Propagation/cuttings

zarazara

A friend has said that if you layer honeysuckle it will root and you get free plant. :j This is my type of gardening. What we did before the advent of the garden centre. Any hints and tips please about this cost-free gardening.

Mortal

I've not tried to layer one, but I have success with cuttings taken mid summer, and popped into the bottom of the greenhouse or a cold frame in sandy compost until spring.

Having said that, I can't see why it wouldn't work. get a nice length of plant that has no flower buds, and lay it on the ground. Where it touches the ground, make a little cut into it at a leaf joint.
Make a little channel into which the shoot will lay, and press it into the soil (mixed with a little compost). Fold a little twig or wire into a v and use it to hold it down, and cover with more compost.
water it over the summer, and come autumn, you should be able to dig up and detatch it from the parent.

Jnelhams

Try and locate a copy of "Plants for Free" by Keith Mossman, sadly Mr Mossman died a few years ago, and Penguin have never republished this excellent book on propagation. Your local library may still have it.

What it lacks in pictures, he makes up for in a witty and clear simple instructions to grow your own plants for free.

Davesnave

I agree with the above, except that I'd use a decent sized stone to stop the shoot pulling out of the ground in the wind.

The problem with creating plants for free is that it takes a bit of forward planning to do it well, but even doing it badly gets results.

If you have a reasonably bright-but-not-sunny-until-late-afternoon sort of place in your garden, you might place a wooden-sided cold frame there of the kind one makes from scraps, with an old double glazing unit for a top. Inside that, improve the soil with lots of grit and sand, and then you are ready to take cuttings of plants which have woody(ish) stems.

Most woody plants are best raised from cuttings taken in autumn, which is where the forward planning comes in, because that's just the time when most people tire of their gardens and seek refuge indoors. Partially mature bare twigs from shrubs don't look terribly exciting, but putting them into little sand-lined slits usually gets results by the following spring/summer. For most of that time they won't need watering either, and all the frame needs anyway is the occasional can-full to keep the soil moist and a bit of ventilation as the temperatures creep up.

Sometimes, easy plants, like fuchsias, rosemary or weigela, taken in late spring will root, but there are obvious problem plants too, like Witch Hazel. The price of those in the garden centre gives a pretty good clue!

The question is whether you have a large enough garden to make the cold frame a worthwhile thing. If not, reasonable results can still be had by improving a small area of soil in a shadyish place. Last year, I had no frame, but I still took copies of hebe and euonymous from the garden at my rental by placing cuttings in light soil at the base of a north-facing wall.

In gardening, you can take it with you!! :rotfl:

peter_the_piper

Roses are a good example of free plants, about 12" hardwood cuttings inserted in the soil (as Davesnave)in autumn, usually rooted by the spring. Lots of shrubs can be propogated this way, always worth an experiment. I put 20 contorted willow stems in from neighbours tree which fell over our fence, should pot them up anytime now.

Sally_A

Honeysuckle is not the quickest plant to root by layering, but it is fairly easy.

To make it simpler, take a healthy shoot, where you can see an active leaf joint, pin it down into a pot of compost using a piece of wire, or something that will hold it in place. This makes it easier to see if it is rooting, and when you are happy that it is, you just cut the umbilical cord, so to speak, and you have it already potted up.

Alternatively, you may find that some have self rooted where a stem has naturally decided to grow along the ground rather than up a trellis. Best time to have a look is late Autumn before the frosts, that way you can at least pot it up and give it a bit of shelter and pampering for it's first winter until entirely hardy.