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Plant propagation and planting is our most favorite activity.

Plant propagation can include taking cuttings from plants to root them, dividing plants,  air layering, and growing plants from seeds. One of the best parts of plant propagation is of course getting plants for free or almost nothing. Certain plants propagate very well, and it’s easy to make dozens, hundreds or even thousands of small plants. All you need is a few mother plants. Following are some basic explanations. You may then follow to specific pages focused on plant propagation for specific plants we have actually propagated. A word of caution, read our article about Patented and Trademarked Plants so you don’t accidentally start propagating a plant that is Propagation Prohibited.

Planting plants and growing them out

Potting up plants and growing them out to a size people want to buy is, and probably always will be our main source of adding new plants to our nursery. Selecting, buying and planting bare root trees is an effective and efficient way to grow a nursery business.

Propagating plants from cuttings

The basics of taking rooted cuttings for plant propagation are as follows. You would select a piece of softwood growth or in the winter, even woody growth from the plant to make your cutting. Typically the cutting should include some branching nodes from leaves or small branches that you remove from the cutting. Often times it’s advisable to wound the end of the cutting to promote root growth. Here are some pictures of some Andromeda’s that we prepared for cutting and rooting to illustrate what a good cutting would look like. Then the cutting would go or be dipped into a rooting hormone which helps reduce disease and promotes root growth. Virtually anything will root given enough time and being sure that the cutting doesn’t rot or become diseased. Many cuttings take as long as a year to root, so it is certainly a game of patience.

Propagating Plants in covered trays.

Propagating Azaleas from Softwood Cuttings

Here is a video specifically about rooting azaleas from softwood cuttings in the summer after the new growth of that year has hardened off some.

Growing medium for cutting propagation.

You absolutely want your rooting medium to drain well. We have thus had the best luck with either perlite or just plain, clean, coarse sand . Some plants do seem to prefer a little bit of peat moss in the sand or this perlite that we like best. We use some peat and perlite for rhododendrons because they seem to like it. However, it’s difficult to prove that this really changes your success rate. What is sure to make you successful is keeping your cuttings moist but not wet. Too wet, leads to rot and disease. Thus our medium of choice lately is really just plain coarse, sand, or maybe some sand and perlite mixed together.

Some plants are super easy to propagate like these Variegated Wintercreepers Euonymus fortunei ‘Variegatus’.

Plant Propagation Rooted Cuttings

Types of rooting mediums for plant propagation.

We have tried a lot of different rooting mediums/compounds with varying degrees of success. Typically it doesn’t seem as if the rooting compound has that much to do with the chance of getting good root growth.  Some are a bit easier to work with and we find the powders are more economical. Rooting compounds should be used, but not to excess, always knocking any excess medium off the cutting. Try a few different rooting compounds but for us it would be difficult to make the case that one is better than another.

Making cuttings for plant propagation

You should probably be careful not to introduce anything that could lead to disease during the cutting process. We typically wipe down our pruners with a little alcohol prior to making cuttings for rooting. Does this help, that is unknown, it can’t hurt. Cuts should be made at a 45 degree angle just below some branching or leaf nodes. This will vary by plant but generally looks like the following.

Plant Propagation by Rooting a plant Cutting

Propagating plants by dividing or root division.

Will be more specific in other pages. however, it is just a matter of dividing the plants and its root structure into smaller pieces. Hostas come to mind as they grow in clumps as hey are tubers. In each clump the plant has its own standalone set of roots available to make a new plant. Dividing these up as they grow naturally makes perfect sense, and works perfectly well. In your retirement nursery or any nursery you might aim to have large beds of plants like Hostas growing. Grow them in well amended soil so you can just pull the plants out by hand. Keep dividing them and dividing them so you have dozens or hundreds of new plants to divide each year. Pull, divide,pot up and sell.

Propagating plants from seeds.

Growing new plants from seed always seems to be a hit or miss operation. We will post some articles about some plants that we have grown from seeds such as Japanese red maples. Seeds do have their own particular set of challenges. Things like stratifying your seeds keeping them properly moist, but not too damp, temperature, and keeping away pests like mice. All are a little bit challenging for us. You can find other articles in our website about some successes, and failures that we’ve had. Fortunately most do not require much of an investment.

Air layering propagation Andromeda

Plant propagation by Air layering

Air layering is a great technique to multiply your plants, especially for certain plants. In a lot of cases we’ve had very little luck trying to get rooted cuttings to grow from certain plants, however, air layering can work very well. Air layering is a process getting a woody stem of a plant to root before completely removing it from the wateri and nutrients of the mother plant. The steps are:

  • Making a cut about 3/4 of the way through the woody stem of a plant like a rhododendron. Generally you want to work with a stem of less than 1 inch in diameter.
  • Inserting something like a toothpick to hold those ends apart, but to keep the plant still attached to the main plant. Be careful to keep enough wood so the top cut does not flop over.
  • Now apply some Sphagnum or Peat Moss around the cut to give the plant something to grow roots into and to hold moisture. The woody stem should produce roots that are seeking the moisture in the damp moss.
  • Then wrap all this with a covering such as clear plastic wrap, white plastic or tin foil.
  • Air layering bulbs work great and provide some protection for the cut and the growing roots. The down side of the plastic bulbs is they are black so they can get very hot in the sun. They also don’t hold water for long. We suggest wrapping around them with tin foil, white plastic or clear wrap to retain more moisture and they will stay cooler.
  • The time required for air layering can vary from a few weeks and we’ve had some go as long as a year.

Air layering will generally result in a much larger rooted plant. This new plant is essentially a rooted cutting but if you go for a good size stem you can root a good size new plant. Once you take the rooted stem off of the main plant you’re left with an excellent starter plant. We have even trimmed some of those back to shape the new plant and use the cuttings from it to make more rooted cuttings in trays or pots.

More plant propagation articles to come

Overtime we plan to offer many more plant specific pages about propagating specific types of plans. You can then have some insights into how we’ve been successful with specific plants. We will share the techniques that were used and update with the results as they occur. In some cases you’ll have a choice of a couple of ways to propagate a new small plant. The economics of propagating your own small plants is of course an exciting opportunity. You can literally learn how to get free plants by getting them to root, growing them out, and selling them.




Propagating plants or buying them?

By rooting and propagating your own plants you save money by not buying plants. You can also make beds of small plants and pull from them as needed. This saves some space and gets you a very steady supply of small plants at a low cost. The downside is time. A rooted cutting could take months to root, time to transplant, and 2, 3, 4 or even 5 years to grow before you can sell it. When we look at that specifically the question becomes one of time Vs upfront investment.

Do you want to start some thing like an emerald green arborvitae from a cutting or do you just want to buy a 6 to 12 inch cutting that is already rooted for let’s say two or three dollars. The time that it will take your small cuttings to grow to that size could easily add an extra year to your time growing it. We recommend doing both. Buy enough bare root material so you will have plants when you want to sell them. At the same time start as many cuttings as you can. Eventually you can stop buying rooted liners but you will always have plant to sell.

Our plant propagation and plant buying plan.

In the beginning with your nursery, you’d probably want to have plants to sell within one or two years, and certainly not more than three years. Starting from very small cuttings you won’t make it. You will add at least one year before you have nice size plants to sell. What did we do? In the beginning, we bought the largest rooted cuttings and transplants we could and also some in smaller sizes. We planted them in 1, 3 and 5 gallon pots. This was done so we would have a staggered crop of plants in no more than 2 years and some 3 to even 5 years out. We planted enough so we would have a steady crop of plants coming to sale size for years to come.

Buying smaller plants saves you money but they tend to be more fragile and will take longer to grow. Yet, it is hard to resist the idea of getting a supply of free plants by propagating them. So, we did both! In the first year we made over 1,000 cuttings with a hope that at least 500 would root. We do much better than that and the results are many very small plants. We will let those grow and have them to sell in 2 to 3 more years. All at only the cost of a pot, some potting mix and a little fertilizer.

More Plant Propagation articles:
Propagating Japanese Andromedas
Propagating Variegated Wintercreeper




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