Easy Guide To Taking A Cutting

Taking plant cuttings is a great skill to have, it lets you keep your favourite strains of a plant going indefinitely, and it saves you some serious cash compared to buying new stock every time. Taking cuttings has always been thought of as something hard, even scary, but that's a myth. It's relatively easy to take cuttings of most plants once you know what's actually going on beneath the surface. Follow our five easy steps below, and you'll be away laughing.

1 – Time it right
If you're taking cuttings from outdoor plants, the best time to do this is mid-summer through to the end of autumn, when the parent plant is actively growing rather than slowing down for the cooler months. If you're taking cuttings from indoor plants, mornings are your best window, plants are at their most turgid then, meaning they're full of water, which gives your cutting the best possible starting point for rooting. A cutting taken from a stressed, dehydrated, or wilting parent plant is starting the whole process on the back foot, so give your plant a good water the day before if you can.

2 – Cut cleanly
Make sure you use a clean scalpel blade or scissors and take a nice clean snip just below a node. The node is the point on the stem where the leaves originate, and it's also where root growth will actually emerge from, so this isn't just a neat place to cut, it's the whole reason the cutting can root at all. A clean, sharp, angled cut increases the surface area available for rooting and makes it far easier for the cutting to draw up moisture once it's in media. We cannot stress enough how important it is that your blade is clean and sterile, a dirty blade is one of the easiest ways to introduce infection into a fresh, vulnerable cut. Once you've made your cut, remove the lower leaves that would otherwise sit in your media, leaving just a few leaves or leaf tips up top.

3 – Gently transfer your cutting
Pretend you're handling a delicate newborn puppy and be as gentle as you can with your cutting. Speed matters here too, the longer that freshly cut end sits exposed to air, the more it dries out, and the harder it becomes for the cutting to take up water and rooting hormone once it's finally in media. If you're using a rooting solution or cloning gel, tip some into a small measuring cup or similar vessel and dip your cutting into it, this encourages root development at the cut site and gives it a bit of protection while it establishes. Then gently transfer it straight into your prepared medium, we suggest perlite, though a rockwool or coco-based propagation plug works well too depending on what system you're growing in.

4 – Keep it humid & moist
All cuttings need a high humidity environment to take off, and there's a real reason why: a cutting has leaves losing moisture but no roots yet to replace that water, so without high humidity around the leaf, it'll simply dry out before it gets the chance to root. A propagation dome with a heat mat underneath is your best bet for maintaining this, aim for humidity somewhere in the 80–95% range and a gentle root zone warmth around 22–25°C. Keep the dome mostly closed for the first several days, then start cracking the vents slightly as roots begin to develop, this isn't just about easing off the humidity, it starts toughening the cutting up for life without the dome. Misting daily with a sprayer bottle on the widest setting, so it delicately coats the leaves, helps top up humidity between dome checks, just try to keep dome lifts to a minimum since every lift lets that carefully built humidity escape.

5 – Transplant your cutting once it's ready
Don't transplant it straight away the moment you spot some roots. Let the root system develop and grow a little more first, this will help it withstand the shock of being re-potted. When you do transplant, ease off the dome and any misting gradually over a few days beforehand rather than pulling it straight from a high-humidity dome into open air, a sudden shift is a common cause of transplant shock. Once it's re-potted, be attentive over the next week, it'll need a bit of extra care while it settles into its new home, and hold off on jumping straight to full-strength light or feed until you can see it's actively growing again.

See, told you it was easy!