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Making More Plants Plants vary in their ability to propagate. Some are so simple you can stick a shoot or cutting in water and it will produce new, healthy roots. The leaves of some plants can be set on a moist surface and the leaves will send out roots and eventually start new plants. Yet others will require the right temperature, moisture and a rooting hormone to get them to send out new roots. The most common plant propagation method is with seeds which you can collect, buy at garden centers, purchase through seed catalogs, or order over the Internet. Then there's vegetative propagation using a portion of the plant whether it's through plant division or using a plant cutting taken from a leaf, stem or root. Although this may sound a little bit like surgery, it's a whole lot easier than you might think. If you really want to propagate plants using surgical skill then you might want to learn the art of grafting. With grafting you take the part of one plant (such as a bud) and attach it to another plant. This is often done with citrus attaching one variety to another to provide a rootstock that may be less susceptible to disease. In this article I'll focus on stem and leaf cuttings.
Simple Tools Needed You'll need a sharp pair of hand pruning sheers to get the cuttings. For soft plant tissue a sharp knife will also work. A dip in a 10 percent bleach solution should sterilize the blades of the sheers and knife so you won't unwillingly transmit any diseases.
You'll need a plant medium for your cuttings. Although I've used good potting soil I've found starting cuttings in about an equal mix of perlite and vermiculite seems to work quite well. The materials hold moisture well which is important for rooting cuttings. For some of the succulents and cactus you could use a clean sand. A deep container is needed to hold the plant medium. Anything will work as long as it's not too large. Inexpensive clear plastic storage containers with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage work well. The lid can be cut and covered with plastic to allow in light and hold in moisture. (With this past summer's (1999) high humidity the cuttings illustrated in this article were propagated in open containers that were occasionally sprayed with water. The rooting medium was kept moist at all times.) You'll need a watering method whether it's a watering can or misting bottle. You'll need some powdered rooting hormone which you should be able to find at any good garden center. The hormone stimulates growth.
And finally you'll need containers and potting soil to transplant all your plants once they've rooted. By the end of August I had more new plants than I did containers to put them in. I rooted several different colors of coleus, two different herbs, brittle bush, several different houseplants, five different succulents and a few things I didn't even want.
Simple Is As Simple Does
I have one Dieffenbachia (dumb cane) plant I've had close to twenty years that keeps getting rerooted and replanted in the spring. Some of the offspring have been given away to others, and I always have requests for one of the plants when I plan on cutting them back. To be honest I'm a little tired of the plants. They're a little like grown, well educated children who haven't moved out of the house. But year after year, I keep taking care of them. Of course if the spot near the sliding glass door where the plants reside suddenly became vacant, I'm sure I'd miss the Dieffenbachia immensely.
So find the plants you like best and take a few cuttings. When you make your cutting, cut at a 45 degree angle so you always know which end goes in the rooting medium. The cutting can be anywhere from 4 - 6 inches long although I've rooted both longer and shorter lengths. Cut near the node, where the leaf was and then dip the cutting into a rooting hormone and shake off the excess hormone powder. Make a hole in the root medium then insert the cutting. Keep the root medium moist, mist the cutting regularly or cover to maintain a humid environment. Allow for moderate sunlight as well but not so much that the plants will cook in our Arizona sun.
Half the fun of plant propagation is experimenting to see which plants
you can get to root. To learn much more about plant propagation I suggest you get the
recently published (First American Edition, 1999) American Horticultural Society Plant
Propagation - The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques. ($34.95)
Editor-in-chief, Alan Toogood; Published by DK Publishing Inc., 95 Madison Avenue,
New York, New York. The well illustrated, easy to understand work is a great addition to
any gardener's library. (1999) |
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