Propogating from Stem Cuttings
We’ve been learning about propagating, which means growing new plants. There are lots of ways to do this, one is sowing seeds. We’re already quite good at that. Another is by stem cuttings, that is, taking a piece of stem of a growing plant and getting the stem to grow roots of its own either in soil or in water. Some plants are easier to propagate from stem cuttings than others. Softwood (new growth) stem cuttings can be taken in summer, while hardwood (older growth) stem cuttings are taken in autumn and winter.
We tried taking stem cuttings of some houseplants to see if we could propagate more plants to sell at Christmas on the Field. We decided to see if we could propagate these cuttings in water, so we could watch when (if!) roots started to form. It was pretty simple:
First we cut the stems just below a ‘node’. A node is a place on the stem where leaves and shoots sprout from. It’s usually a bump on the stem. If there are any leaves growing on this node we remove them, because this is the part that will be placed into the water, and hopefully where the new roots will grow from.
A stem with nodes that we have trimmed the leaves off.
Second we removed nearly all the leaves from the top. Why?! Well, if there are a lot of leaves the new plant will put all it’s energy into keeping them alive and healthy, leaving it no strength to grow new roots. The plant does need some leaves, so it can photosynthesise (make energy from sunlight), but at this stage, not very many at all. If there are any buds or flowers on our cutting, we remove them too. As sad as that seems it’s for the same reason, right now we want the new plant to focus on growing roots, not making flowers.
We popped the stems into a cup of water, making sure that the nodes were covered.
And then we put the cups in a light, bright, but not too hot place. All we needed to do now was to keep the water fresh, and watch and wait.
Here are our cuttings when we took them four weeks ago…
…and here they are now. Look at those roots! The new plants are ready to be potted up.
A close up of roots growing from a node.