Time for Cuttings

 Bay cutting

My two latest plug plant choices I’m growing don’t seem to be in huge demand.  I have small Pipolia clover and cat grass up for sale and at the time of writing this I haven’t made a sale. I’ve even taken to offering a bag of the seeds to go with the plugs to sweeten the deal. All to no avail. 

Grew Well but Didn’t Sell

I’m quite sure the reason is that these plants grow so easily from seed. Why bother buying the small plugs when you can just broadcast the seeds all over the garden or in trays?  I didn’t grow too many of them and they were a bit of an experiment anyway so my own lawn will benefit from the plugs. My next venture will be the Tigernuts I mentioned last week and I have some planted in cells. I’m quite sure these will not be good sellers either, partly due again to the fact that you can grow them really easily yourself and more likely because the could turn out to be the biggest garden weed you have had since the perennial nasturtium.

I do have a plant that could have the potential to become popular – catnip (Nepeta cataria) . The drug of choice for your domesticated moggie. Just one sniff of the nepetalactone stimulant in the plant makes a lot of cats act very strange for a while and they seem to really enjoy it. Just as a matter of interest if you don’t have access to Google, it’s nontoxic and harmless to the cat- just fun for us to watch. I have lemon catmint and regular catmint too and these can also be propagated from seed, but it’s a lot quicker to take cuttings (which again will mean I probably won’t be selling may)

There are a lot of plants that can be propagated in this way. Similar to mint we have coleus, busy lizzie and a lot of herbs which have nodes on the stems where the roots grow, just by putting them in water.

Plant Cuttings

Rooted cuttings are often sturdier than seedlings, and come to maturity faster, many of them bearing flowers and fruits much earlier than seedlings. 

Plants grown from cuttings are exact clones of the parent plant, so you know exactly what you’re growing, which is not the case with seed-grown plants. That’s why many gardeners prefer to grow new plants from cuttings even when they can be easily grown from seeds. I worked with a parks gardener who would only propagate cuttings from their pelargoniums from overwintered plants as she knew exactly what she was growing. This also saved the council a lot of money on new stock and is also a cost effective method of populating our own gardens.

Some plants are sterile; they do not make viable seeds. This is the case with many naturally occurring and artificially developed hybrids and a lot are copyrighted which makes growing them from cuttings even more fun. 

For successful propagation, cuttings should be taken at the right time, especially for plants that change their growth pattern according to seasonal changes. There are different types of cuttings depending on the age of the stems from which they are taken.

Types Of Cuttings 

Softwood cuttings.  Taken in late spring or early summer from new shoots . The soft, flexible, green stems should be kept moist with frequent misting or covering with polythene. They readily take root and get established in the same season.

Semi-ripe cuttings. Taken in summer from slightly matured stems of that season, they may take a bit longer than softwood cuttings to take root, but the warmth of the summer months helps with root growth.

Hardwood cuttings. Taken in late summer/autumn and winter from mature, woody stems, they are ready for planting in next spring. Ideally, the cuttings should be prepared as soon as the shrubs start shedding leaves so that they can grow enough roots before the spring flush of shoot growth.

You can use different parts of the stem to grow new plants, and some plants can be propagated from leaf and root cuttings too like begoias.

Tip cuttings.  Cuttings from the growing tip of the stem is taken just below a node. Most herbs can be grown like this.

Basal cuttings. A side branch is taken, cutting it as close to the main stem. Verbenas and cosmos grow well from basel cuttings.

Heel cuttings. A lot of shrubs require a bit of the old stem for successful rooting. The side branches can be pulled off the parent plant so that they contain a part of the main stem (heel). Conifers are propagated a lot in this way.

Stem sections.  Cane forming plants such as bamboo can be propagated by midsections of their long stems.

Root sections. Some plants are easier to grow from root cuttings than stem cuttings, think rhubarb. A few roots can be dug up in the dormant season without harming the parent plant, and divided into several sections. More examples would be raspberry, blackberry, rose, phlox, crabapple and lilac.

Leaf cuttings.  Many succulents grow new plants from whole leaves, but for begonias all you need to do is place the leaf on soil and put slits in it and new plants grow from these. Gardening is magical.