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Tired of planting seeds? Why not try cloning your favorite plants instead?
Believe it or not, learning how to clone plants is way easier than it sounds.
After reading these three easy steps, you’ll be ready to start cloning your plants for the home and garden with confidence and ease.
Or, if you’d prefer, you could learn about growing seeds in sponges.
1. Take a Fresh Cutting
The first step to cloning a plant is taking a healthy cutting. To do so, start by selecting a stem that shows new growth (from the current season) and includes approximately two to three leaves and/or branches. Depending on the species you’re dealing with, you may even want to take cuttings with four or five leaves.
Next, take the actual cutting by snipping it from the parent plant. Make the cut directly above the new growth if possible. Cutting in this particular place tends to promotes the heaviest regrowth.
2. Carefully Trim the Cutting
Once you’ve successfully removed a fresh cutting from it’s parent plant, the next step is to cut away the excess plant matter. This step helps the plant to save it’s energy and redirect it’s growth to developing a new root system rather than to keep creating new top-side growth.
Cut around 50-percent of the leave’s surface (in other words, cut the leaves in half) as well as snipping off the tail end of the cutting (where you want the new roots to grow) at a proper 45-degree angle.
If you so choose to do so, at this point, you can add a rooting hormone of your choice. We haven’t used rooting hormone in years, rather we like to use plain old cinnamon for this purpose.
3. Re-plant the Clone
After your cutting is properly trimmed up and ready for replanting, simply stick it in a prepared container or grow plug. Or, you may also opt for soaking the clones in a glass of water until the roots are visible before re-planting. The choice is yours.
When you have replanted the clone, make sure it gets plenty of light and plenty of water. Clones require quite a bit of moisture while their changing gears from veg-growth to root-growth.
We like to keep our clones (whether cloning plants or trees) in various sized glasses of water for three to five weeks, under full-sun or constant lighting, before re-planting.
To replant, simply take your clone and place it in a container or in the ground, with the proper environment for whatever type of plant you are dealing with.
Make sure the growing medium is extra-moist and well draining, and water your new plant a bit each day until it grows strong.
A Final Word About Cloning Plants
Cloning plants is an easy and affordable (it’s basically free!) method of propagating all of your favorite plants. The best part is that, from garden herbs to fruit trees, nearly anything that grows can be cloned.
The entire act of cloning plants takes mere minutes. Waiting for the clones’ new roots to develop is the hardest part.
You can expect a time period of around four to six weeks from the time you take your cuttings to the time you can plant your healthy new clones in containers or the garden.
Do you have a question or hack you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!
Good luck with cloning your favorite plants!
Related Video:
Suggested Reading: HOW TO PRUNE FRUIT TREES
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