Uncut Petunias and Willow Water

The uncut petunias are putting on a great show.

For the first time in years I didn’t take cuttings from my petunias and verbenas. Generally it’s the first thing I do when buying a tray of annuals. This year I thought I would just let them grow without any cost cutting intervention from myself. The results have been pretty amazing.   

Normally I would get at least four cuttings from each plant before I put it in a basket or container. Pinching the tips out also promotes bushier growth so I thought I was doing the plant a favour.  It turns out that what I usually ended up with were poor parent plants and even sadder looking rooted cuttings. I’m not sure if that’s a growing technique by the nurseries or just that I doubt give the plants a head start with the soil and rooting techniques. This year’s plants are doing me proud in their containers and both varieties of bedding are producing hundreds of rich coloured flowers. 

Rooting Cuttings

Charlotte Haworth from the permaculture institute had the same issue with her plants so looked up an age old recipe for a homemade rotting hormone to give new cuttings the best possible chance of growing into healthy specimens. Here she tells us how the potion is produced from young willow branches.

“There are many ways to propagate plants, which can be broadly divided into sexual and asexual. Taking cuttings is an asexual method, as your new plants will be clones of the mother. The method is simply to cut a new shoot from an existing plant and encourage it to take root itself. 

Natural rooting hormone

Many plants need a little help to grow roots, although some species can be planted straight into the ground. One of these is willow (salix) and an effective way of capturing the rooting hormone present in willow for use on other plants is to make willow water.”

This willow water recipe is based on one Charlotte learnt during her PDC at Permaship in Bulgaria.

Willow water recipe

Ingredients:

Fresh willow branches – use the very ends of the branches where growth is newest. Charlotte used a ratio of 100g of willow to 500ml of water.

Step 1: find a willow tree, and harvest the shoots

“You are only looking for the very tips on the branches, where the growth is newest. I cut about 10cm from the end of the branches of my weeping willow tree, the ones that were touching the ground.

You do not need many to make an effective rooting hormone. About five-ten 10cm branch-ends is plenty.”

Step 2: remove the leaves

“Cut all the leaves off the branches so that you are left with just the thin, springy shoots. The leaves can be discarded or, if you are that way inclined, dried for use as tea.  Weeping Willow, salix babylonica, is an especially potent species.”

Step 3: chop up the branches

“Now that you just have the branches left, chop them up very small and place them in a large bowl or container. Ideally the smaller the pieces of branch the better.” Charlotte left hers  a couple of cms long.

Step 4: watering the willow

“Now fill the container with water, so that all of your chopped-up bits of willow are completely covered. Place a lid of some kind on top of the container, and leave it to stand for about 2 nights, to allow all of the rooting hormone to soak out of the bits of willow and into the water.

If you are using a plastic container to soak the willow in, it is possible that some of the plastic will leach out and become present in the rooting hormone. However, this does not necessarily mean that the rooting hormone will not be effective.”

Step 5: decant the potion

“Once it has been left for a couple of days, separate the water from the branches using a sieve. Do not be alarmed if the resulting potion smells a little unpleasant; this is for plants to drink, not you, so there’s no need to worry.

Now the willow water is ready for use and you can put it into a bottle using a funnel.

Once you have the willow water in a suitable container, it can be kept for some weeks in a dry dark place, and up to two months if kept in a refrigerator.”

Using the Mixture

Charlotte experiments on Rosemary cuttings and after trimming the cutting, she gently dipped the ends into a capful of the potent mixture and planted them into soil. So far the results have been very promising with loads of healthy plantlets. 

Maybe next year this is what I’ll do with my petunias and verbenas.