snap a good inch or two off and they will branch out and become denser and fuller.
You can see how our front walk looks here all filled out for Fall. I know some of you are lucky that they are either a year round plants or will come back, but our frigid winters take care of that, so they are one of my favorite annuals here.
Also, giving it an aggressive pinching back will cause it to fill out beautifully, as you can see in the above picture.
Growing Coleus in Water
Did you know coleus cutting will readily root right in plant water, no rooting hormone needed! Simply strip off the lower leaves and place your stem cuttings it in water in a jar or bottle in room temperature water a bright window with indirect sunlight.
Once the Coleus roots start appearing, you can plop it in some well-watered soil and let it grow. When your propagate and grow Coleus, don’t let the roots get too long, or it won’t transplant well. Did you know Coleus is in the mint family (Lamiaceae)? That explains not only it’s square stem, but ability to root so easily!
Normally in the beginning of the season, I buy some really beautiful large varieties, put them in the ground and start propagating and planting. Normally, just before the first frost hits, I take cuttings to overwinter my Coleus.
They root and grow so well in water, I thought I would put them in the sunniest window in the house(which happens to be my downstairs bathroom), in some random jars and vintage milk bottles, and see what happens.
Coleus Plant Care
Change the water every week to keep it fresh. Not only will they flourish, but can snapped them off at a nodes when they get too big and started new ones. It’s perfect because they are then ready to transplant in the garden in the spring after the last frost date had passed. This herbaceous perennial can also be transplanted into containers of potting soil with drainage holes in a growing medium once the roots are starting and less than 1/4 inch long.
It was so nice to have something so alive inside when everything else is so bleak and barren outside. In the spring you can start the same process again and create cuttings to plant in your yard and put them in after the danger of frost has past.
I think they look so pretty with their colors against the white and even their roots in the clear water look interesting.
When I change the water once a week I give the roots a quick rinse too.
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