Growing Bonsai from Cuttings

Most gardening enthusiasts will admit that taking cuttings is among the most rewarding and enjoyable activities. In addition to the personal satisfaction, growing a new plant from the cuttings of a mature one also offers added advantages. It can be compared to obtaining something for free. While it is easier to grow plants from cuttings in some cases, in others you will never be able to grow a new plant from cuttings, irrespective of how much you may try. So how do you know which plant is ideal for propagating from cuttings? Certainly, experimentation teaches this.

A number of cuttings are usually taken at the beginning of the growing season, while there are other plants whose cuttings should be ideally taken either during the end of summer or in the beginning of autumn. Hence, before you undertake such cuttings, it is imperative to know the particular treatment required by a particular variety of plant. In fact, learning from others' experiences will help you to save lot of time and endeavour.

Developing new bonsai trees from cuttings has several benefits. In addition to the bonus, which means it is absolutely free, you also have the pleasure of watching your bonsai tree growing from scratch. In fact, in Japan, several well-known and prominent bonsai masterpieces have been created in this manner. Therefore, there is no reason why even you will not be able to create a masterpiece bonsai all by yourself employing this technique. Unlike in the case of creating a bonsai from seed, developing bonsai trees from cuttings should not take very long. It is a relatively much smaller process. You can develop very attractive bonsai trees in just three to four years.

It has been seen that some plant species propagate much effortlessly compared to others grown from cuttings. For instance, viburnum and forsythia are two good examples of plants that grow very easily from cuttings. Just push a small twig or branch of these plants into the ground and they will grow roots within a few weeks. However, there are specific processes that will aid in offering perfect conditions to the cuttings to develop roots. To begin with, you need to make sure that the leaves of these branches or twigs do not give up excessive moisture. To ensure this, you should keep the cutting in a closed setting like inside a clean plastic bag or any standard propagating frame. In fact, professional bonsai tree growers will do a lot of things to ensure that they provide these ideal conditions to their plants.

In fact, professional bonsai growers usually make use of propagating benches having refined automatic misting equipment and polythene tunnels. However, this is beyond the reach for most amateur growers. Moreover, they do not even need these sophisticated items. They only require a flowerpot or a plastic seed tray, some peat and sharp sand, in addition to a clean and transparent plastic bag. Apart from these, using a heated propagator having soil warming cables that help to provide heat from the bottom can also be of great help in accelerating the rooting process. However, it is still possible to accomplish a reasonably high rate of success even without using such sophisticated equipment. It is worth mentioning here that all plants, however, do not prefer bottom heat. Precisely speaking, conifer cuttings can be propagated best without using bottom heat because this may dehydrate the cuttings very fast.

Before you undertake propagating bonsai trees by the cutting technique, you ought to know that there are two main types of cuttings - softwood cutting and hardwood cutting. Usually, a softwood cutting is made in the beginning or middle of summer making use of the shoots that have grown earlier during the spring. The best time to take these cutting is when the stem is just beginning to become woody. On the other hand, a hardwood cutting is generally taking during the end of summer or the beginning of autumn, when the shoots have already become hard and mature.

You may take a softwood cutting along with or with no "heel". When we refer to a heel cutting we actually mention about a cutting that has been ripped from the stem of a plant still possessing a small portion of the bark from the stem. On the other hand, a "nodal" cutting is a cutting that has been cut off from just beneath a leaf joint. A "nodal" cutting can be made using a sharp edged pair of scissors or even a scalpel blade.

Most softwood cuttings of all deciduous shrubs and trees, for instance the trident maple, Japanese maple, elm, pomegranate, willow and cotoneaster, easily take root. However, you need to bear in mind that every type of plant does not develop roots easily from softwood cuttings. In fact, you will come to learn about the particular plants that can be propagated well from soft cuttings only by means of experimentations.

A softwood cutting is considered to be ideal when it is about anything between 3 inches and 4 inches (7cm and 10 cm) in length and does not have more that four or two pairs of leaves. Soon after taking the softwood cutting, you should pinch out the soft growing tip which would have eventually formed into leaves, because usually it becomes drooping and dies. Moreover, when you pinch out the growing tip of the cutting, it also promotes the growth of a bushy plant after the cutting takes roots. You may take a softwood cutting either with or with no heel. When the cuttings have already taken, they will require lots of light with a view to encourage them to produce new leaves and roots. However, it is important to shelter these cuttings from direct sunlight because too much heat and light may result in the wilting and scorching of its leaves. When you find that a softwood cutting has started growing roots (also referred to as "struck"), you will find new leaves emerging from the leaf joints of the cutting. So how will you know if a cutting has really "struck"? It is a very simple. Just tug the cutting gently and you will soon come to know if the roots of the bonsai have formed. In case the cutting is dislodged from the medium easily owing to the gentle tug, it is possible that the cutting has not yet taken roots. On the other hand, if the cutting remains firm into the medium, it is an indication of the fact that it has formed roots.

Using a pure sphagnum moss peat or an equivalent mixture of sharp sand and moss peat may be the perfect medium for proper rooting cuttings. It is best to place softwood cuttings in deep seed tray or five-inch (12.5 cm) flowerpot. On the other hand, it is best to grow hardwood cuttings in deep pots. However, it would be ideal to place them in the open soil.

After the cutting has taken root properly, you can take out a "new bonsai" and pot it into separate three-inch deep (about 7.5 cm) flowerpots and continue to grow them there. Before you think of initiating wiring or training a new bonsai, it should be allowed to grow robustly for a complete year. The training of new bonsai trees is very similar to what you would actually do to a plant acquired from a nursery or garden center. In fact, nearly all plants acquired from nurseries have been grown in the same manner. In this case, the sole difference is that this bonsai has been grown by you.

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