How to take softwood cuttings

Do you ever wish you could grow your very own poinsettias for the holidays? Good news: you can! Christmas flowers, as these plants are also known, are usually propagated from cuttings, and this is the method I’m going to share with you today. Even professional nurseries grow these winter-blooming plants from cuttings, which ensures that newly propagated specimens produce clones of the parent plants. However, a word of warning: this particular home gardening challenge

Tomato plants are pretty darn cool in that they can grow new roots anywhere along their stem. If you’ve ever seen the knobby little bumps growing towards the bottom of your stems, these are just roots waiting to happen! The scientific name for them is root primordia. Generally speaking, they usually only show up if your tomato plants are stressed. And it’s for this reason that you should always plant your tomatoes deeply in the soil. Those new roots will lead

Hardwood cuttings are taken from woody shrubs and perennial plants in the fall or over the winter months. Like cuttings taken at other times, they are a great way to increase the stock of plants in your garden. Now could be a good time to take stock, and take steps to fill in any gaps in your planting schemes. Propagate from hardwood cuttings and you can increase your stock of fruit and berry producing plants. You can create new wind breaks or hedging at minimal cost. And you c

Summer is the ideal time to take leaf cuttings from your houseplants and begonias propagate well from leaf cuttings. A young plant will erupt from tissue along the leaf veins and then root into the compost. Then you simply separate each new plant from the mother leaf and pot it on. A single leaf can produce many young plants, which you can use to increase your own stock of begonias or give to friends. This technique can be used for all begonias but is particularly useful for foliage plants such