Gadenin日本語Get the appBe honest about the odds
Bay is one of the hardest common herbs to propagate at home. Semi-ripe cuttings taken in late summer take three to six months to root, and a good strike rate for an amateur without bottom heat is perhaps three or four out of ten. A rooted cutting then needs two to three years of growing on before it is a plant you would put in a pot by the door, and four or five before you can clip it into any real shape.
Set against that, a young nursery bay of a foot or so (30 cm) costs very little and saves you three years. For most people the sensible route is to buy one plant and then, if you want more, take cuttings from it at leisure with nothing riding on the outcome.
The case for doing it yourself is when you want several plants for a hedge or a pair of matched standards, or when you have a specimen whose habit you like. Then a tray of twenty cuttings that yields seven usable plants is a good deal, and the slowness costs you nothing but patience.
Taking semi-ripe cuttings
The material matters more than the technique. You want this year's growth that has firmed up but is not yet fully woody, taken in late summer: the shoot should bend and spring back rather than snap or flop. Soft spring growth rots before it roots, and fully hard old wood will not root at all.
- Take shoots four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) long Cut in the early morning while the shoots are full of water, from the outside of a healthy plant. Put them straight into a plastic bag so they do not wilt on the way to the potting bench.
- Trim to a node and strip the lower leaves Cut cleanly just below a leaf joint and remove all leaves from the bottom half. Leave two or three leaves at the top and cut each of those in half across to reduce water loss.
- Wound the base Scrape a thin sliver of bark off one side of the bottom inch (2 cm) with a knife. Bay roots noticeably better from a wounded base, and rooting hormone on the wound helps further.
- Use a gritty, open mix Half perlite or sharp sand to half compost. A rich water-retentive mix rots the base long before roots appear over a three-to-six-month wait.
- Keep warm, bright and humid, out of direct sun A propagator with gentle bottom heat around 65F (18C) roughly doubles the strike rate. Without one, a covered tray in a sheltered bright spot works, just more slowly.
- Do not check them Tugging a cutting to see if it has rooted breaks the fragile new roots. Leave them until spring and judge by new top growth instead.
Expect nothing until the following spring. Cuttings that are still green and firm in late winter are working; ones that have gone brown and limp will not recover and can be removed so they do not rot the rest of the tray.
Layering: the method with the best odds
If your plant is in open ground and has any low branches, layering beats cuttings by a wide margin. The shoot stays attached to the parent and is fed by it the whole time it roots, so there is no wilting and no rotting.
Choose a flexible low branch, bend it down to the soil, wound the underside where it touches, and pin it with a wire staple or a stone with a couple of inches (5 cm) of soil over it. Keep the tip pointing up, tied to a short cane if necessary. Do it in spring and leave it until the following spring, then check for roots at the buried point. When there is a decent root system, sever it from the parent, leave it in place another month or two, then lift and pot it up.
The odds here are far better than cuttings, often seven or eight out of ten, and the failure costs you nothing but a branch you can then cut off anyway.
| Method | Time to a usable plant | Rough success rate |
|---|---|---|
| Semi-ripe cuttings | Three to four years | Three or four in ten without heat |
| Cuttings with bottom heat | Three years | Six or seven in ten |
| Layering a low branch | Two to three years | Seven or eight in ten |
| Seed | Five years or more | Poor and very slow to germinate |
| Bought young plant | Ready to shape in one to two years | Certain |
Seed is for the patient only
Bay seed germinates badly and slowly. The seed is short-lived, so anything that has sat in a packet for a season is usually dead, and even fresh seed can take three to six months to come up unevenly. Soaking the seed in water for a day or two and removing the fleshy coat helps a little, as does steady warmth around 68F (20C) and compost that is kept just moist and never wet.
Even when it works, you then have the slowest possible start: a seedling that may be four inches (10 cm) tall after its first full year. Unless you specifically want to grow bay from seed for its own sake, layering or a bought plant reaches the same place years earlier.
Settling a young plant in
However you got it, a young bay wants slightly different treatment from an established one for its first two years. Its root system is small relative to its leaf area, so it dries out faster and is much less cold hardy than a mature plant, but it also resents sitting wet just as much.
Pot it into soil-based compost with a third grit, into a pot only one size larger than the one it came in. Over-potting a small bay surrounds a tiny root ball with a large volume of wet compost that never dries, and that is the classic way to lose a young plant. Give it shelter from cold wind, full sun or light shade, and water thoroughly whenever the top inch (2 cm) is dry rather than on a schedule.
Do not shape it in the first year. Let it grow freely and build a framework, and start clipping in its second summer when there is enough structure to cut into. Removing the growing tip too early gives you a stunted plant that takes another two seasons to recover.
Write down the date you took the cuttings or layered the branch, the date you potted the young plant up, and the pot size. With something this slow, those dates are the only way to know whether a plant is behind or exactly on schedule, and they turn a vague sense that nothing is happening into a clear picture of steady progress.