Propping Cuttings

Propagating by cuttings is a quick and effective way of growing a plant. Taking a cutting is like making a clone of the mother plant, this means we will get a more predictable and consistent plant than when growing from seed. Many plants can be grown from cuttings although some are best at certain times of the year, softwood cuttings are taken in spring and hardwood cuttings in autumn and winter.

There are many ways to grow cuttings. Some plants need more attention and care, others can just be pushed into the ground outside and ignored. The key to growing cuttings is to keep them moist and not let them dry out. Most cuttings appreciate a humid environment and warm growing medium. Both Plant Barn and the NMIT nursery have a hot bed and misting system for cutting trays and seed raising.

Above is a cutting tray at NMIT with a mix of sand, vermiculite, potting mix, and pumice. At the Plant Barn we use straight pumice in our cutting trays. This provides excellent drainage, and we can reuse the pumice a number of times. We use ibadex, a powered rooting hormone, and plant the cuttings in rows about 1cm apart. I have also heard of nurseries using sand as their cutting mix, anything with good drainage is appropriate.

At home I find propagating plants in water is the easiest, particularly for houseplants. Recently I was given the responsibility of growing some climbing plants. I cut the vines into individual nodes/leaves and placed some in water and some in moist sphagnum moss.

This photo shows two Monstera adansonii cuttings, the left one was sitting in water, the right one was in sphagnum moss. The plant in sphagnum moss has grown a much larger root and has begun to put out a new leaf also. This may be because I was able to use a rooting hormone clonex with the moss, I didn’t bother in the water as I thought it would not be effective. Sphagnum moss provides excellent humidity and holds moisture well so the roots never dry out. It is proving to be an excellent propagating media for tropical house plants.

What cutting media have you tried? What do you think is the most successful?