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 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 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.
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. You can buy rooting compounds and all kinds of
other propagation supplies on-line at www.homehavest.com Jeff
Edwards is the owner of this website, and he has always been
great to do business with.
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.
With some cuttings it helps to apply some bottom heat
for a period before sticking them in the sand. I'll address an
easy way to do that in another article.
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 grown 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.
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About The Author
If you have questions for Mike McGroarty visit his website,
http://www.freeplants.com and post them on the message board
where you can learn lots of gardening tips and communicate with
other gardeners. While at his website you can learn how to
start your own profitable backyard nursery. If you would like
a copy of Mike's booklet, "The Secret of Growing Landscape
Plants from Scratch", send .00 to: Garden Secrets, P.O. Box
338, Perry, Ohio 44081
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