How to take hardwood cuttings: propagating shrubs in winter
Lee Burkhill: Award Winning Designer & BBC 1's Garden Rescue Presenters Official Blog
It's a wonderfully straightforward and cost-effective method that requires minimal tools and expertise, making it a perfect entry point for those new to gardening. Imagine being able to clone your favourite plants or share them with friends and neighbours, all when all else is asleep in the garden. Hardwood cuttings allow you to do just that while promoting sustainability and reducing the need for frequent plant purchases or spending a fortune trying to plant up your garden.
In this expert guide, I'll walk you through the steps to master the art of taking hardwood cuttings, ensuring a beautiful garden come spring and taking your skills to the next level Ninjas!
Hardwood cuttings offer a cost-effective and versatile method for gardeners to propagate a variety of deciduous plants, including shrubs, trees, and fruit-bearing species. This technique harnesses the winter dormancy period, allowing gardeners to clone their favourite plants whilst preserving specific traits and characteristics of these garden shrubs.
Let's take a quick look at the other benefits of taking hardwood cuttings to bulk up your borders:
Selecting the Right Plants before embarking on the hardwood plantation is essential, and some plants lend themselves better to hardwood cuttings than growing from seed or softwood cuttings.
Many deciduous shrubs, such as Roses, Hydrangeas, blackcurrants, Cornus and certain fruit-bearing varieties, make excellent hardwood cutting specimens.
When it comes to ensuring success from hardwood cuttings, there are a few tools needed:
Taking these cuttings can take around 30 mins to do, so it's super speedy. Make sure you give yourself enough time by getting all of the tools above ready so that once you have made your cuts, you can get them planted ASAP.
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The best time to make hardwood cuttings is when the deciduous plant is dormant in late Autumn (fall) or early winter. This is when the plant or shrub has shed its leaves and has slowed down its respiration (breathing and water uptake). This makes for the perfect time for hardwood cuttings as the plant is at its least demanding and under minimal stress once pruned.
By making cuttings in the winter, the new plant cuttings can use all of their energy on root development rather than flowers or keeping leaves alive. What makes winter hardwood cuttings so successful is that Mother Nature is on your side from the beginning.
This simple step-by-step guide will help you take hardwood cuttings with ease. Once you've got the process down, you'll be making hardwood cuttings with ease and even be able to show your friends how it is done!
Choose shrubs that will easily root from hardwood cuttings, in my example I've chosen Cornus (Dogwood) as they are notoriously easy to root from hardwood cuttings. Blackcurrants, Roses and Hydrangeas also do well from these cutting types.
Then, it's a case of choosing one or two-year-old stems that are healthy and semi-flexible. Don't try to use old stiff wood as cuttings, as these often fail. You're looking for lengths that are up to a pencil's thickness and look healthy.
Identify the tip of the plant that is healthy one-year-old growth and then work backwards between 15-30cm until you find a bud or leaf node (the part where leaves or side shoots would emerge). Then, it is a case of making a horizontal cut a few millimetres beneath this node or bud.
This is going to be the rooting end of your cutting, as this node contains vital hormones which can create roots. You can cut above it, but the concentration of hormones is far less, meaning you may need to use additional hormone-rooting powder to get the cutting to take.
This step is vitally important when making cuttings and a lot of guides miss out on this step when making hardwood cuttings. You want to make a 45-degree angled cut to the very top of the cutting. This step stops any further apical growth from occurring (length growth).
The reason it is vital is that it stops the cutting trying to put on leafy growth rather than roots. It stops the tip from growing, ensuring all the cutting's survival efforts are placed into created roots at the bottom of the cutting.
We cut at a 45-degree angle so any moisture or rainfall runs off and down the cutting to the soil and doesn't sit, like it may do on a horizontal cut and cause the cutting to rot from the top down. To see an example of the perfect hardwood cutting, have a look below. You will see the horizontal cut at the base and an angled cut at 45 degrees at the top. The cutting is between 15cm and 30cm in length.
It's important to make sure that you don't mix the cuttings ends up. Trying to get the top (apical) part of the cutting to the root is almost impossible, and you'll fail. So, the bottom cut is always horizontal, and the top cut is angled to help you identify the cuttings.
I use a terracotta pot to place the cuttings in before I plant them out. It's essential to get the cuttings in into growing media like compost ASAP. The amount of time out in the open reduces the chances of success so time is of the essence when taking any cutting. If you can't plant them straight away, store them in a damp plastic bag tied up in the meantime.
Hardwood cuttings need a free, draining, and lightweight growing media. You can just use normal peat-free compost, but the cuttings can sit waterlogged if you're not careful. I always use a 50:50 mix of peat-free compost and grit. This aids with drainage for the hardwood cuttings.
The other reason why adding grit, perlite or vermiculite is that it opens up the airflow in the cutting media. Air is really important for healthy roots, so a gritty compost mix is more beneficial for healthy root development.
You may have seen cuttings on TV shows or in magazines where they are placed around the edge of a pot and wondered, why don't they use the middle for cuttings? The answer is simple Ninjas, it's all about warmth and air flow.
We place hardwood cuttings and other types of cuttings around the edge as this part of the pot warms up fastest and has the best drainage compared to the middle of the pot, which can often be the wettest densest part of the cutting compost.
Plant your cuttings so that 1/3 of the cuttings base is in the compost, with the angled end upwards. Don't pack the cuttings into one pot. Place 5-7 cuttings per 2lt plant pot, then get another pot. Water them well once you have planted them.
The next step is to place the cuttings either in an unheated greenhouse or cold frame. If you don't have these, somewhere sheltered and out of extreme frost or wind is best. You can plant the cuttings directly in the ground for some plants, like Roses, in trenches. However, for most beginner gardeners, pots are best as you can check when they have rooted easily and they take up less space.
Your cuttings will take anywhere between 6 to 12 weeks to root, depending on the hardwood plant species you have chosen.
The way to tell is twofold:
If so, then congratulations, your cutting has taken and started to root.
Leave your cuttings in their pot until they are all showing signs of growth with both leaves and roots. Then it is a case of potting them up into individual pots for the next growing season. You don't want to plant them directly outside as they will still be juvenile plants which need a bit more TLC. You don't want rabbits or a really hot summer finishing them off until they're more established.
I keep my hardwood cuttings in individual pots over the spring and summer. Where I can water and feed if necessary. I then plant out the following winter when the plants are dormant.
On average a hardwood cutting will take between 6-12 weeks to show roots and be putting on new growth. It depends on the plant species. Cornus and Willow are the fastest rooting within 6 weeks, whereas Roses and Holly can take the full 12 weeks. This is why it's better to take more cuttings than you need to account for any that simply don't root or take.
Taking hardwood cuttings in winter is a skilful technique that allows you gardeners to multiply your favourite plants with ease.
By selecting the right plants and using these simple cutting techniques, hardwood cuttings are a breeze to succeed in the garden. They take up minimal space and need very little care, making it an excellent beginner gardener propagaton technique.
Embrace the art of hardwood cuttings and witness your garden thrive with new life each spring.
Are you a hardwood-cutting convert? Why not let me know by leaving a comment below or getting in touch with Garden Ninja on Social media Tweet, Facebook or Instagram me.
You can also follow me on YouTube where I’ve got plenty of garden guide vlogs to help you make your garden awesome! Happy Gardening.
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