How to Propagate Plants from Cuttings | This Old House

Roger there's any number of plants that we can route from cuttings things like this begonia or coleus well I know that some simple things to route off a city are in privet right but we also have plants like rhododendron they're more difficult ilex gray white the ink berry Holly is and it's a little bit more difficult than that and then the red and yellow dogwoods they're they're fairly easy here's a little terrarium that I put together from from a salad green box that I got in the supermarket we're in the middle of this great greenhouse and you're using the salad tray to grow your plants well it seemed like a great way to reuse it and it's something special well we can go go to something a little bit you know more elaborate like this tray that I put together for a class I was teaching well we have some woody plants arborvitaes and and camus Epirus cephalo Texas a boxwood this little rhododendron here already has has roots huh we add water carefully with a fog mr. here and then once you put the cover back on you have a closed system right right just a terrarium so that will hold all the humidity in there yeah that's important you don't need a whole greenhouse just a mini greenhouse I thought we'd start with taking a leaf cutting off of this begonia we're going to be able to make five or six cuttings off one leaf I'm going to have a sit right down in here says to not leave a dead stem take that leaf cut most of the stem off and throw it away so that we have no stem Roger we're going to cut this begonia leaf like a pie we'll leave a vein in each cutting and we can get half a dozen cuttings maybe out of this so one cutting right here and we'll tease that out there another cutting using this vein will trim the top another cutting with this vein and here you can even do one right here our next step is to use this Ridge inducing hormone it helps the cuttings to route speeds up the routing process just put a little bit out here we want to keep it clean so we want to cover it up keep it from being contaminated next we'll going to dip this into the bridge inducing hormone knock off any surplus Dibble again we don't want to wipe that that hormone off and we keep doing this process and in about a month we'll have roots on those cuttings now you're just sticking those in peat moss and perlite right just peat and perlite and then we'll add some water some moisture to keep them moist we want the perlite there for porosity and the peat moss for holding moisture we want to maintain the humidity so we cover it up seal it radial seal it right up pretty simple solution pretty simple leaf cuttings of begonia we're easy now let's bring it up a notch and we'll do stem cuttings well let's try this física start by making an angle cut at the bottom going to be at a sharp angle whacked out and here okay and then a square cut just above the bud buds right there square cut square cut there you go this is a little bit more difficult to propagate than the begonia so we're going to use a stronger concentration of the hormone knock off any extra will also Dibble a hole and push this down in we have the angle because it is easier to push in it also helps us keep track of which end is up and that's important to have that the up end the up end should always be half over the end towards the roots it should always be down okay we're using a different medium here we're using sand and perlite because of the added porosity it drains better now one critical step to the success of the cuttings is a heat mat you just plug it in and it heats up to about 70 degrees and put the tray right on top of it that's it and that'll cause those roots to grow even better it's really critical important to do that now we water this and then we put the dome on top now there are some plants that we can't get to root from cuttings that's right those we have to graft let me show you this apple grafting is where we put two different plants together attaching one to the other here we have an older root stock and our new plant the Scion we've attached this to this so you can see where it's all grown and calloused together and you can see how big this apple branch cut let me show you how we do it here's an apple seedling we're going to use it as our root stock going to cut it off right about here now I'm going to use a grafting knife note that this side is flat this side is beveled just like a plain and I'm going to split the stem with that go right down through the center or as close as I can get well that's it for the root stock now we're going to cut into our new plant the Scion one side is cut we'll cut the other side and make a wedge that right wedge like that both sides cut and we're going to trim the top off so that we've got about three buds three or four buds and we'll insert this wedge Scion in to our root stock like so so that the cambium layer that's the layer of cells just under the bark and that has to line up with the rootstock cambium and the Scion cambium you look at this side and you see how it's lined up and if I turn this you look over here you'll see how it's not lined up so we can only match one side aligning the cambium ensures the two parts will grow together that's right now we secure the graft union with a rubber band I want to do it tight but not so tight that it girdles it go down like a barber pole then I fasten that my thumb like that now we see a liar after union with this paraffin wax comes on a roll you could use regular wax that you got from the hardware store we just wrap it around to seal it all in and keep it nice and humid in there so that way you can't dry out right there it is finished take that home put it on a windowsill and by spring it'll be ready to plant outside thanks so much Jack for sharing those simple techniques that will let us reproduce the plants that we love

Channel: This Old House

Views: 549,324

Rating: 4.8783579 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Episode, TV Show, roger cook, Plant Propagation, Plant, Cutting, Television Program, gardening, landscaping, Advice, tutorial, how to, do it yourself, organize, tip, idea, quick fix, fix, inspiration, solution, fast, budget friendly, storage, room, organization, plant cuttings

Id: fzwVKZ6UoGM

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 13 2014