Propagation of Cuttings from Almost any Species of Native Plant!

First, where do you find your plants to take cuttings from? Well, not National Parks anyway, they are totally protected...or supposed to be. Sometimes Botanic Gardens will give you permission to take a cutting or two, but you must ask for permission. Usually the Management wont mind if you take a small cutting.

Friends with gardens containing native plants are usually okay for you to take a few cuttings, and may even ask for a few cuttings from your native garden. You may be able to swap cuttings with the neighbors. If you see somewhere a particularly nice garden with a really nice native plant you would like, ask, because native plant gardeners are very nice people, and love to talk native plants whenever they can!

If the plant you are taking a cutting from has small twigs that will bend but not break, it’s in a softwood cutting, and will strike very easily. If it cracks or breaks it’s a hardwood or semi-hardwood, and will still strike, but may need more care.

With many plants you just can’t fail! Take a cutting about 4 inches long. Cut on an angle, dip in rooting compound, and shove it in the ground. Sandy soil or pure sand is good. If you keep it damp, 99% of the time you will have a success.

If planting your cutting into a pot, use a mixture of around 50% sand and compost. If you don’t have compost, buy a bag of good potting mix. If you have a few large trees and shrubs in your garden, sometimes you can scrape up enough good leafy topsoil from underneath one of them.

Sterile soil is a preferred option with pot plants. You will get a better strike rate, because unsterilised soil may carry a fungus disease. You can sterilise soil by placing it on a tray in the oven for half and hour.

Above left, softwood cutting, above right, hardwood cutting.

Try to take your cuttings on a cool or wet day, or early morning or evening. Plant them as soon as possible. If you can’t plant them straight away, put them in moist bag. One of the best ideas for keeping cuttings in good condition is to use a plastic container, with a wet sponge or cloth in it.

An esky with a wet towel in it is good too. Put another wet towel or similar, on top of the esky as well. I carried cuttings like this in a car for over 600 kilometers once, in hot weather, and they arrived in almost perfect condition.

Cacti, succulents and other sappy plant leavess should be left a few days for the cut end to dry over. You can sometimes hurry this along by dusting the cut end with sulfur, or even fine dust or sand.

With softwood cuttings, take 4 inches of tip, and leave some leaves on it. Take the cutting from the outside of the plant, they are usually more vigorous because they get more sunlight. Cut just under a node, or bud. Remove all the leaves except the top 2 or 3. Dip in rooting powder, and plant in your pot.

Don’t use pieces of broken pot pieces for drainage in the pot, they could carry disease. Place a clear plastic soft drink bottle with the bottom cut out, over the cutting. Leave it on for a week or two, to provide a warm damp environment to encourage root growth. Semi-hardwood and hardwood cuttings are best taken late in summer, and should be taken as heeled cuttings. Remember, hardwood cuttings are from stems that snap or crack when bent. Dip in rooting compound, and plant.

Leaf cuttings are merely leaves that are pinned down with toothpicks on some potting mix and kept moist until they form roots. Even a couple of small stones will hold the leaf down enough to form roots. Most fleshy sappy leaves will propagate easily like this. With the larger leaves, put a few fine cuts across the veins on the back of the leaf, and sprinkle with hormone rooting powder.

Root cuttings are taken from the parent plants roots, dusted with rooting powder, and planted in wet sand. Some plants will simply grow from shoots cut from tubers.

Layering is merely pinning a plant stem to the ground, with a piece of wire bent to form a staple, covering it with soil, and waiting until it grows roots. It is a very successful method of propagation, the new plants form from the parent plant. You may have to wait some months for it to develop enough roots to sever from the parent. You can hurry the process up by cutting shallow slits in the bark, and dusting with rooting powder, before covering with soil.

Air layering is a similar process except that the branch or stem is scored, dusted, wrapped with damp peat moss, then wrapped in plastic. When you can see through the plastic that roots have grown, cut the branch off from the tree side, remove the plastic and plant the branch. Quite large branches can be propagated this way.

Many plants such as ferns, and plants such as dianella and lomandra, can be divided. Just wet the soil around them, dig them up, and divide into as many plants as you wish. Usually the younger clumps near the outside will grow better that the older center clumps.

Native plant seeds are not so easy. It's important that the roots are not disturbed. Some native plant seeds, particullarly those with hard outer casings, need to be scarified, or marked with a file so that moisture can get inside to start the growing process. That's why some native plant seeds take a year or more to germinate in nature, because the hard casing needs to break down. Seeds from legumes such as Sturts Desert Peas need to be soaked in water for a day or two before planting.

Seeds from native flowers and heath plants seem to germinate a lot easier, sometimes they can be just sprinkled on damp sand. Some native seeds are very difficult to germinate. We know a native plant grower in Central Queensland who when collecting seed, looks very carefully for emu drappings. His theory is that native seeds passed through an emu propagate very well, much better than those collected from the plant. But first you must find your emu. :o)

Above left, an acacia tip before trimming, right, after trimming.

For larger seed, plant it four times as deep as the size of the seed, cover with soil or sand, and wet newspaper if it is cold. Remove the newspaper as soon as the seeds start to germinate. If you need to water your cuttings or seedlings, it’s better to dip them in a container of water, that way the seeds or cuttings roots wont get disturbed. Sometimes it’s better to just mist them until they get established.

Snails and slugs can be a problem in some areas. There are many nifty ways to catch them. Put a beer can with snail pellets in it between the seedlings. Make the pull-tab hole a bit bigger so a snail can fit in. Plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes can be turned into snail traps, with a few snail pellets inside to entice them in. Sink a tin can to ground level, and half fill it with beer. Snails love beer, and fall in the tin and get drowned. Grapefruit halves placed upside down in the garden provide a hiding place for slugs where they can be collected during the day.

Just experiment, if you have a failure, so what? Just try again, it wont be long and you will be a native plant propagation expert!

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