Marguerite Daisy Cuttings: How to Root Shoots and Replace the Woody Parent

Why cuttings, and not keeping the old plant

A marguerite that has been through one winter comes back as a different plant. The stem bases have hardened into brittle gray wood, the leaves are held only at the outer few inches of each stem, and the interior of the plant is a bare framework. It flowers, but sparsely and on long stems, and the tight flower-covered dome of the first season never comes back. The instinct is to cut it hard to force new growth from the base, and that is exactly what you must not do, because marguerite will not reliably break from leafless old wood. A plant cut back into bare wood usually sits there for a month and then dies.

This is why cuttings are not an optional extra with this plant but the normal way of keeping it. A rooted cutting flowers earlier, harder and in far better shape than its own parent's second season, and it costs nothing but a pot of gritty potting mix and twenty minutes. Marguerite roots readily, with success rates well over three quarters from decent material, and a single plant gives you as many replacements as you have room for.

It also solves the hardiness problem. In any garden that gets a real freeze the parent plant is dead by spring anyway, and a tray of rooted cuttings on a cool bright windowsill is far easier to keep alive over winter than a large plant in a pot.

Do not bother saving seed. Marguerite sets seed readily but seedlings vary widely in habit, flower size and color, and most are noticeably poorer than the plant they came from. If you like a particular plant, the only way to keep it is a cutting.

When to take them, and choosing the material

There are two good windows. Late summer is the main one: take cuttings while it is still warm enough for them to root quickly, and you have young plants established well before cold weather. The other is early spring, from the fresh soft growth an overwintered plant pushes as the light returns, which gives plants that flower the same season. Midsummer cuttings taken in real heat root poorly and wilt in the covered pot before they can take.

Choose non-flowering shoot tips. A shoot with a bud on it is putting its energy into that bud rather than into producing roots, and it will usually rot before it roots. If everything on the plant is flowering, take a shoot anyway and cut the bud off, but expect it to be slower. The ideal material is a firm but still flexible tip, about three to four inches (8 to 10 cm) long, with short spaces between the leaves.

Take the cuttings early in the morning when the plant is fully turgid, put them straight into a plastic bag out of the sun, and prepare them within the hour. Material that has wilted before it goes into the pot roots badly no matter how well you handle it afterwards.

Rooting them, step by step

The whole process needs a pot, a gritty mix and a clear bag. Roots normally form in two to three weeks in warm conditions, and you should expect most of a batch to take.

1. Mix a gritty rooting medium Roughly half all-purpose potting mix and half perlite, coarse sand or vermiculite by volume. Water should run straight through it. Ordinary potting mix on its own holds too much water and rots the cut ends before they root.
2. Cut cleanly just below a node Trim each shoot to three to four inches (8 to 10 cm), cutting immediately below the point where a leaf joins the stem. Roots form most readily at that node, so a long bare stem below the lowest node is wasted and will simply rot.
3. Strip the lower leaves and remove any buds Take all the leaves off the bottom half of the cutting, leaving three or four at the top, and pinch out any flower bud. Marguerite foliage is finely divided and holds water in a humid pot, so err on the side of removing more.
4. Dip in rooting hormone if you have it Dip the cut end in hormone rooting powder or gel and tap off the surplus. Marguerite roots without it, but hormone gives a faster and more even batch, which matters if you are rooting a dozen at once.
5. Insert around the rim of the pot Make holes with a pencil first rather than pushing the stems in. Set them about an inch (2.5 cm) deep around the edge of a five inch (13 cm) pot, five or six to a pot, spaced so no leaves touch each other.
6. Water once, then cover with ventilation Water thoroughly to settle the mix and let it drain completely. Cover with a clear bag held clear of the leaves on canes, or a propagator lid with the vent open. The cover must not touch the foliage and must not be sealed.
7. Keep warm, bright and out of direct sun Aim for 65 to 70F (18 to 21C) in bright indirect light. Direct sun on a covered pot cooks the cuttings within an hour. Open the cover briefly each day to let condensation off and check nothing has gone soft.
8. Test for roots at two weeks Tug very gently; resistance means roots. New growth at the tip is the other reliable sign. Remove the cover over three or four days rather than all at once, then pot each rooted cutting into its own three or four inch (8 to 10 cm) pot of free-draining compost.

Getting young plants through the winter

Rooted cuttings need somewhere bright, frost-free and airy: a cool windowsill, an unheated porch, a frost-free greenhouse or a cold frame in a mild area. Around 40 to 50F (5 to 10C) is right. A warm living room is the wrong answer, because warmth combined with low winter light produces long pale weak growth that collapses at the first setback and attracts whitefly within weeks.

Water very sparingly through the darkest months, letting the surface dry properly between waterings, and do not feed at all until growth restarts. More overwintered marguerite cuttings are killed by watering than by cold. Check them over every week or two, pick off yellowing leaves, and remove any cutting that goes soft at the base immediately along with its compost, because rot moves through a crowded tray fast.

As the light returns in late winter, growth restarts. Pinch out the tips to force branching, pot up into slightly bigger pots if roots are showing at the drainage holes, and start hardening off once the frosts are done. Plants raised this way go out ahead of anything you can buy and flower for a longer season.

Division, and what to record

Marguerite does not divide. It grows from a single woody stem base rather than a clump of crowns, so there is nothing to pull apart, and attempts to split an old plant simply produce two damaged halves that both rot. Layering is possible where a low stem can be pegged into the soil, but it is slower than a cutting and gives you one plant instead of six, so it is rarely worth the effort.

Keep a note of when you took each batch of cuttings, how many you inserted, and how many rooted. Two seasons of that record tells you which window works best in your climate and how many to take to end up with the number of plants you want. Label the pot with the date it was inserted, because the two-week check is easy to miss and a batch left covered too long after rooting goes moldy.

Also record which parent plant each batch came from and how that plant performed, particularly its flower size, habit and how well it stood up to heat. Over a few years that is how you end up propagating from the best plant you have rather than whichever one happened to be nearest the door.