How to Propagate Plants
Buying plants for the home, the garden, or the landscape can get expensive. Reproducing them yourself saves money and can be a fun hobby. In addition, you can have more of the plants you like and have plants to give away or swap with other gardeners. Let’s discuss how to propagate plants.
How Does Propagating Plants Work?
Most plants reproduce sexually by pollination, combining DNA from two different plants to make seeds, which grow into plants with both parents’ characteristics.
Plants can also reproduce asexually as clones. This vegetative reproduction has advantages for the plant. It can skip the energy-intensive and chancy work of making flowers, fruit, and seeds. Clones also reach maturity faster, skipping the frail seedling phase.
Plants have tissues of undifferentiated cells in stems, leaves, and the growing tips of stems and roots. These cells are constantly dividing and can be triggered to make new roots, leaves, and stems under the right conditions. Learning to exploit this attribute allows gardeners to easily produce more plants.
What You Need to Propagate Plants
Few tools are necessary for successful plant propagation. Use clean, sharp blades when cutting plants. Clean hands, pots, and medium are advisable as well. Rooting hormone can improve the success rate.
And it’s essential to have a well-ventilated area that gets indirect sun to let the new plantlets rest and root. In addition, it’s helpful to look up the species you’re working with to know the best season for taking cuttings.
How to Propagate Plants the Easy Way
The easiest way to acquire a new plant is to place a cutting in water. Many plants will develop roots this way. After the roots form, the cutting can be moved into a pot. Plants that have a vine-like growth, such as philodendron, arrange a long stem so that part of it is submerged in water.
A small wound on the lower side of the submerged section can help stimulate root growth but may not be necessary. That section will grow roots and eventually be cut away from the parent plant and potted separately.
Another easy propagation method is division. Hostas and spider plants, for example, multiply in clumps. Dig up the clumps, separate the individuals, and re-plant. Often they will pull apart easily, but if necessary, they can be cut apart.
Strawberries are an example of a plant that propagates by runners or stolons. Stolons are modified stems that grow along the surface of the ground. New plants grow along the length of the stolon, which can be easily snipped off the parent plant and moved to new locations.
Plants will sometimes produce pups or off-sets – a small, complete plant growing around the base of a bigger plant. When these have developed their own root system, they can be gently detached from the parent plant and potted separately.
Other Ways to Propagate Plants
Here are some other ways to propagate plants:
Layering
Layering is another propagation method. It’s done by bending a branch down into a U shape, so a section can be buried in the earth with the tip of the branch poking out above the ground. Then, with a clean blade, wound the bent part of the branch buried in soil, and anchor the branch in place.
Roots will begin to form at the wound, and the tip of the branch will have new growth next season. It’s usually best to let the branch grow attached to the parent plant for two seasons, then it can be cut free, and the new baby shrub can be moved to a new location in the garden.
Air Layering
Air layering is a variation of the above method. Using a clean, sharp blade, carefully remove a strip of bark from around a branch of a shrub or tree that you want to reproduce.
Cover the bare section with moist sphagnum moss or peat, held in place with plastic secured above and below the cut. Roots will form in the moss, and after a season or two, that branch can be pruned and planted as a separate tree.
Suckering
Suckering is a way to multiply some plants that naturally tend to form thickets. Raspberry, lilac, dogwood, and sumac are a few plants that can be easily reproduced by separating and repotting the shoots that grow up around the main stem.
Next, carefully dig around the base of the parent plant, cutting the underground connection to the sucker. Then dig out the suckers, verify they have well-established roots, and put them in pots.
Propagating Succulents
Multiply succulents by removing one of the lower, older leaves, gently twisting it off the plant’s stem. Let the leaf sit for a day or two so the torn area will scar and dry thoroughly. Then lay the leaf on a layer of potting soil, not burying it but pressing it into the surface.
Place the leaf in indirect light and keep the soil’s surface moist using a spray bottle. Tiny new plants will grow from around the edge of the leaf.
Propagating Rhizomes, Bulbs, Tubers, and Corms
Many plants reproduce by underground structures with several names: rhizomes, bulbs, tubers, and corms. Asparagus, bamboo, hops, and ginger are examples of plants that grow from rhizomes below the soil. Some ferns and irises grow from rhizomes on the surface of the soil. Potatoes, Jerusalem artichoke, and tuberous begonia are a few of the many plants that grow from tubers.
Onions, tulips, daffodils, and many other plants grow from bulbs. And gladiola and crocus grow from corms. To propagate rhizomes and bulbs, wait until the plant is dormant in winter, dig up and separate the smaller rhizomes from the parent plant, and re-bury them at the same depth in a new location.
You may need to use a clean, sharp blade to separate small rhizomes from the parent plant if they don’t come apart on their own.
Conclusion
There are more elaborate and complex methods of plant propagation, such as laboratory cloning and gene manipulation. However, the methods above are available to any interested gardener and provide abundant variety and satisfaction.
