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How to Take Spring Basal Cuttings – Verbena and Cosmos
Spring is a fantastic time of year to take cuttings. Plants are amazing at the best of times, with cells able to change their function depending what’s needed. At this warm time of year when there’s prolific growth, the desperation to make stem or leaf or flower is high and, if you’re taking cuttings, those living pieces of plant then change tactic, clinging onto life by having their cells change into root growing tissues instead.
Some of the best cuttings you can take are basal ones. This is simply a complicated way of saying that cuttings are taken from the base of the plant instead of snipped from further up the growing shoots. When growth first bursts from the soil it has a lot of vigour to get the plant going in the short season. As such, cuttings from here can often take more quickly.
I have a couple of lovely plants that were newly acquired last year; chocolate cosmos and verbena ‘Bampton’. I’m keen to propagate lots more, especially as the cosmos, in particular, is a short-lived perennial that needs careful overwintering. I have two plants which were potted up and kept in the greenhouse, and in the past few weeks of warm they’ve put up numerous shoots; ideal for cuttings. Meanwhile, Bampton was left in the ground overwinter and I now want to make lots of lovely new plants to enjoy.
Prolific growth on verbena ‘Bampton’ makes it the ideal time to take cuttings.
The process is easy;
- Use a sharp knife or pair of secateurs to take a cutting near the base of the plant (here, a chocolate cosmos). Not are these shoots ideal for propagation, but new growth will appear from the stems left behind creating a bushier plant.
- Your resulting cutting will have numerous leaves and growing tips on. These will continue perspiring, so it’s best to remove as many as possible to prevent the shoot dehydrating.
- Remove these leaves and any flowers or excess growing shoots so the cutting puts its efforts into producing roots.
- Use a dibber and pot these cuttings around the edge of a pot, using rooting powder if you have any. Then all you need to do is keep the cuttings moist and look for signs of rooting. This is often indicated by new leaf growth. I used to put my cuttings in plastic bags, but I found mould spread too quickly. Now, I just stand the cutting pots in water so the soil is constantly moist.
And it really is that easy. Take as many cuttings as you want, keep the compost wet to encourage root growth and in a few months time you’ll have a plethora of new plants to use yourself or gift to others! Let me know how your cuttings go in the comments!
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