Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Hardwood Cuttings: Cheap, Simple & Often Overlooked

Transcript

Hardwood Cuttings: Cheap, Simple & Often Overlooked · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything
• 0:04
  soilless cultivation. I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:07
  Russell Sharp, and in the first few episodes of this podcast at the start of
• 0:11
  the year, we talked about cuttings and how to take cuttings and different werewolves,
• 0:17
  how, why, where, and when.
• 0:18
  And I didn't mention hardwood cuttings, which are not used very often in hydroponics,
• 0:25
  but they are an often neglected form of propagation.
• 0:29
  And we've talked about a few neglected techniques in horticulture recently
• 0:32
  so I thought I'd talk about hardwood cuttings and when you might want to
• 0:35
  use them because I've seen some people doing what
• 0:38
  we call softwood cuttings or normal cuttings for crops
• 0:41
  in hydroponics that should really have been hardwood cuttings recently and
• 0:45
  as we're getting into autumn and winter this is a good time to talk
• 0:48
  about hardwood cuttings so have you
• 0:50
  ever heard of them have you ever used them the use of hardwood cuttings is
• 0:53
  a good way of propagating deciduous woody perennials
• 0:56
  so plants that live zellies in the winter that have
• 0:59
  got woody stems and live the number of
• 1:02
  years so in the late autumn as we're getting into now once
• 1:05
  it's past halloween and winter it's an especially
• 1:08
  good method for use on deciduous trees and shrubs now for hardwood cuttings
• 1:13
  there is far less of a requirement for control over the propagation environment
• 1:17
  compared to softwood cuttings this is its big advantage you don't need to have
• 1:23
  a protected growing environment and control the temperature and the humidity as much.
• 1:28
  So hardwood cuttings can be taken in the absence of protected environments and
• 1:32
  placed directly into the growing media.
• 1:34
  As a result, hardwood cuttings are cheaper, easier and more convenient to produce
• 1:39
  than softwood cuttings and can have a much higher success rate.
• 1:41
  They do take longer though to root because they are essentially a dormant stem.
• 1:46
  They can be formed from material generated from hard winter pruning or deciduous woody perennials.
• 1:52
  So if you've pruned a tree, say maybe.
• 1:56
  You're interested in like a willow tree then you could just take them
• 1:59
  and take the pruning and use that now for
• 2:02
  some there might be a specific time of year that's best so you might want to
• 2:05
  do some research so the pruning
• 2:08
  pruning often the time you prune the plant might
• 2:12
  be the more critical than the best for cuttings
• 2:15
  so this can be the case for let
• 2:18
  me have a look currants so anything
• 2:22
  in the ribes genus grapes mulberries honeysuckles
• 2:26
  chinese virginia creeper and snowberry they
• 2:29
  all match the time you prune them is the time that is
• 2:32
  actually good for taking cuttings because of the
• 2:35
  need for less control over the ingrown environment little scientific optimization
• 2:39
  has been undertaken on hardwood cutting propagation methods what is known is
• 2:44
  that only certain trees and shrubs are conducive to hardwood cuttings so always
• 2:49
  research the propagation method that can be used for the certain plant species
• 2:53
  you're trying to propagate.
• 2:55
  Harvill cuttings can also benefit from a small amount of basal heat.
• 2:59
  So normally you keep them in a cold shed or greenhouse and then just put some
• 3:04
  basal heat, so bottom heat, to keep the roots nice and warm,
• 3:07
  get the cells dividing, get the callus formation forming before they form roots.
• 3:11
  The best way to achieve this at home is to
• 3:14
  place the cuttings in sand in a heated propagator
• 3:17
  on the lowest heating setting and then place the
• 3:20
  propagator in an unheated greenhouse shed or garage now
• 3:24
  you can do hardware cuttings in
• 3:27
  hydroponics as well so you could do hydroponics and
• 3:30
  you can use rooting hormone you can use IBA indole butric
• 3:34
  acid I think they're slightly higher concentrations than for softball cutting
• 3:40
  so 0.3 to 0.8 percent auxin now if you're buying a off the shelf rooting hormone
• 3:46
  then you might not be able to get those concentrations in there but if you bought
• 3:49
  an oxygen concentrate like utremus oxygen concentrate you could potentially go higher.
• 3:54
  So that's an option you could use dwc or
• 3:57
  probably aeroponics potentially to get some to
• 4:01
  get it but you would have to be have the hydroponic system
• 4:04
  running for a long time too and that is
• 4:07
  a disadvantage for rooting hardball cuttings
• 4:10
  you don't want to be running a hydroponic system for a long time so you might want to do
• 4:13
  some sort of semi-hydroponics or just grow in sand
• 4:16
  and then transfer them from the sand into your
• 4:20
  grow media and your hydroponic system thereafter you don't
• 4:23
  want to be putting them into soil and then trying to transfer a cutting from
• 4:26
  soil into hydroponics world of pain there because
• 4:29
  you get all the bugs and the bacteria and the pests and the disease and the
• 4:32
  animals from the soil and it mucks up
• 4:35
  your hydroponic system so grow in some nice
• 4:38
  clean horticultural sand if you can
• 4:41
  or try it in perlite or vermiculite as well
• 4:44
  just making sure they're nice and cool don't heat your hardware
• 4:47
  cuttings too much after rooting rooting can take between
• 4:50
  two and maybe two weeks to
• 4:53
  12 plus weeks really depending on the species you could.
• 4:57
  Gradually increase the ec and then transfer them to a
• 5:00
  more conducive growing environment where they should bud
• 5:03
  and start growing away so that's important
• 5:06
  watch out for pythium you know slimy brown roots
• 5:09
  and prevent that by keeping them nice and cool and
• 5:12
  not too much water so very much a
• 5:15
  an option there for growing various plants what else we took any other plants
• 5:20
  that we haven't mentioned willow poplar forsythia dogwood hydrangea viburnum
• 5:27
  so maybe if you were growing tea that is a.
• 5:33
  A plant that is very good to grow with hardwood cuttings is it a deciduous though
• 5:38
  let me just check if camellia that's not deciduous is it no i'm talking rubbish
• 5:43
  what sort of crops mulberry I agree.
• 5:46
  There's some hydroponic willow being grown. Not aware of anyone using Forsythia.
• 5:52
  Dogwoods can sell for a lot of money, ornamental dogwoods. Hydrangeas,
• 5:57
  some rare species of hydrangeas. Mulberry.
• 6:00
  Mulberries are a great crop, which is lovely fruit, but the fruit don't transport well.
• 6:05
  So I always think it'd be a good one for local restaurants to grow mulberry
• 6:10
  because you can't transport it.
• 6:13
  So you can make an advantage of that. you can only
• 6:16
  buy this here sort of thing so yeah maybe one
• 6:18
  for the mulberry growers hydroponics if you
• 6:21
  have done hardwood cuttings and got any other tips or some
• 6:25
  species that you found are surprisingly good for hardwood
• 6:28
  cuttings let me know if you found this podcast useful please leave
• 6:31
  us an apple podcast review if you listen on apple and if
• 6:34
  you listen on any other podcast provider don't bother with a review
• 6:37
  because it's useless it doesn't help the podcast in any way but if you do want
• 6:41
  to help the podcast then please check out utreema.co.uk that's the website for
• 6:45
  my company and we sell all sorts of crazy and interesting fertilizers biostimulants
• 6:50
  and biopesticides and if you can't spell utreema it's latin for wasabi and i'll
• 6:55
  see you again tomorrow on hydroponics daily thank you for listening.