Can I Get Cuttings from Hebes

PinkLady

Hello
Got some hebes in my garden- some of which are flowering and I was wondering if I could get successful cuttings from them>

If so when is best and do I stick them in water or in soil? (can you tell I'm a professional gardener - NOT!)

thanks!

Jayar

Yes, sure you can take cuttings, but perhaps this is not the best time of year to do it as they are in flower just now. Best to wait until they have finished. If you do decide to do it now, be sure to take non-flowering stems.
What you are looking to take is known as a heel cutting. By that I mean, if you rip a stem away from the main stem, it will come away with a "heel" of wood attached. Then take off the bottom few leaves and if the heel is longer than about an inch, trim that as well. Now you dip it in water and dip it into rooting hormone powder and shake off the excess. Dib them in around the edge of a pot and water. Cover with a clear plastic bag and wait for them to root - should take about 3-4 weeks.
Good luck - I love my hebes, they are covered in flowers and butterflies at the moment.

stmidwife

Hi all,

I'm quite new to all this gardening lark but wanted to make the most of the lovely plants that I have got and if possible use them to fill my rather large and bare back garden. My question is can I take cuttings from the spotted laurel and a hebe (silver dollar, i think) and if I can - HOW? and when?

Thanks in advance.

Sam
x

arkonite_babe

We have an older thread on this, so I've added your query to it

stmidwife

arkonite_babe wrote: »

We have an older thread on this, so I've added your query to it

Thank you, got a bit worried when I saw it had been moved - thought I had done something wrong.

Davesnave

Jayar's advice above is sound and what most books say, but personally, I've never found the plastic bag method a huge success, nor the hormone powder, though I use hormone gel. For a start, it often gets too hot & humid in a small poly bag, unless you're around to keep an eye on it all the time, and the bag can foul the leaves, leading to rot.

I'm not being awkward, just pointing out that if new gardeners follow that method and it doesn't work, they may feel they've failed and blame themselves. To construct a heated sand bed costs time & money but, having used one over many years, I can say that it is hundreds of percent more successful than the poly bag method and roots things impossible to do in a poly bag. Even that needs careful handling though, as the thermostat can't react quickly enough to sudden sunshine/temperature changes inside the greenhouse, so shading & ventilation still need control.

However, there is another way....Out in my garden, in a shadyish area, I have a cold frame in which the soil has been altered with lots of grit, sand & old compost. In there, I stick cuttings of shrubs and, apart from altering the ventilation now & again, watering in summer and a bit of weeding, they just sit there until they either root or die. Mostly they root, sometimes better than in the sand bed, though even if they die, it's usually at a more leisurely pace!

There are of course 'best' times to take different cuttings, but you can't always time opportunities in the real world. I've found that the cold frame will often root things started at the 'wrong' time, mainly because it takes longer and is more forgiving.

To go back to the original questions, hebes and laurel will do fine in a cold frame, both being quite easy subjects. I'd split the cuttings between warm & cool methods & see what happens. As the late Geoff Hamilton used to demonstrate, you can make a cheap cold frame out of odds & ends - it doesn't have to be posh. Good luck anyway.

craftyanny

Hi folks
Totally new to the boards but thought I'd let you know what happened to my hebe last year.
Don't know how I managed it but some of the lower 'branches' beacame covered over with soil. Anyway I noticed that these little bits were growing away nicely as they were still attached to the mother plant. Decided to cut one away and hey presto, a root system all of it's own. Needless to say I got to seperating the rest of them and got them potted up. Haven't did anything to them since and they look as if they'll be fine to plant out this year.
Maybe worth a try as well as your cuttings

Davesnave

Don't know how I managed it but some of the lower 'branches' beacame covered over with soil. Anyway I noticed that these little bits were growing away nicely as they were still attached to the mother plant. Decided to cut one away and hey presto, a root system all of it's own

.

It's called 'French Layering,' and it is about the only way everyday gardeners can propagate awkward shrubs like cotinus (smoke bush.) See this RHS article:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0602/layering.asp