Hardwood Cuttings: Tips and Tricks

Shrubs and trees can be expensive plants to buy, yet with a bit of patience you can easily grow your own plants for next to nothing.

Hardwood cuttings, taken during the plant's dormant season, are one of the simplest ways to propagate many deciduous garden trees and shrubs. You can take cuttings any time between mid autumn and early spring, with the most successful times being at leaf fall and just before bud break.

Select material from ripe, one or two year old growth. Choose strong healthy, straight stems of about a pencil's thickness and showing plump buds. Remove any leaves and the soft growth from the top of each cutting, then trim each one to around 8-10 inches. long. Make an angled cut above the top bud and a straight cut below the bottom one so you know which way up your cutting is. This might sound silly but believe me, once they are cut it can be really difficult to tell one end from the other. To improve the chances of your cuttings rooting, remove a 1 inch sliver of bark from the base. This exposes more of the cambium, the specialized tissue from which the cuttings can develop roots. If your soil is free draining you can put your cuttings straight into the border. Use a dibber to make individual holes 3 inches apart or make a slit trench with some sharp sand at the bottom. For just a few cuttings, pop them into a deep pot filled with some gritty, loam based compost. There’s no need for any heat. Just put them somewhere they will get a bit of protection and get a drop of rain now and then, or make sure they don’t dry out. Most cuttings will have developed a strong root system after a year and then they can be potted up or planted out in the garden.