Hey, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm today here with a quick video on the secrets of stem cuttings
I made a couple of other videos in the past where I've used this technique of stem cuttings, both on roses and
willows. When I say secrets of this method, I don't mean that it's like trade secret or something like that
It's just the secrets to my success the things I've done and learned over time
I doing a lot of these that make me more successful at them
And the first of those secrets are revealed right up front is that this method the general method of stem cuttings
Whether you're talking about softwood semi hardwood or hardwood stem cuttings is all the same
basically, you can use this method on a wide variety of plants and
It works for all of them
But you just have to tweak it a little bit based on the stage of growth
The size of the plant and so on. Some examples of plants this works on obviously
I've mentioned roses and willows as well and dogwoods and so on but it works on a ton of stuff like
Rhododendrons it'll work on hydrangeas. It'll work on
Blueberries just tons of stuff. I actually brought some examples here of some things that are done by that same method over here
I brought phuopsis
Which is just a perennial and the cuttings on that one are really tiny usually taken in the softwood stage. This one here is
A tricolor sage and again a fairly short little cutting a little tiny cutting like that
this one here is tamarix. I've got two roses here and
This Rose here that was done by hardwood cuttings. You can see just
white roots
Beautifully rooted looks no different than one that was done by the semi hardwood method
and in fact
That's one of the things I want to reveal right up front. Is that botanically the rules are very simple
You have a node at the bottom of the cutting you have a node at the top of the cutting
you might have one or two in between and
That's your cutting!
Botanically speaking
there's a very little difference between this little one here. I may have to put a photo up on that one afterwards to get you a
better view and
This one here this one taken from a small perennial like a
Rosemary and this one here taken from a grape
You can see this one has a cut at the bottom cut at the top
This one below a node this one above a node, two nodes in between it's the same as this they're just taking of different stages
from different plants
So some of the questions that I've heard as I try to talk about this
Both the Garden Club's and online is the question of should I score the cuttings on the bottom now just to explain what that means
Scoring is a method where you would take a cutting like this and at the bottom of the cutting
you would take your blade and just take a chunk out of it and
that show would reveal more of the cambium layer of the plant and
It's definitely something you can do to try to
Increase the surface area that's available to do rooting especially if you're using rooting hormone
I don't routinely do it on most of my plants on the roses
I do, you know a thousand two thousand cuttings a year
it would just add greatly to the amount of handling time that I do want it and I get
good results without doing it
but certainly you could and if you're having trouble with a particular variety of roses because it is very
varietal some do very easily and some
take a little bit slower or don't take it all then you can certainly experiment with that technique score either one side or
Both sides of the bottom of the cutting before you apply the rooting hormone and see if that improves your success
another thing that's been asked to me a number of times is
especially at hardwood cuttings
Should I take a slanted cut at the top of the cutting so should the top cut here not be flat
But rather be taken on an angle like this
Preferably a clean angle like that
the answer is that that method is often recommended on gardening websites to
Tell the difference between the bottom and the top of the cutting it really doesn't have a lot to do with
The success of the cutting so if you can either by eye or because you're sticking it right away if you already know that
It's through the top and the bottom
Then you don't have to bother by taking a slant to cutting on the top of your cut or on the top of your cutting
But if you are going to take a whole big batch outside of things that have no leaves on them
It's not going to be easy to tell the top from the bottom
Then go ahead and make that slanted cut if it helps you to remember which is the top of the bottom it functionally has no
Difference in whether the this cutting will succeed or not. Some people have used this up what I call a little bit of a
suspect science of well, if you cut it on an angle
It's going to divert the rain away from the top bud or something like that
And to me that makes no sense at all
Every part of that plant is going to be equally wet when the rain comes down upon it and it's going to dry it about the same
Rate, so I think that's nonsense even though I've heard it in a number of places
the third thing that people sometimes asking is about rooting hormone and
Do I use it? Well, yes, I do
I find that on my rose cuttings. And that's what I cut the most of it makes about 10% difference in success rate
So if I don't use it
My average rate might be closer to 75% And if I do use it, my average stick rate might be closer to 85%
And that's worth it if you're doing 2,000 cuttings
10% change in rate means 200 extra plants. So yeah that's worth it. What kind of rooting hormone to use?
I'm less particular about that. I use the one that's the most convenient for me
I use a rooting powder and on roses. That's a
Semi-hard what I you do most of my by semi hardwood cuttings, so I use a
number two
in Stim Root is the one that I use but that brand name is going to vary from place to place What you shoul
look for is on the side of the bottle. It's going to have the
Indication of which kind of plant it's for: hardwood cuttings of trees and shrubs
It'll say softwood cuttings of annuals and perennials or say semi hardwood cuttings
So that's what you're looking for. Those correspond to different rates
of the active ingredient which is IBA
On the side of the bottle.
Now as for whether you use a power where they use a gel whether you use a liquid, I don't care. The liquids
you have to mix them as a step first
So you'd mix a small amount of the concentrate into the bottom of a cup
Add some water and then just do a quick dip for a number of seconds based on whether it's hardwood or semi hardwood
It's the length of the dip that varies
I just find it a pain to have to stop and remix something all the time
I like to have a powder that's ready to go
Also the powder you use very little of because you can just dip it in and then knock it off the end of your cutting
Some people use gels and I have to say the gels are
fantastic, like I enjoy using them but I go through them really fast because a lot of the gel sticks onto the bottom of the
Cutting so you end up going through them pretty quickly
And I also don't like the idea that with the powder you put it in you tap it off
It feels quite sanitary. With a gel, after you've been dipping a bunch of stems into it
I feel like you may have contaminated the gel to some degree
What else am I going to talk to you about today?
Temperature and
Kind of cutting. So that's the next thing you need to know the difference of and I have gone over this
So if you want to learn this in a real-world
Video about either the Willows or the roses go back to my other videos this one here
I want to show the difference between a softwood
Semi hardwood and hardwood cutting it's hard for me to find softwood material out in the garden right now
But what you're looking at is something that bends very easily. So if you look at this one here - sorry, that one snapped
But this one here if it bends
like that, that's softwood. If it will bends a
Little but not a whole lot. That's semi hardwood
and if you get to the bottom of this stem here and you're trying to bend that and
You almost can't bend it without snapping it. That's
hard wood
So these are just related to different stages of growth in the plant
The softwood you've got to imagine is new tissue and the cells in there actively differentiating. They're actively growing
So if you take a softwood cutting it should be able to root quite quickly. It will like more warmth
It will like more moisture and it doesn't need a high level of rooting hormone for it to get going
If you're looking at semi hardwood
It needs a little less heat. It needs a little less moisture
it's going to take a little bit longer to root and
It needs a higher concentration of rooting hormone to do that and the hardwood cuttings on the far extreme
Are a little bit harder a little less active. They need even less moisture even less heat. Oftentimes
I take those cuttings over winter and just let them sit for months and
They need an even higher level of rooting hormone to get them to go. Just as a final trick
I'm going to pass along to here some plants who need no reading hormone at all.
You can use
hormone on them, but I just like to save myself the time
So if I'm taking cuttings on willows, I know I'm going to get a hundred percent success rate on the willows
Anyway, it doesn't matter what I do in terms of rooting hormones. They're all going to get roots
It might be the same thing for buddleja or butterfly bush. I have pretty good success rate with fuchsias, which I have
Right here
so I sometimes use rooting hormone that sometimes I don't I
Have a pretty good success rate with elderberry and with gooseberry. So if any of those things come across my
You know across my propagation table
It's like do I have the rooting hormone handy? And how much time do I have?
And that's it
Otherwise, I'll stick them without the rooting hormone and I get pretty much as good success with or without
So on those ones that might make less than a five percent difference about success rate
Which on a large number might make a difference, but if I'm trying to save time and I'm doing two cuttings per no big deal
alright, that is my short blurb on the
secrets of
Stem cuttings and I would sure appreciate it if you have any questions on stem
This is the video to do it on so
I'd love to see if you have any questions on the specifics about species or anything else
I'll share what information I can and thank you so much for watching today