Plant Propagation with Rooted Cuttings

Taking cuttings from plants is a good way to multiply your stock. It is a very simple process and I will give you the steps that I take.

Today I took cuttings from dahlias and snapdragons. I have done many dahlias but it is my first time trying snapdragons. There are many other flowers that you can root from cuttings. I decided to try snapdragons since I needed to pinch my plants anyways and figured I might as well try to make a new plant instead of just throwing the pinched part out.

Before you begin you want to make sure you have all of your supplies ready. You need a clean sharp knife or snippers, rooting hormone, a dish of water (if using a powdered rooting hormone), potting soil, a cell tray (something to hold your soil), a tray for under your cell tray without holes to hold water.

First you want to prep your trays. I just use what I have on hand which is 72 cell trays. I fill them with damp potting soil. Then I use my marker to make holes in the tray almost to the bottom. (You don’t want to lose the rooting hormone as you are sticking the cutting in the dirt) I stick my tray into another tray without drainage holes. You want the soil to stay wet until the roots develop so I keep some water in the tray.

Than you can take your cutting. For snapdragons you want to snip off the top right above a set of leaves, leaving behind a couple of sets of true leaves on the original plant. For dahlias, you want to cut the sprout off right at the base.

Next you want to remove any extra leaves. You only want a couple of small leaves left to not stress the cutting too much.

I am using a powdered rooting hormone so I first dip my cuttings into water to make the powder stick better.

Then stick the cutting into the holes you made in the potting soil and gently press the soil around the cutting.

The last step is filling the bottom tray with some water so that the soil stays saturated while the roots develop. And place your cuttings in a warm bright place and wait for the magic to happen! It should take about 7-10 days. You will know that roots have developed if you gently tug on your cutting and it doesn’t move, then it has roots keeping it in place. I have had very good luck in the past using this technique with dahlias. This is my first time trying with snapdragons so I will have to come back and update how they do!