Propagating Plants

[Troy]

There’re many reasons to propagate plants otherwise know as taking plant cuttings. Some of the reasons are.

• Cost: Is cheaper to propagate a few plants from what you already have than to go out and purchase new of the same.
• Plant life expectancy: Many perennial plants live for a few years then die, taking cuttings from those plants extends the species living in your garden.
• Multiplying the breed: Say you only have one type of a specific plant in your garden. You can take cuttings from the mother plant then multiply the breed.
• The good feelings: One of the greatest feelings as gardener or hobbyist is to see a plant develop from seed or cutting into a beautiful spender from the likes of your doings. Those are only some of the reason why it’s good to propagate plants.

 

Propagating plants is not difficult. Many plants can be propagated simply in your home or garden with no effort.

I’ll jot here what works best for me as a hobbyist gardener living in London UK. Through the years I’ve experimented propagating various plant types. At first, many of my cuttings would not root, they’d dry up. I found out when taking cutting its best to take cut from a new growth section from the mother plant. Cut a stem that is green and soft, not developed yet into a woody type stem. Since doing that 99% of my cuttings always roots. Many plants will root by inserting the cutting in moist compost or a container holding water. I found’ dipping the cuttings in hormone rooting powered makes the rooting process much faster.

 

 

The process

• Start off by using a clean plant cutting tool to collect your cuttings.
• Take cuttings which are green, soft not matured yet.
• New growth shoots are best. Here in London, I noticed the plants pop out new growth twice per year. Once after the winter, around April May and later in the year, around July August.
• Remove leaves and stems from the bottom of the cuttings, basically, you want to create a clean stem to stick into the compost.
• Wet the cuttings then dip them in some rooting powder.
• Pop them in the compost then compress the compost around the base, make it slightly tight.
• Pour some water onto your new potted cuttings.
• Let it sit for about three weeks in a nice warm spot, away from the direct sun is best.

One important thing is to make sure the compost is moist/wet all the time. In about three weeks you’ll have some nice cuttings from your mother plants ready to re-pot or spread out in your garden or indoors.

 

 

 

In the photo above, those are cuttings were taken from a daisy mother plant, after three weeks they’ve popped out nice fresh healthy roots ready to be re-potted or plant on in the garden.

 

 

Check out my video which illustrates a bit more about how I propagate plants here in London UK.

That’s it, nothing much to it.

Happy propagating.

 

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