Cuttings...

Hi folks,

i asked a while back for some help about taking cuttings - all greatfully received, thanks to those who...etc etc, but now I have another related question.

I took half a dozen cuttings from most of the established the plants in the garden (the theory being that surely some of them will make it, right?) Now they've been kept over the winter, and have (mostly) stayed healthy looking, and I even had some new growth and shoots on them. All well and good, I thought.

But, we had a bit of a disaster at the weekend, when the wind brought down the "growhouse/cold frame" thingy that they'd been stored in, and contents of the pots were scattered. Now, I've re-potted them, (hopefully I got them in time to save them) but the strange thing was that, despite all the new growth, none of them have developed roots.

Not one, zero zilch, nada etc

Have I done something really obviously wrong? I'd have expected them to be dead if they hadn't rooted by now (about 5 months since I took them). Is this normal?

What's going on?

 

all depends what you took cuttings off, some plant cuttings will root in a matter of weeks in optimal conditions while others will take months...

 

If they are still healthy looking then they are still viable. Before a hardwood cutting can make root, it first has to produce what is called, callous tissue, which forms over the cut end. This forms the area where the roots emerge, or the root plate. So don`t give up with them.:gnthb:

 

Months? really?

I assumed if they hadn't rooted in 2 or 3 weeks they simply die.

Thanks, you live, you learn I suppose.

 

One or two of them are what might be called "hardwood cuttings" - others are not (Akuba, and forest flame being two).

After some searching on the interwebthing last night, it seems I took some of them at the wrong time - or rather it would have been better had i taken them in late summer rather than late autumn, but most of them seem to have survived this far, so i'll let them go a while longer.

I took cuttings from a forsythia, and the darn thing had flowered in the pot - but not a root to be seen.
Weird.

 

Well when taking cuttings you should generally rub out any flower buds that you see s otherwise it will put all it's energy into flowers and not roots:thumb:

 

There are various types of cuttings. I know very little about hard wood cuttings, ie cuttings of woody stems, except that they can take a very long time. Cuttings from soft herbaceous plants (ie flowers) depend on when you took them, and how much light and heat they have had.

I took some Salvia cuttings in Novemeber, and put them in a lightbox where they had plenty of light and heat, and not only had they rooted within 10 days, but they were also flowering a few days later. I cut the flower buds off as fast as I could, but they managed to flower even faster. The plants are now nearly two feet high and are still flowering. But that's under ideal conditions.

If I had put the same cuttings outside in a growhouse in November without heat or much light they might not have even rooted by now. Over the winter it is so cold that they could have gone dormant, and only just be awakening.