Everything you need to clone your favorite plant!

Have you ever had a plant that performed so well that you wished you could copy it and put exact copies all over your garden?  Well we’re going to show you how! All you need is a seedling tray with a clear plastic dome, some extra-sharp pruning shears, a spray bottle, and some of your favorite potting soil.  A few items that can help increase your chances of success are some rooting solution and a screen to make your own superfine germination potting mix.

If you want to make your own superfine germination mix, just put your potting soil into your screen and pretend your a prospector looking for gold!  This will sift out any big chunks and help your baby cuttings.

There’s black gold in there!!  We add a little compost to our potting mix to give our young plants some nutrition when they’re ready!

Now it’s time to take our cutting.  We want to find a growing tip that hasn’t been cut yet.  We chose one of our favorite thyme plants to demonstrate.  Cut about two to three inches of your plant tip, and try to make sure you have some nodes towards the bottom inch of your cut.

Those leaves just above the shears are the ones to remove after cutting.

Trim any growth off of the bottom nodes.  This is where we want our new roots to grow from.

Ready for dipping!

If you’re using a rooting solution, now is the time to dip your cutting in!  If you grow organically, be advised that most rooting solutions are NOT organic.  There are organic solutions that can be used, but in a pinch, some people think a little saliva can do the trick.  We haven’t tested these, but let us know if this has worked for you on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages!

Place your cutting into your seedling tray and give it a good misting.  This is the tricky part. Ideally we want to mist just after our previous misting dries out, but it doesn’t need to be perfect.  Try not to over mist or your little cutting will lose the nutrients stored in its leaves. We misted occasionally, but left our cuttings over nights and weekends covered in it’s dome, and half of our cuttings made it!  Take plenty of extra cuttings to ensure you get plenty of plants.

Ok, our spray bottle was broken when we took this, but you get the idea.

Cover your cuttings after every misting.

A heating pad underneath will help any young plants stay nice and warm during the cooler months.

Keep an eye on your cuttings, especially the bottom of your plug tray.  After about a week, start lightly tugging on the stem.  If you feel pressure, try gently removing the plug from the plug tray.  If it has a nice root system, that means it’s thyme (sorry, I couldn’t resist) to transplant!  Here is what another thyme cutting we took looks like after two weeks!  We can’t wait to give one of our favorite herb plants new life!

Another thyme cutting we took 2 weeks ago

Healthy roots after 2 weeks!

How did your cuttings do this year?  What are your favorite crops to take cuttings of?  Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!