Growing from hardwood cuttings
THE far from scientific term ‘greenfingered’ is usually directed, as a compliment, towards the gardener that has a natural ability or just plain luck to be sucessful in growing plants with apparent ease. This is usually with no regard for the rules and regulations most of us try to adhere to not to mention hardwork we put in. ‘Oh I just grew that from a slip’ or ‘I just stuck it in the ground and it grew’ . We’ve all been annoyed by the self congratulatory gardener next door.
Now you can literally strike back, strike being horticultural the term used to describe getting a cutting to root, by taking some hardwood cuttings. Hardwood cuttings are the easiest, least skilled and most sucussful method of propagating a wide range of woody plants and from mid autumn through winter is the time to take them. You will however need to have a little patience as these cuttings won’t be ready for planting on until next autumn.
Deciduous trees and shrubs are all sucessful from hardwood cuttings as are fruit bushes like currants and gooseberries, roses, many climbers and some evergreen shrubs. Never take your cutting material from open gardens or parks and always get permission if the source is not your own garden.
A hardwood cutting is taken from this years plant growth that has lignifed or hardened to a woody state. This is opposed to soft wood and semi ripe wood cuttings that are taken earlier in the year and are much more vunerable as they are taken from plants that are still actively growing. The dormant state of a hardwood cutting makes it much more robust. They are generally planted outside in the open ground which is another great advantage as the can be left to their own devices all year apart from keeping them weed free. They can be sucessfully planted in pots and containers and grown under cover but outside makes life much easier.
To take a hardwood cutting cut off a straight shoot between fifteen to thirty centimetres long and about as thick as a pencil if possible. Remove the very tip with a sloped fourty five degree cut just above a bud or leaf node. This will allow water to run off the cut and is also useful to help you remember which way is up which is sometimes not as easy as you might think. At the base cut flat just below a leaf node, the cleaner the cuts the better. Dip the flat cut bottom of the cutting into a rooting compound, this will help the cut calous over and also ward off fungal infections. In a pre-prepared trench of manure incorporated soil make a slit with a spade and insert two thirds of the cutting into the ground and firm in. Water to settle in.
If you are taking hardwood cuttings from evergreens like Cotoneaster, Skimmia, Ligustrum and Ilex take your cuttings at around fifteen centimetres in length and nip out the growing tip. Take off the lower leaves leaving around four on the cutting. You can then use a technique called wounding which means to cut a small vertical sliver of bark off one side of the bottom inch of the cutting. Dip all the cut surfaces in rooting compound. Insert half of the cutting into the ground and water in. These evergreens cuttings will have a better strike rate if grown under cover and winter protected.
Come spring, late May, some of the cuttings may have failed to leaf which will mean they haven’t taken. Some may leaf then shrivel which again is not a good sign but leave alone as they may sprout again. Most, eighty percent of your cuttings should grow on favourably. Roses and evergreens may have slightly lower strike rate. In autumn next year you can carefully lift the rooted cutting and plant into the final location then next summer tell everyone you just stuck it in the ground and it grew.