Can you cut it?
BOOST YOUR PLANT STOCK CHEAPLY BY LEARNING THE ART OF TAKING CUTTINGS
Use clean secateurs, you are creating open wounds so you don’t want dirt to get in...
LOCKDOWN has increased our interest in the craft of gardening, and the notion of making do with what we have about us, to create, repair and grow. When garden centres weren’t open many of us bought seeds online to ensure we had plants... either to eat or to enhance our environments.
Due to these strangest of times many new gardeners have discovered the thrill of nurturing a plant into life. It’s probably the ultimate creative satisfaction and, of course, it can save you a lot of money as well.
We started off with seeds but now is the time for our new budding gardeners to take the next step – let’s take some cuttings! With a new garden, this can be the most economical way to get started. By cuttings I mean taking a piece off one plant and rooting it in a growing medium such as compost which results in a new young plant.
This can be performed throughout the year – fresh softwood cuttings in spring, greenwood at the moment, semi-ripe during late summer, and hardwood cuttings in winter.
You don’t even need your own mother-stock to start off – gardeners like to share so if your family, friends or neighbours have plants you admire, why not ask them if you can take some cuttings? For those you can make right now, greenwood cuttings are taken from the tips of leafy stems. They will be quite soft but not as soft as sappy spring growth.
Among the many suitable plants for propagation in this way are herbaceous plants such as delphinium, penstemon, verbena, chrysanthemum as well as pelargoniums, vines, fuchsia, helianthemum, buddleja, lavatera, ceanothus, philadelphus and forsythia.
For beginners, I recommend trying something really easy like nepeta – recent cuttings I took started putting on new growth within a week!
Your main challenge is keeping the stem alive once you’ve lopped it off from its parent. So the best time to do this is early in the morning when the plant is full of water.
Choose a healthy looking specimen, without any visible signs of pests or diseases, and choose a non-flowering shoot. Using secateurs, cut about four to five inches off, just beneath a bud or leaf node, and place the cutting in water or a plastic bag to minimize water loss.
You’ll want to get these planted up as soon as possible after cutting. Plants lose water through their leaves so trim leaves from the base – you only need leaves at the tip. Remember to use clean secateurs – you are creating an open wound in the plant, so you don’t want dirt to get in.
You can use a hormone rooting powder to stimulate root growth – just tap some powder into your palm and dip the bottom of the cutting into it, shaking off any excess. You can also make rooting hormone solutions from store cupboard items such as a teaspoon of honey diluted in warm water, or some apple cider vinegar diluted – both have natural antiseptic qualities which help prevent rotting. Other solutions include making a brew from willow cuttings – willow has natural growth hormones – or dipping the end of a cutting in dissolved aspirin.
Fill pots or trays with compost and firm the compost down so there are no air pockets. Now insert the cuttings, water with a fine rose and cover with polythene to prevent water loss.
Your cuttings will need adequate light to start developing roots but not somewhere too hot where the leaves will be scorched or the plants will dry out.
If you overwater you run the risk of saturating the plant and rotting it, but don’t let it dry out too much either.
After three to eight weeks the stem will have developed its own root system and become a fully independent plant.
You can repot these individually and allow them to grow on. It’s surprisingly easy – you won’t have a 100% success rate but you’ll be amazed when it does work.