Preparing stock plants for taking cuttings

January 14th, 2010 by Dane

What is a stock plant?

Stock plants are those plants that you have chosen to be the source of your cuttings. They can be planted in blocks, rows, or simply be planted in your landscape.

Why is it important to prepare them for taking cuttings?

Preparing the stock plant is done for many reasons, but three of the most important are:

To keep the plant in the juvenile stage
To be sure the cutting has reserves of nutrient
To be sure the plant is healthy and disease free

Lets learn why both are important.

Keeping the stock plant in the juvenile stage

Research has determined that many cuttings root easier if the stock plant is still in its juvenile stage of growing. Plants, like humans, go through stages of growth, and once the plant reaches maturity, the cuttings you take do not root as easily. Keeping the stock plant in the juvenile stage ensures your cuttings will root easier.

There are a few ways to keep the stock plant in the juvenile stage, but the simplest way is to simply prune them hard. Pruning them hard forces them to continually produce new, young shoots, exactly what you want to start with.

Ensuring the stock plant has enough nutrients

First, if you haven’t read my article on why it is important for the cutting to have nutrient reserves, please do.

To make sure your stock plants have reserves of nutrient, all you need to do is fertilize them. Of course, you need to fertilize them in advance so the plant has a chance to actually absorb the nutrients. You can use either a foliar feed like Miracle-Gro® or use a slow release fertilizer like Osmocote®. A good practice is to keep your plant on a regular feeding schedule so they are healthy and have the required nutrients in reserve for the cuttings.

Having healthy and disease free plants

Proper feeding of your stock plants will help keep them healthy and ward off diseases and other pests. Along with proper feeding comes proper watering. Ensuring your stock plants are properly fed and watered will help reduce stresses associated with drought, insects, or diseases. A healthy plant is more likely to survive these attack and recover quicker too.

If you notice a stock plant struggling, investigate and correct the problem immediately. Never take a cutting from any plant that is infested with insects or displays signs of disease. Doing so will unduly stress the stock plant even more than it already is. Rooting a cutting that is already infected with a disease is never a good idea. The cutting needs to put all its energy into creating roots, not fighting a disease.

Rooting cuttings that are infected with diseases has the potential of spreading the disease to other cuttings. You also have the potential of inadvertently selling an infected plant and spreading the disease even more.

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