Hi I'm Cherie Dorfman and I'm a Master Gardener I've been a master gardener
since 2001 so that's quite some time and today I'm going to show you one way, I
think a very easy way, to propagate your shrubs. Now I first learned to do this
on azaleas and I will show you how to do that as well and you can apply this
to almost any woody shrub. These are the tools that you will need to do this to
propagate your plant first of all you'll need something to dig and to cover the
soil over your stem then you'll need a hair pin and that adheres the stem to
the ground to make sure it has good contact. Then you need something
depending on how resistant or how heavy your stem is to weight it down, and to
let you find it next year when you can dig your plant out of the soil. Okay?
Alright first we're going to start with hydrangeas because they are a larger in
leaf and the stems are thicker and you can really see what we're doing. What
we're going to do is I am going to show you where the leaf axle is and that's
where the growth starts for many many things. It's kind of like a stem cell for
human beings that can become almost anything
well the nodules in the leaf axils are the same way they can become leaves,
stems, or roots so this is a branch that I have just selected and I'm going to
show you
leaf axils.Right in here and that's all new growth between the leaf axils okay
now when you take a stem you will see these tiny little things, but even they
have started to leaf out so I'm going to take another branch and show you what
it's like to look at and what you want to see can you see it right in here or
actually here is better right in there can you see that little tiny thing? That
is an axillary node axillary - axilla it's like armpit so it's kind of the
armpit of the plant. So we will take this right here is the leaf axillary node and
what I'm going to do is I'm going to snip these two leaves off and then I'm
going to scratch the surface right here right on the side and then what we will
do is we will put that next to the ground we'll scratch a little soil
from underneath put some soil on top and then we'll put a stone on top of that
for the weight, and also so you know where it is when the plant has formed,
because the roots will come out from these axillary nodes and root wherever
you put them. Shall we go and do that? Here we are I've chosen this because
it's very low-- always go for low-hanging fruit because why why stress yourself
out and break the branch instead of making a new plant. So I'm going to take
these leaves off and you can see the leaf nodes I think a
little bit better here, can you show them okay then I'm going to scrape away the
mulch. Get this scrape it away then make sure you have good solid contact with
the ground. So what I'm going to do okay see I'm making contact here and what I'm
going to do is put a hairpin right there-- whoops it happens-- and right here okay
and I'm going to take some soil and put it on top just like that, and then I'm
going to take this rock and put it right on top here for weight and for contact.
Now in the spring when this plant is rooted, what you will do is cut it right
here and that will detach it from the plant ,but in the meantime the main
plant is giving this whole area nutrition so it never has to depend just
on its own. And that's how you make a new plant! This plant I got from my neighbor
he gave me permission I really liked his hydrangea plant and so I did that and I
did this cuttings and I also did what we did back there for the hydrangea and so
this is another plant-- it's a few years old-- but this is proof that I it really
works! And these three hydro the plans over here I also made from
babies these were babies at one time and so we're making another hydrangea plant
out of one of these babies that I made before!
Hi now we're back in my backwoods and this is an azalea, a deciduous azalea and
I brought this 20 years ago from my home garden outside of Philadelphia.
Now I made this plant and several others and I brought them down and put them in
the woods so that I would have some color and it would be nice and these are
a lavender color and they're gorgeous! So I'm going to show you how we do an
azalea. We're going to do it slightly differently but it's the same principle.
What we're going to do there's some green wood here that's what we want and
there are leaf axils as well but what you want to do is take that and put it
in contact with the ground just like we did with the hydrangea and
I'll show you and then we cover it with soil use the hair pins to make sure
that the stem adheres to the ground well and then cover it with soil and then
something to make sure that it stays that way!
Now, I always go for low-hanging fruit I don't try to get a branch all the way at
the top, I try to get a branch that is much lower. This is the biggest plant and
has had a lot of lower branches that still have good wood to them so we're
going to do that now, okay? There's some grass here under all these leaves so I'm
not going to put it on there I'm going to put it where there's no grass. You
see it's very dry and there's lots of tree roots here so okay so we're going
to start here where the branch branches out, and what I'm going to do as I
scraped it and then I will scrape this a little bit again and then I put my hair
pins in.
Okay?
And then it's very hard to get any soil from here but I'm going to try so you
can see there are lots of tree roots it is really the back woods here! Okay we've
got that to cover and then I'm going to take this, which is a pot foot and this
is not what it was made for but it serves very well it's heavy and it's
flat so you put that right on top and that way I'll be able to find it in the
spring! I'm gonna do this over here
because this seems to have a lot more life to it
it's also low hanging fruit and I'm just going to bend this back it seems to want
to go this way actually I think I'll do this one right here... put that here, scrape
it and then put it down
and put it down get some soil put it on top if it will go now you can probably
have some potting soil or something else that you might want to put on here if
you can't get it up like I can't get it up the soil up so you just put it on top
okay and we'll put these stones right on top and I may come back later and put
something heavier on it like another pot foot but that's how you do it! And then
the same thing, after you have a plant you cut it here you cut it here, after
the plant has given it all its nutrients that it needs to become its own little
plant, its baby, then you can cut and you take it and put it wherever you want in
your garden! So this is how I make my babies, my plants, and it gives me a great
deal of satisfaction when I come out in this spring and I see some leaf growth
on the end and I can cut that main stem and I have more plants for my garden for
my friends!
Thank you!