The cuttings edge
Why pay a fortune when you can get stunning plants – like poppies – for FREE?
WHEN I left school, I took a part-time gardening course at my local horticultural college. In the first few months I learned to prune roses, prick out seedlings and plant bulbs, but the technique that made the greatest impact on me was taking hardwood cuttings.
Following a lecture on propagation, my fellow students and I were released to test our new-found knowledge. Long, leafless stems of willow and dogwood were gathered, divided into shorter pieces and plunged into sticky clay soil.
What happened next seemed like horticultural alchemy. Over the next few months, my cuttings s of Salix daphnoides – a gorgeous willow w with purple stems – formed roots, shoots and plenty of leaves. That autumn, I was thrilled to dig up my young plants and take them home to my parents.
As I discovered early on in my career, taking hardwood cuttings is a foolproof way of propagating a wide range of deciduous trees, shrubs and climbers. This method can be carried out at any time when plants are dormant, from late autumn to the end of winter.
Apart from the sat- isfaction of seeing a tiny bit of stem turn urn into a fully fledged plant, learning how to propagate plants will help lp to cut down on your garden centre bills – it’s essentially a way of filling your garden for free.
Among species that will regenerate reliably from cuttings are buddleia, dogwood, elder, forsythia,a, philadelphus and willow, along with climbmbers such as honeysuckle suckle and jasmine.
Taking hardwood cuttings is simple. Select a few strong, straight shoots roughly the thickness of a pencil. Divide the shoot into several 6in to 9in-long pieces. Use secateurs to make a straight cut above a pair of buds, followed by an angled cut above another set of buds.
Find a sunny, sheltered spot and excavate a V-shaped, 6in-deep slit trench. Spread horticultural grit or sharp sand along the base for drainage. Insert cuttings vertically, slanted cut-side-up to allow water to run off, so a third remains above
the s surface, spacing them 4in apart. Top up the trench wi with soil, firm an and water. Alternatively, yo u can place several cuttings in long pots filled with equal parts of multi-purpose compost and coarse grit. Cuttings will be ready for moving into theirth permanent positions ini beds and borders from late autumn, when they’ll be well rooted and have put on lots of top growth.
Hardwood cuttings are not the only way to make more plants at this time of year. Winter is the perfect time to propagate flowering perennials by root cuttings, an often overlooked technique that involves removing lengths of root from underground, which are then inserted into pots.
It’s a suitable technique for oriental poppies, Japanese anemone, bear’s breeches, eryngium, phlox, verbas- cum, and several types of hardy geranium. Whether plants are in the ground or pot-grown, lift and sever a few long roots close to the crown – choose only those that are white, healthy and about the thickness of a pencil. Replant the perennial immediately.
Push five cuttings vertically – and the same way up as when attached to the parent plant – into a 3in pot filled with specialist seed and cuttings compost. When the top of each cutting is level with the surface of the compost, cover with a ¾in layer of horticultural grit. Label and water.
Plants with finer roots will need different treatment. As they’re too flexible to be pushed upright into compost, place 2in-long pieces horizontally on the surface of 5in pots of compost. Arrange cuttings 1½ in apart so they have plenty of space to develop. Pots are best stored in a greenhouse or unheated porch.
Shoots should appear within a few weeks. When roots nose their way through the drainage holes in the base, split up the root ball of cuttings and give each its own pot – use multi-purpose compost. Young plants should be ready for planting out by summer.