Easy Fall Plant Propagation Techniques
As a home gardener, fall should be a very special time for you.
Fall is the best season of the year for plant propagation,
especially for home gardeners who do not have the luxury of
intermittent mist. The technique that I am going to describe
here can be equally effective for evergreens as well as many
deciduous plants. The old rule of thumb was to start doing
hardwood cuttings of evergreens after you have experienced at
least two hard freezes. After two hard freezes the plants are
completely dormant.
However, based on my experience it is beneficial to start doing
your evergreen cuttings earlier than that. So instead of doing
"by the book" hardwood cuttings you're actually working with
semi-hardwood cuttings. The down side to starting your cuttings
early is that they will have to be watered daily unless you
experience rain showers. The up side is that they will start
rooting sooner, and therefore are better rooted when you pull
them out to transplant them. To prepare an area in which to root
cuttings you must first select a site. An area that is about 50%
shaded will work great. Full sun will work, it just requires
that you tend to the cuttings more often. Clear all grass or
other vegetation from the area that you have selected. The size
of the area is up to you. Realistically, you can fit about one
cutting per square inch of bed area. You might need a little
more area per cutting, it depends on how close you stick the
cuttings in the sand. Once you have an area cleared off all you
have to do is build a wooden frame and lay it on the ground in
the area that you cleared. Your frame is a simple as four 2 by
4's or four 2 by 6's nailed together at each corner. It will be
open on the top and open on the bottom. Just lay it on the
ground in the cleared area, and fill it with a coarse grade of
sand. This sand should be clean (no mud or weed seed), and much
coarser than the sand used in a play box. Visit your local
builders supply center and view each sand pile they have. They
should have different grades varying from very fine to very
coarse. You don't want either. You want something a little more
coarse than their medium grade. But then again it's not rocket
science, so don't get all worked up trying to find just the
right grade. Actually, bagged swimming pool filter sand also
works and should be available at discount home centers.
Once your wooden frame is on the ground and filled with sand,
you're ready to start sticking cuttings. Wet the sand the day
before you start, that will make it possible for you to make a
slit in the sand that won't fill right in. In this propagation
box you can do all kinds of cuttings, but I would start with the
evergreens first. Taxus, Junipers, and Arborvitae. Make the
cuttings about 4" long and remove the needles from the bottom
two thirds of the cuttings. Dip them in a rooting compound and
stick them in the sand about an inch or so. Most garden centers
sell rooting compounds. Just tell them that you are rooting
hardwood cuttings of evergreens.
When you make the Arborvitae cuttings you can actually remove
large branches from an Arborvitae and just tear them apart and
get hundreds of cuttings from one branch. When you tear them
apart that leaves a small heel on the bottom of the cutting.
Leave this heel on. It represents a wounded area, and the
cutting will produce more roots because of this wound. Once the
weather gets colder and you have experienced at least one good
hard freeze, the deciduous plants should be dormant and will
have dropped their leaves, and you can now propagate them. Just
make cuttings about 4" long, dip them in a rooting compound and
stick them in the bed of sand. Not everything will root this
way, but a lot of things will, and it takes little effort to
find out what will work and what won't. This is a short list of
just some of the things that root fine this way. Taxus, Juniper,
Arborvitae, Japanese Holly, Blue Boy/Girl Holly, Boxwood,
Cypress, Forsythia, Rose of Sharon, Sandcherry, Weigela, Red
Twig Dogwood, Variegated Euonymus, Cotoneaster, Privet, and
Viburnum. Immediately after sticking the cuttings thoroughly
soak the sand to make sure there are no air pockets around the
cuttings. Keep the cuttings watered once or twice daily as long
as the weather is warm. Once winter sets it you can stop
watering, but if you get a warm dry spell, water during that
time. Start watering again in the spring and throughout out the
summer. The cuttings should be rooted by late spring and you can
cut back on the water, but don't let them dry out to the point
that they burn up. By fall you can transplant them to a bed and
grow them on for a year or two, or you can plant them in their
permanent location. This technique takes 12 months, but it is
simple and easy.