I had to rescue a pot of cuttings of orange flowered Impatiens from the heated propagator in the greenhouse because they were pressed hard up against the plastic lid and growing sideways. They are Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata, originally bought as a little mail order rooted plug from Dibleys some time in 2014, and which I have managed to keep going through a succession of cuttings since. They root ridiculously easily, and from that point of view I could have dozens by now if I wanted to. They are not the easiest things to keep once rooted because they are extraordinarily attractive to vine weevils. Twice now I have gone into the conservatory to find the current plant collapsed on the ground with all its roots eaten away. Each time I have quickly cut the ends off some of its stems to use as cuttings, and so started again.
The Impatiens makes a fair sized plant when happy, getting on for a yard in all directions, and so I have always whittled the cuttings down to one as that's all there's room for in the conservatory. Dibleys suggest it would be good as a bedding plant, but I don't do that sort of gardening, and in winter it definitely needs to be under cover. In fact, once I'd liberated the latest rooted cuttings from the warmth of the propagator I thought I couldn't just leave them on the greenhouse bench. It would be too cold for them, especially at night, and the shock would probably kill them. Instead I put them on the kitchen window sill, trying to hide them in the corner behind an orchid. The kitchen window sill is not really supposed to be used for gardening, and it already had a pot with the albino Clivia seedlings on it. Adding three large wonky Impatiens cuttings made it look even more like an impromptu propagating area.
The kitchen is reliably warmish thanks to the Aga, but much less humid than the inside of a heated propagating case, and the leaves of the Impatiens collapsed almost immediately. Then over the next few days half of them stiffened up again, while the other half shrivelled and fell off. I am not too fussed, since they are already starting to make side shoots from the leaf axils, and come the spring should roar into growth and the loss of some leaves will be history. When I overwintered the mature plants in the conservatory, only just above freezing, they used to drop many of their leaves anyway. It is all very messy, though, and I have to admit I don't have the right facilities for propagating Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata starting in autumn. Maybe I should have chopped the tops off the cuttings and left them in the heated propagator, but I didn't think of that at the time and anyway I wanted the space for the tomatoes.
The three very small cuttings I took in autumn as an insurance policy cum experiment from Begonia fuchsioides all struck with bottom heat, and have been growing at a measured pace and even flowering. Their leaves are a nice dark green and they look a lot better than the parent plant down in the chill of the conservatory. It spent last winter in my bathroom because I was afraid of it catching cold, but it was so much in the way that this winter I decided to try cuttings instead. Now I have seen how readily it roots I shall take more cuttings in the spring. It is an enormously pretty plant and not offered for sale very often. I first saw it at the Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens, who didn't have any to sell, and I got mine from Fibrex Nurseries at an RHS London show. If I grew some spare I should think people at my garden clubs might like it as well.
They are the successes, by the way. My cuttings of two sorts of Argyranthemum and a dark stemmed Verbena failed utterly. as did most of the Arctotis.
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