Our Products:

Gardeneers.co.uk
© 2006 - 2008

Growing

The basic starting point for all gardens and gardeners is knowing how to grow and look after your own plants successfully. Gardening is a skill that is learnt over many years, but some of the essential elements can be established quite quickly. The following brief guide will help you to gain an understanding of general plant growing techniques, covering sections like seeds, seedlings, plants, cuttings and related subjects.

Hardwood Cuttings

Hardwood cuttings are taken in the winter months, when the plants are dormant and are generally used to propagate deciduous shrubs and trees. Many of these plants can also be grown from soft or semi hardwood cuttings taken during the growing season.

This method of taking cuttings results in cuttings that are quite large, around 150–300 mm long. The cuttings are started off outdoors in specially prepared well-drained garden beds containing a suitable potting mix.

Most hardwood cuttings are simply straight lengths of stem with three or four leaf nodes. They can be branch tips or pieces from slightly further along the stems, but they are generally best taken from the growth of the season immediately past.

Older wood should not be used for making cuttings.

Cut the base of the cutting at a slight angle just below a node and remove the buds from the two lower nodes. Cuttings taken from the tip of the parent plant only require this action, and then are ready to set.

Stem cuttings require the top cut just above a node.

Next, dip the base of the cutting in some hardwood root-forming hormone and then insert them in the planting beds. The cuttings can be inserted quite deeply, with just the tip and the top node showing. They should start to strike roots as the foliage develops in spring but are best left in the plantiong beds until the following autumn when they are once again dormant and safe to transplant.