I am beginning a long farewell: by the end of the year, I will be gone from this garden and starting anew in Welsh soil. I am fantasising about having a garden that wraps around a house, but in truth I think I am gaining all of four metres, several of those in shade. Still, it is a blank canvas to paint on, and when I’m not heartbroken about leaving my fruit trees, I stand in my garden and make plans for what should come with me.
I don’t want to leave this garden with great holes where I’ve uprooted established plants, so instead I am taking cuttings. I have already taken hardwood cuttings of all the soft fruits, vines and figs.
But now that spring is in full swing, it is time for softwood cuttings of perennials: herbs such as rosemary, sage, lavender and savory, and deciduous shrubs such as hydrangea, buddleia, kerria or sambucus.
As the name suggests, a softwood cutting is taken from tender new growth, which is ready to take root. If successful, softwood cuttings can be potted up by midsummer and have an extensive enough root system to survive the winter.
Softwood cuttings are collected from the tips of new growth on a parent plant’s non-flowering shoots. Such new growth will lose moisture very quickly, so you need to take care to prevent wilting.
Take a cutting early in the day, when the plants are turgid. If you have lots of cuttings to take, drop them into a clear plastic bag as you go as this will prevent precious moisture loss.
Cuttings can be kept in the fridge for a couple of hours, but ideally you want to go from taking the cutting to potting it up as quickly as possible. The cutting should be about 10cm long, taken from above a bud on the parent plant.
Then, using a sharp, clean knife, trim the cutting just below the node: this is the point just below the leaf joint where there are the most hormones. Remove any lower set of leaves so that you are left with a cutting between 5cm and 10cm long, with one or two sets of leaves. Now, pinch out the growing tip.
Ideally specimens should be potted in seed or cutting compost; if you don’t have this, add at least 25% grit to some peat-free multipurpose. Insert the cutting with the first pair of leaves just above the compost.
Label the pot, water it from above and keep it somewhere warm, but out of direct sunlight. You can cover the pot with a clear plastic bag to keep things moist.
Remove the bag at least twice a week for about 10 minutes to ventilate the new plant. Keep the compost moist until the cuttings are well rooted, usually after four weeks.
