8 ways to stem root successfully to get more plants

If you want to expand your flower collection, here are some essential things to know about stem rooting.

What's needed is high humidity paired with limited indirect light.

• Give cuttings only enough light to keep them alive and cover them with a plastic tent so the leaves don't have to replenish lost moisture.
• Until the cuttings grow roots, they have no way to gather enough water to keep unprotected leaves provided with the water they need.
• Try to keep humidity close to 100 per cent.

• Mint is so easy to root from stem-tip cuttings that you can grow a plant from a stem purchased at the supermarket.
• Other easy rooters include coleus, chrysanthemum and any type of sedum.
• Among shrubs, forsythias, hydrangeas and roses often root in only a few weeks.

Cuttings need a few leaves to nourish the developing roots, but too much foliage demands more moisture than a rootless stem can provide.

• Pinch off the lower leaves as well as any buds.
• You will know new roots have begun to develop when new leaves appear.

A severed stem is actually a gaping wound through which fungi can enter.

• Root cuttings in sterile seed-starting mix, vermiculite or a 50-50 mixture of peat moss and sand, and make sure the containers are clean.

Clay pots work well for rooting cuttings when covered with a loose, clear plastic bag, such as a produce bag, held above the cuttings with wood skewers or a wire hoop.

Speed counts, which is the main reason to use rooting powder, which contains hormones that encourage the cutting to form roots quickly.

• Very fast rooters don't need rooting powder, but for woody, slow-rooting plants, it can mean the difference between rooting and rotting.

Willows and black locusts give off indolebutyric acid, a natural rooting hormone.

• Soak pieces of willow or black locust stems in rainwater for two days and water cuttings with the solution.
• Or simply include a willow stem in a container in which you're rooting stems in water.

• Another way to supplement the root-inducing hormones in a cutting is to slit a notch in the base of the cutting, then wedge a wheat or corn seed in the notch before setting the cutting to root.

As the seed germinates, it releases hormones that help keep the cutting in a root-growing mood.

With these simple tips you can easily multiply shrubs and flowers by stem rooting, either for your own garden or to share and exchange with gardener friends.