How to Propagate Plants: Cuttings, Water and Division

Wipe the blades of your pruners or scissors with rubbing alcohol before you cut anything. A dirty blade spreads bacteria straight into the fresh cut, and a cutting that rots never gets a chance to root.

Then look at the plant. You want soft, new growth coming off the base, not the old woody stem. Follow that soft stem and find the nodes, the points where leaves join it. A good cutting has two or three sets of nodes, because the nodes are where roots will grow.

This works on almost anything: the video takes cuttings from a lantana, Swedish ivy, salvia, boxwood, a native shrub and catmint, one after another.

Make one clean cut a little below a set of nodes. That bottom cut, plus the nodes above it, is where the new roots come from, so cutting right under a node gives the plant the most places to root.

Aim for a cutting a few inches long with two or three sets of nodes on it. Two is fine. Three is better.

Pinch or cut off every leaf below the top set, so you have a clean bare stem with one or two leaves left at the top. Those two leaves are all the cutting needs for photosynthesis. Everything you stripped off would have rotted under the soil.

If the top leaves are large, cut them in half. A big leaf loses water faster than a rootless stem can replace it.

Then take more. Never try to root one cutting. Take a whole handful from the same plant, because some will fail and you lose nothing by trying ten.

Pour a little rooting hormone powder into a separate cup. Never dip cuttings into the original tub, or you contaminate the whole thing.

Toss the bottom of the cutting in the powder until the cut end and the bare nodes are coated, then tap off the excess.

Rooting hormone is optional. It is a hormone that speeds up root formation, and cuttings will root without it, just more slowly and with more failures. Powder, gel and liquid all work.

Push each cutting down into a cell of seed-starting mix or potting soil, all the way up to the top leaves, so every bare node is under the surface.

A plastic cell pack from any garden centre is ideal because each cutting gets its own plug and pops out cleanly when it has rooted. Small pots or a cup work too.

Firm the mix gently around each stem so it stands up and the nodes are in contact with the soil.

Soak the tray straight away, going back and forth with the hose or a watering can until water runs out of the bottom and the mix is wet all the way down.

From here the rule is simple: never let the cuttings dry out. A cutting has no roots yet and can only take in water through its leaves, so the mix around it has to stay consistently moist, not soaking, until roots form.

The easy way to do that is a saucer. Stand the tray in a saucer, fill the saucer, and let the mix drink from the bottom for fifteen or twenty minutes. Tip out what is left and refill when the surface starts to dry.

Put a clear dome over the tray, or a clear cup or a zip bag over a single pot. It traps moisture and warmth around the leaves and noticeably speeds up rooting. It is not essential, but it helps.

Keep the covered tray out of full sun. Direct sun through a dome will cook the cuttings in an afternoon. A bright windowsill or a shaded spot outside is right.

Lift the dome for a minute each day to let fresh air in and check the mix is still damp.

Give the cuttings about three weeks, then gently pop one out of its cell. You are looking for white, hairy roots running through the plug.

The catmint in the video rooted in a plain plug tray in three weeks with no dome and no saucer, nothing but consistent moisture. Once the roots fill the plug, the cutting is a plant and can go into a pot of its own.

If a cutting pulls out with no roots but is still green, push it back in and give it another two weeks. If it is brown and soft, bin it.

Not everything wants soil. Pothos, philodendron, monstera and the other aroids root beautifully standing in plain water, and you get to watch it happen.

Find the small brown bumps on the vine, the nodes. Cut just below one, strip the lower leaves, and stand the cutting in a jar or bottle with at least two nodes under the water. Roots start showing in about a week. Change the water every few days.

Skip water for woody cuttings. Shrubs and trees rot in water and want the soil method above.

Plant-specific water guides: pothos, monstera, spider plant.

Clumping plants, like ornamental grasses, hostas and many perennials, cannot be grown from a stem cutting. They get split instead.

Slide the plant out of its pot, or dig it up. Cut straight down through the root ball with a garden saw or a sharp knife, working along the line where the clump naturally wants to separate. A blade tears fewer roots than pulling by hand. One established plant will give you several.

Pot each piece up, pack potting soil firmly around it, water it and keep it in the shade until it settles in. A freshly split plant is fragile for a couple of weeks and must not dry out.

Softer clumps, like creeping jenny, split by hand. Massage the roots apart until rooted pieces come away, and pot each one.