Gadenin日本語Get the appChoose the method by how long you will wait for flowers
The important difference between these methods is not how hard they are. It is how many years pass before the new plant flowers. Layers and cuttings are made from mature wood, so they carry that maturity with them and flower within a few years. A seedling starts from nothing and has to grow up, which on this shrub takes most of a decade. Decide what you are actually trying to produce before you start.
| Method | Time to rooted plant | Years to first flower | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple layering | 1 to 2 years | 2 to 4 after planting out | Easy, very reliable |
| Semi-ripe cuttings | One season under cover | 3 to 5 | Low strike rate; take plenty |
| Softwood cuttings | 6 to 10 weeks with bottom heat | 3 to 5 | Needs mist or a closed case |
| Seed | Germinates in one spring | 7 to 14 | Easy to germinate, very slow to flower |
| Grafting onto a seedling | One season | 2 to 3 | Skilled; worth it for a known plant |
Layering: the method to use
Wintersweet naturally throws low, flexible stems from around the base, and those stems root readily where they touch soil. Layering costs nothing, needs no equipment and no propagator, and the failure rate is low because the branch stays attached to the parent and keeps being fed the whole time. Start in spring as growth begins, or in autumn after leaf fall.
- Pick a low, whippy stem from last year Choose a flexible one-year-old shoot near the base that can be bent to the ground without snapping, about a foot (30 cm) back from its tip. Older, thicker wood roots far less willingly.
- Prepare the ground where it will touch Fork over a patch of soil where the stem will meet the ground and work in a spadeful of grit and compost. Scoop out a shallow trench about four inches (10 cm) deep with one sloping side and one vertical side.
- Wound the underside of the stem Where the stem will sit in the trench, slice a shallow tongue about an inch (2.5 cm) long into the underside of the bark with a clean knife, angling towards the tip. Rooting hormone on the wound is optional and does no harm.
- Peg it down and bend the tip up Press the wounded section into the trench against the vertical side, pin it firmly with a bent wire or a forked stick, and bend the last foot (30 cm) of the stem upright against a short cane so the tip stands clear of the soil.
- Backfill, firm and water Cover with the improved soil, firm it down with your heel and water thoroughly. Mark the spot with a label so nobody hoes it, and keep it from drying out completely through the following summer.
- Check after a full year, sever after two Scrape the soil away gently the following autumn to look for roots. If there is a decent root system, sever the layer from the parent, leave it in place one more season to build strength, then lift and plant it out.
Cuttings: expect losses, so take plenty
Wintersweet is not an easy shrub from cuttings, and a strike rate of one in three is a good result. That is a reason to take twenty rather than a reason not to try. Semi-ripe cuttings in late summer, taken when this year's shoots have firmed at the base but are still soft at the tip, are the most forgiving. Take four to six inch (10 to 15 cm) pieces early in the morning, cut cleanly below a leaf joint, strip the lower leaves, reduce the remaining leaves by half to cut water loss, and dip the base in rooting hormone.
Put them round the edge of a pot of half grit, half compost, water once, and stand them in a closed propagator or a clear bag out of direct sun. Bottom heat around 68F (20C) improves matters noticeably. Do not let them dry out and do not let condensation sit on the leaves; open the case for a few minutes daily. Leave them alone until the following spring, and only pot on the ones that resist a gentle tug.
Seed and grafting
Seed germinates without much trouble. Collect it from the dry papery pods after flowering, soak it in warm water for a day, sow half an inch (1 cm) deep in a gritty mix, and leave the pot outdoors over winter so the cold breaks dormancy; most will come up the following spring. Handle the seed with the knowledge that it is poisonous, wash your hands afterwards, and keep it away from children and animals.
The catch is the wait. A seedling wintersweet typically takes seven to fourteen years to produce its first flower, and you have no idea what the scent or flower will be like until it does. Raise seedlings if you enjoy the long game or want rootstocks; do not raise them expecting a replacement for a shrub you like. Grafting a shoot from a known plant onto a two-year seedling rootstock in late winter gives you a plant that flowers in two or three years, and is the reason nursery plants flower so much sooner than home-raised ones.
Record what you did and what took
Propagation on a slow shrub is only informative if you can compare across years, and nobody remembers the details eighteen months later. For each batch write down the date, the method, which part of the parent plant the material came from, how many you started with and how many rooted. For layers, note where in the garden the pegged stem is, because an unlabelled layer gets forgotten and mown.
Also record whether each new plant came from a layer, a cutting, a graft or seed, and keep that note with the plant when it goes out. In eight years, when one of them is flowering freely and another is not, that single word explains the difference and saves you digging up something that is merely young.