Coffee surgery - the aftermath

How did the coffee plant pruning turn out? Exceedingly well!

This was the plant right after cutting the trunk:

The coffee plant right after cutting the trunk.

And this is the plant after one month:

 

The plant almost exactly one month later.

OK, so the camera and the light are both better in the second picture. But it's still fair to say cutting that trunk has done the plant a world of good. There's lots of new, dense growth and little to no leaf browning. 

That last may be in part because I'm more restrictive with watering; a Reddit post suggested a common cause was overwatering. I now wait until it seems dried out, then way for one more day before I completely drench the pot. It certainly seems to work.

The cuttings didn't fare nearly as well:

Yeah, that didn't work.

No idea what went wrong. I still want a second plant so I may try again in spring. Will need to first look up a better way to do it — this time I just dipped the cuttings in growth hormone then pushed them into the soil. I also tried putting one in water first, but it never formed roots either. Anybody know how to take proper cuttings, let me know.