How to Grow Azaleas from Cuttings | Propagating Rooted Cuttings of Azalea Plants

all right I've got a fun one for you guys today I get a lot of questions today we are going to root some Azalea cuttings but before we do that don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe if you want to see more awesome gardening videos here we go [Music] [Music] now there's two types of azaleas there's deciduous in Evergreen today we're going to be propagating Evergreen azaleas the Deciduous azaleas that lose their leaves and have the beautiful colored flowers a lot of the orange type of azaleas that people go after like Klondike those are much more difficult to root they're taking as soft wood cuttings early on in the spring and intermittent Mist can be very helpful for those the Evergreen azaleas are a lot easier now it takes a little patience and time but they root much more readily and you'll get a much higher percentage of the root in fact when I root Evergreen azaleas I usually get close to 100 success rate we'll see if that proves out here in this video so Evergreen Azalea are best rooted as semi-hardwood cuttings and I've done a lot of these over the years and I'm telling you I know how to root Evergreen azaleas you take the cuttings typically in around August September I like to go more into August middle August something like that where the wood is semi-firm it's somewhat hardened off but we haven't had into winter yet it's not hardwood material now I like to root these on my propagation frame that I use for Rhododendrons they root really well that way on bottom heat through the winter I actually leave them in there but I pull those out after the first winter the Rhododendron is I leave in that frame for a year and a half the Azalea root much quicker and I can pull those out sometimes after a few months but usually the following spring now this is one of my evergreen azaleas this is Mother's Day and it's got a beautiful red flower and I can see right here I've got tons of beautiful cutting material on it it makes a really nice full plant this method will work for any type of Evergreen Azalea that you come across that I've come across so far you can see these are all the spent Blooms from last year I'm going to get a few of these cuttings and we'll get this started it's like it never happened so for these little azaleas what I like to do is just strip down I'll grab up here a little higher and then just grab the bottom leaves and strip them off you don't need to wound these this is all you really need to do for these azaleas and then you leave a nice stem now you can leave I don't know probably like three finger width on that stem just like that and then cut down below a node and that would make a real nice good cutting right there [Music] [Music] oh I like to do this with all my Azalea and Rhododendron cuttings I just kind of fill up a little shallow bucket and once I get all my cuttings in there I kind of grab them and just rub them through the water like that just to get in you spider webs and debris and anything else off plus it moistens those little cuttings and plants to keep them from losing too much moisture while I'm doing this process the other thing it does is moistens the stems so that rooting hormone will adhere easier the next thing I do is come over here to my Rhododendron frame and I just kind of lay things on the ground there's nothing sterile about any of this so you really don't need to worry about that I'm going to use my powdered rooting hormone here torment in three I'm sure I'll get those questions a lot but you don't need this stuff it's just really good for rooting semi-hardwood cuttings like rhododendrons and azaleas but really azaleas will root pretty readily with just about any rooting hormone you could find root tone or there's several of them out there that you can find easier in local garden centers uh but I gather them all up like this in my hand and now there's one thing that I'm sure I will get some grief about here but I all I can tell you is that I've been doing this for 16 years somewhere around there now and have been doing it like this and never had a single problem and that is I take the cuttings all like this in my hand and then dip them directly into the bottle I know a lot of people cringe when they see that and they get really upset but it works just fine I've never had a problem with it I know the talk of contamination is there but uh it's not an issue at all I I'm real clean about it I don't drop dirt in there purposefully but uh yeah there it is all right so we need to lift the lid on this and if any of you have been following my Instagram or Facebook you saw that I posted a picture of all these Rhododendron cuttings in here so I usually let these cuttings sit for a few minutes and kind of absorb that rooting hormone and then after a few minutes I find a spot I actually saved a little spot aside in the frame after doing all these Road entering cuttings just for these little azaleas so you can see them root and it's a little spot but it's going to work so I'll set all these down here and I'm gonna actually use this as a dibbler because these are these cuttings right here are thinner and I don't want to bend them up so we'll just kind of stick a little little hole in there we'll place that cutting and show you that right in that hole and just kind of Tamp down a little bit in fact these stems are pretty heavy maybe they'll just go in yeah they're going in on their own we don't even need the dibbler and it's never been a problem with pushing off rooting hormone they root pretty readily and I've let this sit and soak up some of that hormone now typically I'll keep a separation between my rhododendrons because I want to make sure I'm not uh that I'm not mixing up the varieties but these Azalea will be a nice little separation there between them and you can't mix up these Azalea with the rhododendrons there they're just too dissimilar I've got 10 cuttings I believe here so when we come back we'll see how well this worked out usually a very high percentage will root and those are Mother's Day azaleas so there they are all nestled in their little beds for the winter it's September 1st today so they should go on to root really well and like I said probably in a few months they'll have nice roots on them but I'll usually leave them in here until the springtime I may pull these up sooner for you guys we'll see how things go alright so there you go very simple we'll definitely come back when something's happened just so you are aware I do use bottom heat for my Rhododendron frame like that and I'll usually get that started as the weather starts cooling down probably around the end of September even into October it really just depends on how I'm feeling about the weather outside how warm it is how cool it is that kind of thing I typically like to try and keep the medium in the frame somewhere close to 80 in the 70s something like that um you know the ideal range for plant propagation somewhere 78 to 82 but those things will root all the way down until you start getting into probably the mid 50s that's when things just kind of shut down of course the higher temperatures you're at the better off you'll be but you don't want to go too high because that can kill cuttings too so I get that on it's just real low real gentle keeps that Medium slightly warmer than the Ambient Air Above anyway we'll come back when something's happened with those and I'll show you what's going on oh and I should add that if you want to learn how to build that frame and how to build all the bottom heat into it like I've got over here you should go check out the website down below that's where I've got over six hours of video that go into detail on how to build that frame how to set it all up and then I've got video going over about a three year span of me taking cuttings of rhododendrons propagating them rooting them potting them up and then going through like three years of their growth and a lot of other education on growing these plants so if you're interested in that check out the website down below let's move on to when these things rooted here we go all right we've arrived and today is June 5th that was September 1st we went all the way through the fall the winter and most of the spring and we are finally here let's go take a look at those Azalea cuttings man isn't that just a beautiful frame of rhododendrons I love looking looking at these this time of year it's just so exciting to see what's rooting what has rooted what's possibly going to root and it looks like so far we got one that I was really excited about Star Bright champagne been getting a lot of questions about that and uh decided to take a bunch of cuttings and there they are I think almost every single one of them if not actually yes every single one of them is rooted we've got tons of apricot fantasy this year just all kinds of stuff rooting and going on but we are here today for the little Evergreen azaleas and there they are let's check them out so these have made it all the way through the winter now and they've rooted fully you can see where we lost a couple of them right in here but we've got one back in there and we've got a whole bunch all along here I think that's probably what a 80 success rate there so I'm gonna go get some uh pots and we're gonna pull these guys out of here and get them potted up all right so I don't want to disturb the roots of these other Rhododendrons in here so we're gonna have to go real careful but I've got my Anna krusky rhododendrons all behind me so we'll keep those designated there and then let's start with this little guy we'll just kind of get in there I normally don't like doing this with my fingers because this bark can leave slivers but right now I just want to be delicate here all right and there we go we've got one set of roots look at that I'm not gonna pull all the bark off of these we're just going to pull it out like that and show you what it looks like lots of roots there I love looking at those things it just never ceases to amaze me that you can take a little cutting and then root it like that and it'll grow into its own beautiful plant all right so I've got some Roots here from some of these other rodent dinners I'm going to Tamp that back down and then we will pull these guys up nicely because I've got some cherry float right there that I don't want to disturb I'm not sure if they've rooted yet but they very well may have got to go easy here there we go there's another one lots of roots beautiful little plant pull these out out there's a couple more one two three it looks to me like we got five of these to root out of I think nine so well that's what closer to a sixty percent success rate some years we do a lot better and in fact usually I'm closer to a hundred percent with these azaleas but actually nope there's a there's a sixth one a little guy so we got uh six out of nine so somebody do the math on that closer to 70 percent success rate on that and these will turn into beautiful azaleas [Music] [Applause] [Music] so there they are six beautiful azaleas all potted up we got some fertilizer on there and a little bit of casserole to keep the weeds from growing in the pots I'll come back and water these real good and they'll just sit here all summer long and grow into beautiful Mother's Day azaleas so there it is you guys asked for it and it only took me five or six years to get to but we finally got the Azalea video out there for you they're very simple very easy to propagate they root very readily now could you have pulled those out last fall later on in the season yeah absolutely could have but there would really be no advantage to that these things root fairly quickly six to eight weeks however if you pull them out and you're just head into winter you're disturbing The Roots going into winter and they've really got nowhere to or no time to get us established before the freezes really start coming so I leave them in that frame and I let them just continue to slowly grow little roots and then I pull them up in the spring now you guys saw me pull these up this spring with the rhododendrons I like to leave them a whole nother year so I let them go through the summer the fall the winter and then put them up next spring because the roots just like these azaleas are fine in hair like and they're bigger cuttings and so if I were to disturb them right now when they're so just young and tender sometimes they don't come right back I've done this in the past I used to pot them all up that first year and then I would get a number of them in the one gallon pots or two gallon pots I would get a number of them just die off through the summer because they weren't really ready to pull out of that bed and disturb those roots I've noticed that since I've left them in for a whole nother year they still continue to grow they still can continue to put on size get root structure and become bigger healthier plants but when I put them up they're stronger they're hardened off and they're really ready to go and just take off in a nice beautiful landscape plants so the azaleas not so fussy you can pull them up the very next spring after you propagate them in the fall you'll also notice I started this project September 1st I typically like to take those cuttings the Evergreen azaleas in August August is a great time because there's still a lot of hot weather the cuttings are hardened off enough to where you can separate them from the parent plant they won't Wilt over and they're semi-firm wood so they can stand up to being severed from the parent and put in a propagation frame and then if you take them earlier in August they'll have more warm weather to root even stronger before you pull them out so I hope you guys enjoyed this one I hope you learned a lot from it and if you did hit that like button subscribe if you want to follow along and see more fantastic plant propagation videos have a fantastic week and I'll see you guys in the next video adios oh yeah one more thing I'm finally gonna get a video out to you when you can just go forward in another couple months and actually take the cuttings and use the information in this video fairly quickly and not have to wait a whole year see I was I was thinking about you guys [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mike Kincaid

Views: 76,184

Keywords: azalea cuttings, how to propagate azaleas, azalea propagation, plant propagation, new azaleas from cuttings, azaleas from cuttings, how to propagate azaleas from cuttings, how to grow azaleas from cuttings, how to grow azaleas, how to grow azalea plant, rooted cuttings, propagating azaleas from cuttings, when do you propagate azaleas, rooting azalea cuttings, propagate azaleas, azalea cuttings propagation, azalea cuttings in water, azalea cuttings season, Mike Kincaid

Id: hyrjnM6OnDE

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023