Multiply Your Plants for Free | Rooting Cuttings of Hydrangea: A Plant Propagation Masterclass

all right so in this video we are going to be propagating some hydrangea cuttings but not just any hydrangea cuttings i'm really excited about this one we are going back to our roots and we're going to propagate the same hydrangea cuttings that i got off that same plant in oregon so about three years ago i think it was three years ago maybe for 2017 i think was the year i made a hydrangea cutting video is the first hydrangea video that i did for you guys and it turned out to be a pretty popular one a lot of people followed the steps and were able to get cuttings rooting successfully but i have had people come back to me and say mike it didn't work for me they all rotted so in this video we're going to answer those questions we're going to solve those problems you guys are having and we're going to answer some other questions that haven't been asked yet like how long can you store these cuttings and how do you store them if you're traveling you find the cuttings and you got to get all the way back home we're going to talk about that so let's get going all right you guys are always asking me where i got those hydrangea cuttings in that original video about them i did like three or four years ago we're here again on the oregon coast just around tillamook and there's the nursery hidden acres and look at the size of this dinosaur plant man that thing's like seven foot tall right there at the top leaf dang that thing is so massive what do you think ally it is big isn't it look at that i love this stuff look at that texture going up and down that little branch there this is that original hydrangea i got the cuttings off of and there is that blue color it's still earlier in the season though there's only like two blooms on the whole thing but didn't add a pretty deep blue let's see if we can get some more cuttings all right so we're back at the hotel room and i've got these guys piled into two plastic bags on the way back and we're gonna shove them in the fridge now with a little bit of water i just put a little bit of water on these guys this is how you store cuttings these things have got to last for several more days in the refrigerator in plastic bags and then we're going to take them out when we get home and get these cuttings stuck all right so i got these guys broken into half i just want to make sure that i can seal this bag up all the way i'll tie a knot seal it down put a little bit more water in there and then this is going in the refrigerator all right now let's talk about these cuttings so these are the same hydrangea cuttings i got off the same plant in oregon now we just got back from our family vacation but this year we went a month earlier so i was able to get them when they were just in beautiful vegetative growth and lots of good green material to take and once again the lady that works there said go ahead take all the cuttings you want so what did i do it was going to be several days before i got back home and was able to do anything with them i just took the cuttings i put them in a plastic bag sprayed them with a little bit of water in fact i didn't even have my spray bottle i just took a little bit of water off the tap and just sprinkled it around in there and then i just sealed up the bag just tied a little half knot in it just like that and then this whole thing went into the refrigerator while i was waiting to go home it sat in there for several days in oregon in our hotel room and once again as usual we had a little oops so we got all the way home by the way on the way home i just threw them in our ice chest i didn't put ice on them i just put them in the top of the ice chest to keep them cool and when we got home we threw them in our outdoor fridge overnight and of course it was a little colder than it should be and it actually froze some of the leaves so once again i'm up against the eight ball here and i've got to figure out how to make these things root for you guys so let's take a look at these right now and i'll show you exactly what i'm talking about look at that beautiful green growth and it got a little curled up because it's been in that bag all that time but this is what the refrigerator here our house did it froze those leaves some of them not all of them but some of them but i've got plenty of green material up here and i'm going to get these cuttings to root i'm determined if you can see some of them even up near the top here you can see some frost damage from being in that refrigerator it's a shame but it's going to work anyway so once i realized exactly what was happening in the refrigerator i quickly pulled them out left them in the sealed bag and just put them on my back porch completely out of direct sunlight in fact they didn't even get any overhead light from the sky they were just sitting on the back porch and if you really think about it that's all these cuttings are doing inside of a tow anyway they're sitting in a human environment in a medium they can do the same thing in a plastic bag it's not going to hurt anything so i dug around and i found the tote that we're going to use it's not the same tote because i've got some potting soil in that one but we're going to use a clear plastic tote like we've used in the past and i've got a piece of plexiglass that wasn't originally made for this but it fits it perfectly so i'm gonna get all these things cleaned up we're gonna get them ready to go and i've even got the same four inch pots that i used for those original hydrangeas from that first video we're gonna use those pots too so let's get everything cleaned up and let's get going uh [Music] uh all right so let's start setting the stage now i'm going to use those little four-inch pots like i mentioned and we're going to fill them with fine fur bark now that's just a material that i have easy access to in my area because it's a byproduct of logging which is a big industry around here if you don't have access to that you can use anything that drains well holds a little moisture and is relatively inert you don't want to use soil you don't want to use anything that has lots of bacteria or fungus in it a good well draining potting soil will work but don't over water if you're interested in exactly what i use i'll put links to other videos i've done that describe this stuff to a t once we get the containers filled then we're going to saturate these pots because we're not going to be watering these things while they're in the tote we're only going to water the soil and then the plants after they're put into the soil before they go into the tote so we want them fully saturated now here's the caveat you don't want to over water if you're using peat moss or something that's going to retain too much moisture i'm saturating this bark because it drains right through and i need it to be moist but it's got lots of air spaces between it if you're using standard potting soil without any kind of fertilizer in it just standard potting soil that has a lot of peat in it and it holds a lot of water you just want it to be lightly moistened you might even want to wring it out a little bit remember too much moisture and too much heat will kill your cuttings the rooting hormone i'm going to be using is called hormone 3 and the only reason i'm using that rooting hormone is because i use it all the time for my rhododendrons and tougher to root plants you can use any rooting hormone that you have available in your area hydrangea are really easy to root in fact i want to make another point here so many of you have come to this channel based on a hydrangea rooting video that i did in late august early september where i put them on bottom heat now that's what i did at that time because the temperatures were getting cooler but you can root these things way easier if you just stick these cuttings earlier on in the summer and i've got videos about that in the description down below i'll put links down there for other hydrangea videos where i took the hydrangeas earlier on in the season they'll root much faster they'll get fully rooted before the fall comes and you won't have to worry about bottom heat the only reason i did those other cuttings later in the season was because that's when i had access to those cuttings so what we're going to have to do here now is i'm going to take that first top little snip off because that little soft growth isn't going to do much anything and then we're going to cut down below this node here just below it and then we're going to strip those two bottom leaves off now i'm going to come back and trim that up even more here so i can dip some hormone into a freshly trimmed area and then we'll just stick that cutting the last thing we'll do here though is we'll cut the leaves in half a lot of people ask me why do you cut those leaves in half and it's for several reasons one to save room in the propagation tote you can put more cuttings in two it helps decrease the amount of respiration that the plant does it can't lose as much moisture from the leaves when there isn't as much of a leaf surface to lose moisture from on this one you can see this side the leaf actually got frozen kind of burnt by that refrigerator cold area but we still got one good leaf here so i'm going to snip it just above that node and we're just going to get rid of that leaf there and then right below this node here pull those little dead leaves off and there's going to be our cutting on that one so i'll go ahead and get the rest of these worked up and we'll get after sticking them in the pots [Music] so i ended up with five beautiful cuttings here and you might be asking well why did you leave just two leaves on this one but then you've got the top part on this one well you know nothing in nature is perfect guys and i like to experiment with different things we'll come back and see how one roots versus the other i like to try different things all the time you know it's you know with nature it's kind of like about you know there's nothing perfect there's you know there's ideal henry there's nothing perfect about it it's just there's an ideal situation and then there's you know a broad range of what will work outside of that so anyway we've got these beautiful cuttings we don't need all eight of the pots we're gonna stick these guys let's do it all right now i know some of you are gonna say mike you need a dibbler of some sort so i'm gonna go ahead and do that now just so we don't knock all the rooting hormone off of these guys because there are whether you guys understand this or not there are dibbler police out there and i get called out by them on a regular basis on this channel all right so now we've got our rooting hormone that i showed you and we're just going to take these little guys i just snipped the tip off just to get it right down to some fresh new green material might even dip it in a little bit of water there and then we're just gonna dip it in that rooting powder and there it is that's that hormone three i know i'm going to get that question so by dibbling this we're able to set that down in there without knocking all of the rooting hormone off of the cutting and then we'll just kind of firm it in and we're good to go on that one i'm going to go through the rest of these and we'll get it finished up had five cuttings and we've got six well that's just good for us now you see me packing these down in a little bit but the reason i'm doing that is because this fine fur bark material is so loose and airy and i want good contact with the actual cutting if you were using something like peat here and it was holding on to a lot of moisture or it was you know it's a finer particle you don't want to pack it too tightly you want air to be able to get down in there around the cutting and now i've got two extra pots for something else all right so the last thing i'm going to do is just throw a little water over these guys no it's not going to be enough to really rinse off any of the rooting hormone i just want to get everything kind of wet the leaves and the stems and the surface of the rooting medium that's it all right so the last thing we're going to do is put our cuttings in our tote we'll take this little plastic lid off here and we'll set all these cuttings right down inside now if you notice like i said i'm not going to water these guys god willing i'm not going to water these at all but you do have to keep an eye on your cuttings you don't want to just leave them be and not look at them not watch them not see if they need anything to be adjusted however if you do this right and you put them in the right place you're not going to have to touch these things at all you're not going to have to take the lid off or do anything with them until after they fully rooted and we're talking four to six weeks here so we're going to put this lid on and you can see i want to show you there's little bits of moisture down in the bottom there it doesn't have a lot of water or anything i may put a little more down in there probably not though let's just say for right now i'm not gonna there should be plenty of moisture but this lid here doesn't seal a hundred percent it sits down all the way around the edge but there's probably you know a hairline gap between this and the tote because this isn't made for the tote but it's not enough to matter it's going to build up lots of humidity in there in fact i can already see it building up humidity down on that plexiglass the next thing we really need to do is get this in the shade and we got some things to talk about guys all right so let's talk about this for a minute guys because this has become a point of contention here on this channel yes this is going to be a little bit of a tongue lashing but you know hey some of you deserve it i've done a ton of propagation videos on this channel and the one thing that i've always stuck with i've stuck to my guns on is that these cuttings need to be in a place where there is no direct sun but lots of overhead skylight so for some reason this year in particular i have been getting tons of people on here saying i did everything that you told me to mike and my cuttings rotted and they died what's going wrong then they got the emoji that's crying and water is pooling all over the place and that's probably half their problem is they've got water pooling all over the place but the two biggest reasons that you guys are killing your cuttings is too much moisture and too much heat now you saw i didn't water these once they were in here i didn't put lots of water in here it's just enough the moisture from the rooting medium and whatever was on the sides of the container and the bottom is going to evaporate and create a very humid environment close to 100 humidity in there so you don't need a lot of moisture you just need just enough just enough moisture now the other thing is heat you cannot ever let sun touch this container if the direct sun the rays of the yellow sun touch this container it will become an oven it will immediately i mean i'm talking within minutes the sun will cook everything inside of here and then don't come back to me and say what do i do now because i'm going to tell you you dump them all and you go back out there and take more cuttings because once that's happened and i know i've got videos in the past where i actually cooked my cuttings and then ended up getting some to survive so you know if you want to keep moving forward cool but you would be so much better off if you just dump them and start over again and then put the tote in a place that never gets direct sunlight i can't say that enough guys so let me show you just what i'm talking about here and i've got some other projects going on over here don't worry those are coming down the road but you can see the line from the sun now i've got a 14 foot tall pole barn right here and so you know i've got a nice shadow casted on here but you can see the sun just comes straight across it never will hit that toe now if you'll notice something in the summer the sun actually rises somewhere over here and in the very early morning i'm talking like eight o'clock in the morning seven o'clock in the morning you might get the dimmest little bit of sun right there but it's still really cool it's way too far down on the horizon and it doesn't affect anything over here but you can't have the sun as a rule you cannot let the sun touch this thing because it will just cook it but you do want lots of overhead skylight now i've got some big fur trees right around here so they're blocking some of the skylight and that's not ideal but there's enough skylight there's plenty of skylight as you can see to give these cuttings what they want and i know that because i've rooted lots of cuttings over here on this side of my building now i want to say something i've had lots of people come on here and tell me i don't have a place to put these cuttings i don't have a north side of the building well if you've got four walls you've got a north side of the building and if you can't find a good spot to put these things you're just not being creative enough guys listen all you need to do is build something you can take a piece of wood and lean it up against this thing so that it blocks the sun and then builds some sides you can build a simple small structure with a couple little sides you could do this out of one sheet of plywood just a lean two and a couple sides and it will completely block the sun the sun will never the rays will never hit this thing you can make it work you can even do that and put the whole structure in full sun as long as it that structure is blocking the rays from hitting the plastic now i know i'm gonna get one or two comments on here saying why are you yelling at me and i'm yelling at you because you need it all right so this totes been over here sitting out of the sun for probably i don't know five minutes now and you can already see look at that you can already see the humidity building up in there and this is what we want this is the environment we want now remember these cuttings were taken days ago i took these what is today is saturday and i took these cuttings i think on tuesday and yeah it was tuesday they've gone through a refrigerator they got burnt a little bit by some frost in the refrigerator they sat out on my back porch they went on a road trip in a cooler these guys have been through a lot but they're still going to be just fine and this is what we want just humidity a light level humidity on top nothing's over watered i will come back and check on these guys almost daily because i'm insane and i can't help myself but uh i am determined to get these to root for you so that i can show you how to do this and that it really does work once and for all so today is july 26th we are going to come back here when something's happened let's go so today is august 4th and we started these hydrangeas almost two weeks ago and i noticed something here i want to come out and show you real quick we're not even close yet to getting these guys rooted fully but they're on their way but let's go ahead and take this lid off now first of all you can see some humidity built up inside of this but i want to address some issues so when i take this lid off you can see right away we've got some that are looking good and some that are looking okay but not quite as good as the others and here's the first one i want to point out to you so this was near the top of the plant you can see it's all top growth that's a terminal bud right there and it was just the most soft succulent growth on that part of the plant there and those will usually do something like this they'll wilt over easier because they can lose moisture easier the wood is not as hardened off and so what did i say we're two weeks into this now i'm just going to come in here and i don't want this to lose any more moisture from the top so i'm just going to reduce the surface material where that thing can lose some moisture now we've got two nice healthy leaves we've got a little bit sturdier wood further down that was a little more hardened off and this might perk up a little bit more but i'm still not worried about it and that's what i want you guys to know don't worry about these guys at this point they're doing just fine this one started to wilt over you can tell it was smaller growth it's near the top of the plant the leaves have turned up towards the light we got buds in there just fine everything's green it's looking good this guy is not doing quite as well well i wouldn't say he's not doing well but the leaf is kind of drooped over so what i'm going to do here is just come along with these little pruners just cut a big portion of that leaf right off of there and by doing that we're just going to lose less moisture through that leaf and now we still have good material down below here let's get this in and it's got nice healthy buds right down in there on each side and we've still got a good shot of seeing something happen with that we don't panic here we just we got a good shot at it still this one was good strong solid material further down on the plant and you can see it's still standing straight upright the leaves are looking okay some of you know they kind of started drooping a little bit but it's been hot around here lately and that's another reason i want you doing this on the north side of a building where you get no sun at all but you get overhead skylight they need light but you don't ever want sun to hit these things this is without sun hitting them it's been hot we've hit the hundreds well 100 maybe 101 something like that and this is what these little cuttings are doing but they never get sunlight hitting this thing this is the healthiest looking of all it was probably a lot further down on the branch everything's looking good now as far as waterings i know you guys are gonna have that question the only thing i did one day about a week ago i was out here looking at them and i wanted to make sure that they were doing okay because they were starting to do what you're seeing here and i just took the watering one and i went right over it real quick one time and that's why you see a little bit of excess water down there in the bottom not much just a little bit but i just went over it once real quick i've not watered it since you don't really want to water it there's plenty of moisture down in there it's built up here on the glass or the plastic in this case and everything's looking good so as long as you just keep this out of direct sun but with a little bit of light overhead and you know if you live down in an area like the southwest you're probably not gonna be growing hydrangeas but uh you guys do get a little bit hotter you might need some deeper shade but as far as we're doing right now here this is what we're gonna do i'm not gonna panic i'm just gonna let things go we'll watch it we've still got two three four weeks to go on these guys so we'll come back when something more has happened all right it is september 18th and i cannot wait to get this one to you guys let's go check it out so here's our hydrangea they have never left this box they've never left this side of the building since we started this little project this lid has stayed on the whole time except for a couple times and i want to explain that to you let's take a look so when it comes to cuttings people ask me all the time how much do i water how often do i take the lid off well you know there's a lot of questions that come around it but what i want to tell you is you've got to watch your cuttings so when i took these cuttings it was still really hot the climate was really really warm we were in the middle of summer and so i came out and i checked on him and you can see with this guy back in here see how he's kind of limping over a little bit well it's firm hard material now it's not going anywhere it's strong it's solid it's hardened off it's good strong material in fact it's rooted in but in the beginning it started kind of leaning over a little bit because it was a soft wood cutting and it was so hot so i didn't panic i didn't worry about it i actually you can see it happening to this one too this one was further down on the stem so it was a little tougher a little stronger it started doing it to this one but this one actually turned out to be the better of the cuttings now these two guys right here they actually lost their leaves but look they've got some roots on there and they're already starting to leaf out again so here's what i did different this time i watched them it was really hot they needed a little moisture when i saw this start to happen after about a week i took the lid off and i just took the watering wand and i just gently went over it real quick maybe once or twice not to water through the medium because i knew the medium had moisture down in the cups i just went over the tops just to get the leaves moist cool everything down in there and then i just put the lid back on and i walked away i did that again after about the three week point somewhere in there but that time i actually pulled each individual pot out i set it right here because the bark was starting to dry out just a little bit not a lot but just a little bit i set them all out here and then i watered them and i let the water kind of soak through a little bit and then i just put them back inside and i put the lid back on that was it two times two different times over that whole period of time i actually got a little bit of water on them the second time like i said i water them put them back in and that was it the rest of the time i've left this lid right on here now if you guys watch that video that i did several years ago the the first one with these exact cuttings from this exact plant then you'll remember i never took the lid off but also if you'll remember it's a different tote and that tote that i used before has a sealed edge with like a foam material and it completely seals the inside this one doesn't this one is just a plexiglas piece that i set on top and so there's a crack you see that all the way down and on the corners it's really bad it kind of lets a lot of this air escape through there it's still okay here for the humidity it keeps the humidity levels up and you can see got a lot of humidity built up in there but it does let enough air flow out that i did have to watch this a little more carefully and i did have to add a little bit of water throughout the process just those two times though all right we got everything back in the hoop house let's sit down and talk about them so this is what i've been waiting to see guys i am so nostalgic about this one because it's the original the same exact hydrangea that i took those cuttings on like i said three or four years ago now and i got that video i'll put a link in the description below but i loved that one and i wanted to get more cuttings off of that same one because i have to admit i've over the years i've mixed up a lot of my hydrangeas and i'm not sure what's what anymore i you know i get a little busy sometimes but and my main focus is the rhododendrons but anyway i got the cuttings and here they are again i'm not going to mix these up so let's look at this biggest fattest one i've already been looking at them i sneak to peak but i'm going to show you what the roots look like in here so i'm just going to kind of put my hand right along that bark so not too much falls out we're going to take the lid off gently keep the look at that look at that look at that guys oh man you just can't do any better than that look at all those roots just pouring out all the way around i absolutely love these guys all right let's put this lid back on here this is gonna be my little mother i'm gonna keep her and label her so because i she's the strongest she's got the biggest roots i'm gonna put a little label in there and i'll always know that this was that blue hydrangea if you guys have been following me for three or four years now then you'll know we did this before with that original video and then i posted updates over the next year and it at the cuttings that i took then actually came out the next spring and grew pink flowers is then we learned all about the ph of the soil turning the hydrangeas different colors and how you could take a blue hydrangea and it just turns pink it is absolutely amazing to me i just love that subject but i got this off of blue hydrangea all right this is number two see how it fared and it's got some roots not as many i told you that other one was the best but it's well rooted in and it's gonna root more and more now remember today is september 18th and so we're headed into cooler weather especially with all these fires going on around here these wildfires it's been blocking the sun so much it feels like a nuclear winter around here the weather's gotten a lot cooler and we're headed into october soon so these roots aren't going to do too much more they'll do a little bit more in there but really we're going to be heading to a time where the leaves are going to want to start falling off and these guys are going to go dormant and we're going to talk about that how i'm going to store these through the winter let's look at this other big one here and we got a little bit not quite as much see that little bits of roots all around there around every side there goes henry and one more the other two don't have leaves oh look at that he's got lots of roots that one's actually doing really well too not as much on that side but plenty of roots there doing really really well now these two with the leaves that fell off they fell off because they overheated but look at that they grew roots and they're coming back just fine and uh i don't want to disturb them i've already looked at them there's a one or two little tiny dots of white from roots starting to come through but not much because they don't have a lot of leaf surface to photosynthesize yet and grow lots of roots but they'll probably be okay and go through this winter just fine but here's what i want to do i want to sacrifice one of these guys and here's why we like to see roots i mean we want to see these guys right let's just sacrifice one of them it's going to be okay this is for educational purposes this is your science 101 by all the plant biology 101 so let's go ahead and take a look all right now i know this one didn't have as many roots it's got enough roots to take a look at though let's kind of get all that off of there i love doing this this is the fun part look at that look at all those roots you guys want to rinse it out and take a look at it and there it is guys look at that all rinsed out isn't that just absolutely beautiful i don't know how you feel about it but i love looking at these roots and i love how these plants and this biology just all takes place man it's just so cool and so interesting look at that a little cutting for those of you who don't understand plant propagation or you haven't you've just arrived here and this is the first video that you found and you're like oh my gosh yes it's for you this is real this can be done you can take a cutting of any of these plants and it will grow its own roots man it will just turn into its own beautiful plant you can multiply these things like crazy i love it i love it i love this part of plant propagation i love all of it but isn't that just isn't that just the coolest thing man look at that all those massive massive roots man so interesting so cool so does this guy have a chance of survival well i don't know it's probably going to be somewhat slim because i just stripped this little guy of all of the bark all of the medium that it was growing down into and then washed it with really cold water it's been out in the air the roots are starting to dry off i mean i could try but you know what's the point i know some of you will get a little upset by that but like i said this is for science guys this is for educational purposes but for all you doubters out there there it is isn't that cool now for the rest of these cuttings i want to show you what i'm going to do to overwinter them because a lot of you guys have been asking me lately how do i overwinter them and i do have probably like five or seven different videos about overwintering rooted cuttings in which i actually took the cuttings and i did different techniques and different things and then showed you the results of them a year later and how they did bounce back and they did survive the winter in fact one of those videos i took the cuttings in a flat that i rooted them in and just stuck them out in the weather and it snowed on them and i showed that and then the next spring those guys started growing like crazy so it's not a big deal as long as they're cold hardy to your area but i'm going to show you what i'm going to do with these guys right here what i think you should do to protect your plants through the winter your rooted cuttings and this is it i just want you to take the lid that you already had on top of your tote and when i tell you to crack the lid i don't want you to crack the lid but i want you to just turn it sideways a little bit so that you've got some airflow in through one corner and airflow out from the other corner you've got some airflow going on in there you could even have a little bit of these two corners it doesn't matter what matters is that you've got some air going in there and the humidity levels can calm down we want this to get more acclimated to the outside humidity levels we want these guys to harden off essentially so don't take the lid completely off you want to leave it on and then you also want to do this slowly so you know these guys are rooted well enough it's not going to be a big issue because they'll be able to take up moisture but you want to just do it a little bit just crack the lid a little bit leave it like that for a couple days then crack it a little more leave it like that for a couple days you can even get to the point where it's like that and you got a big end open maybe right in the middle and you can have air flowing out both sides doesn't really matter so once you get to this point you want to have this whole set up it's actually pretty well protected the things you want to protect from are harsh winter winds and tons of rain soaking your roots and so really what that means is like a back porch something that's covered and it could even have the sides open but while it's in this it's protecting from the wind so i'm going to leave it my hoop house here and a lot of people come on here and they say well you don't you know i don't have a hoop house or i don't have a greenhouse but this is not a greenhouse this whole structure i'm inside of it's a hoop house these plants all around me freeze hard as a rock in the winter time it is not heated in here it the only thing it does is protect from saying this will protect from the harsh winter winds and massive amounts of rain water just washing through my roots it just it creates a controllable environment that's all but these cuttings inside of here these guys will freeze this soil will freeze hard as a rock through the winter i'm not worried about that because these plants are cold hardy to my region and they can take those freezing temperatures the things that hurts the rooted cuttings is not the freezing temperatures as long as they're cold hardy to your area the things that hurts them are the harsh drying winter winds letting those guys get dried out and just the winds sucking all the moisture out of them one and two frosts that come really quickly early on in the year some years this isn't a problem but some years you start with like 40 degree temps next thing you know by the weekend it's 20 degrees out you've got massive amounts of frost freezing temps and these guys haven't fully acclimated that'll kill cuttings and i guess one more thing would be the rains if you leave these cuttings out in the rain not all the time i've actually proven that they'll get through the rains just fine with some plants but i don't like the rain to be able to just keep the rooting medium saturated in there i like to manage it myself i'll come through and i probably will only have to water these guys two times maybe three times max through the entire winter and when i say water i mean run the watering wand over these guys just quickly just enough to keep the soil lightly moistened so that's all you need crack the lid get a little airflow put it on your back porch if you don't have a back porch and you're really worried and you want to protect them even more you can put them in a shed or you can put them in your garage but you don't want to do that until after they've gone dormant and there's some reasons for that i've made some videos about that you guys want to talk about it now so i like to let my plants go completely dormant for the winter before bringing them inside now not these guys because they're already in the hoop house and i got to get this side rolled down before it starts getting too cold because the plastic won't stretch in the cold weather i'm going to fix that one of these years and we're going to have roll up sides on this thing but for my figs and other plants that i want to bring inside my rooted cuttings that i want to bring inside and protect in here from the things that i just mentioned i like to wait and leave them outside until they go dormant here's why when the cuttings actually have a chance to do what they're naturally supposed to do in nature once again i'm not dr seuss but i sound like them sometimes they would normally be out in the open these cuttings these plants and they would gradually start hardening off until you get a couple freezes and then they're completely dormant and they're hardened off so if you bring those cuttings into an environment like this which is not heated but more protected if you bring them into an environment like this and i've watched this over the years they won't harden off as quickly and as fully and completely i mean they they will eventually but it'll take longer because of this buffer that we've got here the problem that brings about is if we have a more mild fall and they're in here then they're really taking a long time to harden off and then when the outside is good to go and all of a sudden we're in december and we get some really hard freezes fast in here it's going to freeze hard as a rock and those cuttings are a little bit more temperamental because they haven't had a chance to fully harden off yet so once again you're in a situation where you've got cuttings going from warmer temps to really freezing temps fast and that's not good for them so i like to leave them outside in an area that is going to allow them to acclimate to their environment that's going to allow them to go dormant start losing their leaves and all that then bring them into a protected area now that being said this area in here with this tote inside of this hoop house is so protected that i don't have to worry about that i'll just leave them in a corner and they'll be just fine but if you don't have a hoop house once again not heated not a greenhouse but if you don't have a hoop house what you would want to do is leave these guys out wherever they're at under a porch or you know wherever you had them rooting and then when you want to start acclimating them you could put them under a porch and crack the lid sideways you don't want rain filling up your tub there but leave them in that spot until they go dormant until every area of the country is going to be different because weather patterns vary but you'll want to leave them there until you know it's dormancy period everything's kind of lost its leaves then take them and put them in your shed or your garage if they need that extra protection and then they'll just get that little bit extra protection when they're already hardy and hardened off to your outside climate your outside temperatures man that was a mouthful there i go babbling again but that's about all i've got to say about that so there you have it guys for those of you who love these hydrangeas as much as i do another success we've done it again i've shown you what i've done i've told you every little thing that i've done so that hopefully you can go and be successful but remember i took these cuttings mid-summer actually we went on vacation a little bit earlier than we normally do down to oregon and so i got them earlier and so this worked out great unlike that one video i did where i had to put them on bottom heat and all you guys have seen that one but i'll put a link in the description for those of you who haven't but if you had to take these guys later in the year yes i get this question a lot you could bring this whole toe inside where it's warmer as long as you've got good proper lighting plant lighting on top then the warmth will just get them going and they'll root like crazy and you'll have no problem at all only problem is then you're gonna have to leave them inside through the winter keep the lighting keep the fertilizer and as long as you're set up for something like that by all means have at is you guys want to have fun growing these things indoors there's no problem at all and i might do that with one of these we'll see i've got a cool indoor plant light setup that i need to show you guys i just haven't gotten around to it yet and i want to do some fun things with indoor lighting and indoor growing through the winter but we'll get to that and so i'm all wore out and talked out and that's all i've got to say about that so i think we're done here if you guys like this one hit the like button subscribe if you want to follow along and see more fantastic gardening videos and if you want to see how these little these little guys right here these little hydrangeas are going to turn out next spring because i'm going to show you i always do have a fantastic week guys and i'll see in the next video adios [Music] you

Channel: Mike Kincaid

Views: 238,378

Rating: 4.8946333 out of 5

Keywords: hydrangea cuttings, plant propagation, rooting cuttings, taking cuttings, stem cuttings, softwood cuttings, how to grow hydrangeas, hydrangea propagation, plant propagation methods, gardening for beginners flowers, When should I plant Hydrangea cuttings, Can hydrangeas grow from clippings, What plants can be reproduced by cuttings, How long do plant cuttings take to root, free plants, multiply plants, masterclass, plant masterclass, plant, grow hydrangea from cuttings

Id: DC2u-diXoyM

Length: 42min 54sec (2574 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020