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Plant Propogation
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Plant Propogation
Hardwood: In July '00, I took cuttings from my Hick's Yews, Common Boxwood, Mock Orange, Lilac, a couple of Tea Roses.Here's how I did it;
1) I prepared 3 inch pots, by washing them with soapy water, rinsing them in diluted bleach, then letting them dry. The pots were filled with a sand/peat mix and allowed to soak in a tub of water until soggy, after which they were set aside to drain while I took the cuttings;2) Each cutting was a 4 inch stick (sorry, my technical turn for 'section of stem') with a few leaves on it. I stripped any leaves off of the bottom inch of the stick, then scratched that section up with the sharp edge of my shears (just enough to cut in a bit here and there).
3) The end was dipped into Rooting Hormone (the goo, not the powder), and the stick was stuck into a three inch pot and set aside again to finish draining.
4) After everything was potted up (I did about 50 or so cuttings) each pot was placed into a Freezer Bag. The top of the bag was closed with a twist tie so that plenty of air was trapped in side the bag.
5) The bags were placed in a North facing window - and forgotten.
I am very pleased with this method. I have tried another similar technique which calls for tenting a bag overtop, but I found that it required much more attention, and I lost all of my cuttings because I had to go away and they dried out. With this freezer bag method, I didn't have to look at them for 8 weeks. After which, they came out of the bags, pots were placed on my front step (north side of house, full shade, protected from wind and rain), in November they were moved to the south side of the house and placed into open cold-frames, beginning of December I started closing cold-frames for the winter, beginning of March cold-frames were opened and remain so, plants are currently under 3-4" snow.
The results of this test are promising for me. Out of fifty potted cuttings - I lost 6 to a neighbourhood cat, 3 to the kids (which turned out to be good, because I had a chance to examine the root growth on a few of each type), and several to family members as gifts, etc. There are quite a few in the cold frames still waiting for nicer weather.