Dr. Grow: Successful cuttings

Trim any leaves off the bottom of your cutting before you plant it.

Finally place your clipping in a small pot. Make sure keep the leaves moist or they will wilt because they don't yet have the root structure to live.

Each spring several people ask me how to start plants from cuttings. They remember their mom or grandmother snipping a few shoots, rooting them, and then sharing the new plants with friends and relatives. They would like to renew this family tradition.

The technique described below is used for herbaceous plants such as mums, wandering jews, pothos, Swedish ivy, and for willow and cottonwood. Modifications of the procedure need to be made for harder to root plants.

To get started, collect the materials you need. The list includes a sterile root substrate, rooting hormone, a plant from which to make cuttings, small pots or divided cell packs, and water. Tools needed are a wooden pencil, snippers, two shallow saucers and a water mister. All of these supplies can be purchased at your local garden center.

The sterile root substrate can be vermiculite or a commercially prepared soil-less potting mix. Do not use soil from your yard or garden. Natural soils contain a lot of fungi in them. These fungi can become pathogenic and ruin your chances of getting a good rooting system from the cuttings.

Place the sterile root substrate into a small pot, not bigger than two to three inches in diameter. You can also use divided cell packs, such as on the ones your garden center sells bedding plants in. Do not use a large pot to start your cuttings in. Too much substrate in the pot will hold too much moisture, resulting in shoot rot before new roots form.

After you place the root substrate into the pot, thoroughly moisten the substrate with water. Then push a wooden pencil two inches deep into the center of the moist substrate.

This hole is where you will place your cutting.

You are now ready to make your cutting. Select from the mother plant a shoot that is growing vigorously. Snip one to three inches off of the end of the shoot. Next remove all the leaves at the cut end for one-half to one inch. You now have a shoot with leaves next to the growing end of the shoot, the apical meristem, and with a bare shoot next to the cut end.

Now dip the cut end of the shoot into water placed in one of the saucers. The water will help hold rooting hormone onto the cutting.

Next dip your moistened cutting into the powdered rooting hormone that has been placed on a saucer. After dipping, your new cutting will have a layer of rooting hormone covering the cut end of the shoot. Now place the hormone-coated cutting into the hole in the rooting substrate. If no hole is made, the rooting hormone will be rubbed off the cut end of the shoot as it is forced into the root substrate.

Next tamp the rooting substrate around the stem of the cutting. Make sure that no air pockets are left around the shoot.

After you have "stuck" your cutting, mist the cutting with water. Do not use a sprinkling can. The water droplet size is too large. Use a mister nozzle that breaks up the water into very small droplet sizes as it leaves the nozzle. Mist the new cuttings until the substrate is moist, but not to the point that the substrate and cutting is swimming in water.

Watering and misting is probably the most critical part of taking successful cuttings. Place the cuttings in a lightly shaded area. Every two hours each day, mist the new cutting lightly. You must keep the tops of the cuttings moist, while not keeping the substrate too wet. If you don't mist your cuttings occasionally, the tops will wilt. Since the tops are not attached to roots, they have no way of replenishing water lost through transpiration. By keeping the air around the tops close to 100% relative humidity, the tops do not loose much water through transpiration, and consequently do not wilt. Usually within a week or so, the plants listed above will have produced enough roots to begin to reach the bottom of the pots the cuttings are made in. When the pots are filled with roots, you can transplant the new rooted plants into larger pots and give them to your friends.

The technique described above does not work for all plants. For example, after taking cuttings from yews, it sometimes requires several months of treatment before roots appear. A misting bed is needed for these hard to root plants.

Some woody plants require cuttings be taken at particular times in the season if rooting is to be successful. For example, the best time to take cuttings from forsythia is in the spring, while plant branches are elongating. These softwood cuttings generally produce roots faster than cuttings obtained from hardened branches.

As described above cuttings are dipped into a rooting hormone. Some plants require different concentrations of rooting hormone to successfully produce roots. In addition some plants require treatment by alternative rooting hormones that are on the market.

Try your hand at rooting with the herbaceous plants suggested above. When you become consistently successful, then try you hand at the harder to root plants. Who knows, you may produce all of the plants that you grow in your landscape.