I am always surprised that more people do not propagate their own plants. With new technology you really don’t need green fingers to create exciting new shrubs, perennials and trees. I bought a small 9cm plant of the fabulous Verbena ‘Bampton’ a year or so ago and within about three weeks I had around 10 plants that I now give away like courgettes. The same goes for the Cosmos ‘Cherry Chocolate’ and Salvia ‘Hadspen’ – great new plants, fabulously easy to propagate (three weeks) and with the same huge price tag as many brilliant new introductions.
Not to boast, but a lot of my yew hedges, box hedges (including the blight resistant new varieties), lilacs, daphnes and roses are home propagated. Those rarities that you see are impossible to get – you just have to propagate. I am about to try the wonderful but rare Rosa hemisphaerica, the pale-yellow, scented favourite of old Dutch masters, which is legendary in being difficult to root – but I have a cunning plan.
I have a corner of the garden which is my “working garden”, probably my favourite part, where I keep a cold frame and two homemade greenhouses, plus some hoarding borders. These hoarding borders are where I grow my cuttings before planting them out into the garden proper. I also have a raised bench (with capillary matting) where propagated plants are grown in pots. I need gifts and not just for friends, I also bring my podcast guests a present, and usually it’s a plant I think they will like. I took Nick Mason the fabulously showy Abutilon “Ashford Red’, which sort of matches his Ferraris. Mary Berry had a myrtle, the symbol of love and friendship and so on.
Cuttings
By far the most common system I use for perennials, shrubs and roses is by taking cuttings. For me this has been revolutionised in the last five years or so by the introduction of aeroponic propagators. These massively speed up rooting times and success rates. There are a fair few suppliers on the market now, and I probably saved the £60 investment in the first three weeks thanks to my new cuttings output. They now go for around £81, but I promise you they will completely change the way you garden, as you will be able to plant interesting new plants expansively.
If I am propagating cuttings the traditional way, I use a 50 per cent Perlite and 50 per cent compost mix. I normally use a seed tray filled almost to the top and sometimes put it on a small heat mat in the greenhouse if they are trickier subjects. Many things don’t need this: lavender, penstemons, nepetas and many more, but the bottom heat will probably help speed things up.
Books always specify whether you should do hardwood, semi-hardwood or softwood cuttings but often I can only get the cutting wood when I visit the garden, so I frequently disregard this. Providing you take maybe ten cuttings, you will often get some success when you disregard the rules. I took some cuttings of Daphne laureola from Chris Baines’s garden while filming a YouTube video with him in early spring.
This is the native spurge laurel, a fabulous exotic looking evergreen with highly fragrant pinky-white flowers followed by attractive berries in early spring. All three rooted, even though it is advised to take in June or July. I also sowed some berries and about 80 per cent germinated, but I followed directions requiring I put them in the fridge (4 degrees celsius) for a month or so before sowing. These have not yet caught up with the cuttings, but are looking well. It will be interesting to see if there is some variation in the seed sown plants, while obviously the cutting-raised ones will be identical to the parent plant.
I never bother with rooting hormone, the shelf life of the hormone is very small, and often by the time you buy it, it has decreased rapidly. The fungicide element of it is probably what is helping, if anything – but I don’t find it worth the cost. Joe Sharman agrees with me. Joe has the reputation of being able to put roots on anything and runs Monksilver Nursery near Cambridge.
If you take cuttings and it becomes hot and sunny, always put them in the shade. I often mist them with a bottle and watch them closely for signs of wilt, especially very soft cuttings. Once the roots develop then obviously this becomes unnecessary. Polythene bags over the top will help keep the humidity up. Having travelled with cuttings in a suitcase for a day or more (in a poly bag with very damp tissue paper), I am often surprised how quickly the sad, wilted specimen revives and goes on to strike healthy roots.
How to propagate cuttings: a step-by-step guide
Layering
Often a neglected form of propagation, but can be easy and especially useful with trees. Pete Glassey has layered the new replacement trees for the lime avenues at Burghley Park, having felled some of the original and decaying older ones. He wanted to have exact clones of the original lime trees (Tilia x europea Burghley tall), and so layered them. He uses the stump of a tree that is shooting around the edge, takes a new shoot, and “puts a blinking great clod of earth on it” to hold the middle section to the ground, then pulls the end of the shoot up vertically and holds it up with a tree tube. He never bothers to wound the stem as it commonly recommends in books. In 12 months he will have a new tree.
I have tried rooting cuttings from my quince trees, the variety Cydonia ‘Serbian Gold’, which is far less prone to blight than others. I have had no success. I am now trying to layer it but many of the branches are quite high from the ground. I am using a ‘cutting globe plant propagator’, which is a simple plastic globe in two halves, one red and one clear, each around 7cm in diameter. You wound the small branch of the tree by removing the bark and cambium layer then you stuff the globe with moist compost stuffed around the stem and screw the ball together. The red face should go towards the sun.
The success rates are amazing. In 6-8 weeks you will find the roots are well into the compost, so you can detach the plant and plant it up. Instead of hormone powder I am using a recommended mix consisting of one part honey and one part warm water, rubbing it on the exposed cambiums. Then I’ll dust off with cinnamon powder to control rotting. You can do this any time when the temperature is above 8 degrees celsius. It seems to work brilliantly for figs, many trees, rhododendrons, many house plants, Japanese acers, Garrya elliptica (typically difficult) and others. You fit the ball between the nodes or buds. Half of the ball is see-through so you can see when the root system has developed. They are available from mailorderplants4me.com for £15.50 for six including postage.
Irishman’s cuttings
Great for things like globe artichokes. You remove a young stem just below ground level, with a bit of root, and pot it on.
Division
The easiest form of propagation, but you have to have a good sized plant to do this. Herbaceous peonies have the reputation of taking years to flower following division. I found out this was incorrect having been given masses of lovely old peonies from the old walled gardens at Stapleford Park around 37 years ago. As long as each division has a flower bud on the roots, it will flower the following spring. Having lifted the clump from the ground, simply remove any dead top growth and then, with a sharp knife, cut vertically down and try to get at least one bud and root on each section – three to five is better if your clump will allow this. Joe Sharman says that an even better way is just to throw the clump on the ground with force and it will naturally break into smaller pieces with roots and buds.
I have never found the back-to-back fork method much good for division. I believe it just creates an attractive illustration in books. Most commercial growers I know use a knife, and Joe Sharman’s top one is the 20cm Lakeland precision bread knife ,£29.99. He has had it for many years, and it is amazing.
I am looking forward to dividing my tree peony. These are so expensive but utterly beautiful. You do need to make sure that they have lots of stems though. If they have just one or two, then they are probably still reliant on the grafted herbaceous “nurse” rootstock and it won’t work well. If they have lots of stems then it will work perfectly. Lift it carefully, digging around the drip line and trying not to damage the roots, then remove some soil before washing it all off. Try and see where the plant divides naturally and then you can try pulling it apart, so you have a good few stems and roots. You could also go further and try to get more divisions from the plant. On replanting, it can help to reduce the top growth to lessen the strain on the plant.
Aeroponic propagation
This is my go-to method now. There are a few brands on the market. I have the X stream Aero Propagator from The Greenhouse Effect (ghedirect.co.uk) and also the Hydropod Propagator from Two Wests and Elliot (twowests.co.uk). This system enables you to put cuttings into sponge discs that are suspended above a mist sprinkler that mists the stems continually. There is a vented clear Perspex top above. Some versions allow you to keep the water warm, but this is not really necessary in the summer. You can also put an unheated version on a heated mat in cooler conditions.
There are also versions with lights if you want to use them in a darker area. The pump, like any water pump, needs to be cleaned occasionally; annually or when the water stream gets a bit choked. It’s like Christmas when I lift the lid and find great newly rooted cuttings ripe for potting on. I push it to extremes and put multiple cuttings in each disc, not just one as recommended.
Seeds
Probably the most common form of propagation. The progeny may not be the same as the parent though. I took some berries from the most prolifically berried holly I have ever seen, a very old tree. It was deep winter so it was not easy to take cuttings at that time. After a year in a cold greenhouse quite a few berries had germinated, and the small plants are growing well.
However, they will not be identical to the parent tree genetically so may not produce such prolific berries. On the other hand they could be better. Also some will no doubt be males so will not produce berries at all. On perennial seed sowing, the best source I know is the Jelitto website.
Under “Plant Information” it has explicit sowing advice for many perennials. Jelitto are a great source of a massive range of quality perennial seeds but because they are wholesalers there is a minimum order of around £25.00, so it may be worth considering linking up with other gardeners.
Root cuttings
These are best for plants such as some of the sterile Verbascum hybrids, Corylus colurna, Acanthus and some Eryngium, among others. Books tell you to do this in winter, but Joe Sherman has found it is far better done when the plant is actively growing. It seems counter-intuitive to dig a plant up in June, but the root cuttings will grow on much faster. He places them vertically in compost, top ends up, and usually gets a rooted plant in the autumn.
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