Hi again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm and i have to say without any false modesty that
i've gotten fairly good now at propagating plants from cuttings this wouldn't be much of a business
without it substantially now everything in my greenhouse here all of the stuff behind you
all the stuff on the floor elsewhere in the greenhouse is all propagated from cuttings
and i actually make a pretty reasonable income selling the resulting plants so
this wasn't always the case i have to be up front early on i struggled an awful lot with
it and although the topic may have been how do i succeed in growing plants from cuttings
really the question i was asking was : Why do I keep on failing? when you see the plants dry
out when you see the plants begin rotting from the base up that black stem coming up from the
base of the soil you wonder what did i do wrong i'm going to break those failures up into three
basic categories number one is choosing the wrong plant or the wrong stage of growth so it all comes
down to the source of the plant number two comes down to technique how do you make that cutting
and number three it comes down to the growing environment and all three are
equally important in deciding whether your plant will dry out whether it will rot
or whether it will root and shoot in that order and make a successful cutting let's have a look at
some of the failures and then we'll work forward to some of the successful ways of doing this
so i have two cuttings here and the first one you can see is still quite firm and plump and green
with those red buds on it so it's it's actually holding moisture quite nicely but as i move
downwards you can also see that from the base is that telltale black rot that's moving up the stem
and a little further up here you can see that thorn on the right hand side is starting to
darken around that it's just working its way up the stem it will kill the entire
cutting ultimately move over to the right here you can see that basically the opposite is true the
stem is plump and green at the base it even has some leaves emerging from that bud on the right
so i have every reason to believe that it's developing roots down below the surface however
up above at some point or another it just wasn't enough moisture
to maintain that section of stem up to the next node so the plant died back in that section
now early on you can definitely take some clues from the way that you're cutting fails typically
if it's rotting you would interpret that as too moist too much humidity too still of air
and maybe not enough temperature that might be the way you would interpret it depending on how
your setup is if you look over to the right there and if it dries out you might interpret that as
too little moisture too much air movement and too much temperature so if you're balancing out
your your growing conditions that might be the way you interpret it but it is important not to read
too much into that because ultimately if your cuttings are going to fail it's going to be in
one of these two modes either it will dry out before it rots or it will rot before it dries
out but it's going to do one of those two things if it's not going to succeed with developing roots
and then shooting after that so then it begs the question what are the conditions that make it most
likely that your plant will succeed in rooting quickly before it suffers one of these two fates
let's get right down to the root causes here cause number one why your cuttings may fail is you're
choosing to take cuttings of a very difficult variety or you're taking cuttings of a variety
that root would root better by a different method than the one you're using and how
would you know you could go on forever trying to root a particular rose or a particular hydrangea
from softwood or semi-hardwood or hardwood cuttings only not to know that it roots very
easily from a different kind of cutting for most of the macrophylla hydrangeas i find
they take fairly easily from most stages but this year i found they take much much better from tip
cuttings than they ever do from semi-hardwood cuttings who knew i didn't until i tried it so
here's the way you could approach that you could say let's do it the hard way you know and you
could start from a to z abelia to zizyphus and try every stage of cutting and every kind of plant
and really try out everything or you could do it the easier way because let's face it the
propagation community has tried all of this before and generally they're very willing to
share that information if you go on to the culture guides for most of the major horticulture industry
partners like ball or um walters they will give you culture guides that talk about the specifics
of temperature of humidity of time in the tray and everything to make your cuttings or on the amateur
end a wealth of information go to your facebook groups uh those places like um uh the probably
the best one right now i find is uh i love plant propagation which is mike kincaid's group
on facebook and the people there are wonderful about sharing their propagation information
because let's face it we're all geeks in this regard we all love trying new things and sharing
our successes and maybe even our failures so that's where you should start don't don't spend
a lot of time on a plant uh with just one method and keep on failing and never think to well am i
using the wrong method am i picking things up at the wrong time of year i can give you some
specific directions or tips on this and number one is that when in doubt i usually start with
semi-hardwood i find that method to be adaptable along a wide range of perennials and shrubs
there may be things that take a little bit better from soft softwood cuttings but even if you can
get it from soft food cuttings you can usually get it from semi-hardwood as well the second specific
tip i'll give you on this is that in general the the better the condition the more robust
both the plant and the section of the plant you take the cutting from the more likely it is to
succeed so if you're taking it from a very healthy plant and a very healthy section of a very healthy
plant you give yourself the very best chance second set of big reasons that could have to
do with your success or failure comes down to the cutting technique itself and although there are
plenty of videos out there including my own where you can go and look up specific cutting techniques
for different plants here i just want to focus in on a few of the differences in technique
that i think can make a big difference to your success or failure so number one
start with a clean sharp pair of pruners clean and sharp because you don't want to be introducing
any bacteria or fungus that will then turn into rot organisms on your cutting and you also want a
clean cut because if you crush the bottom of that stem it's going to very much reduce your chances
of success in terms of what to clean it with i used to say something more complicated but simpler
is probably better lysol is readily available not too expensive and it won't rust your pruners
second thing that i will highlight is make sure that you take your cutting just below the node the
node is the place where the leaf comes out i'll show you i'll insert a clip here but the further
you go from that node the further you are away from the tissue that can differentiate and create
the callus at the bottom of your cutting even a quarter of an inch can make a big difference in
success or failure so definitely target that and the third thing i'm going to highlight here is the
use of rooting hormone which is in general for a soft wood cutting or something in very active
growth it's a low level of rooting hormone and for things that are in dormancy is a higher level
of rooting hormone but follow the directions because it can vary from variety to variety
i use it it increases my success rate as i take my cutting some people try to substitute it with
things like honey or cinnamon or bananas or apple cider vinegar or other things
like that and although i can't say in every single case that i've tested these the ones that i've
tried have not been that successful and there is very little objective or reviewed evidence
that supports their use in the way that uh that rooting hormones themselves based on iba will
improve your success rate so if you're looking for an edge that's one place where you can get it the
final area i'm going to cover in this video comes down to the growing environment of your cuttings
and really it comes down to controlling four variables once you've stuck those cuttings
you're controlling light you're controlling temperature you're controlling humidity and
you're controlling soil moisture and it varies a lot depending on what stage your cuttings
are taking so if you're taking something in active growth a soft wood or a tip cutting
typically the higher the temperature the higher the light level the higher the moisture the soil
moisture the higher the humidity you're cutting will accept or even possibly need for it to root
quickly and to get through to the next stage if you're going to semi-hardwood cuttings choose
something in the middle for all of those things and for hardwood cuttings you're generally going
to want lower temperatures lower light levels less humidity held around the plant and less soil
moisture so those are your general variables and you're going to have to play with them a
little bit to see what is most successful for you based on the feedback from your cuttings as i said
earlier if you notice that a lot of your plants are drying out that is wilting or shriveling from
the top then you may have to push your environment a little more towards the the wetter whereas if
you're finding that they are rotting from the base up consistently that probably means you're
going to have to push the other way out to a slightly drier a little more air circulation and
and trying to cut down or sorry increase the heat a little bit so that it doesn't rot uh so
quickly so these are your these are your growing environment considerations i definitely go through
that in a number of my other videos but i'll just leave it right there for now as to say
these are the common causes why your cuttings will fail if you have any questions drop those
down below the video and i'll see what i can do to help and thank you so much for watching today