How To Take Cuttings?

[wild]

Hey folks,

I'd like to take cuttings from a few of my fruit plants. Namely, my Cherry tree, possibly my Fig plant too. I'm very new to gardening, so I have some questions:

What time of year is it best to take cuttings?

I am told that there is some products you can buy which encourage roots to grow, which of these might you suggest?

When I have taken the cuttings, so I plant them in soil or leave them in water until roots appear?

Any other advice for me?

Thank you!

[Kirk]

Not sure about the fig but the cherry will be on a rootstock, so if you get a cutting to root then the root system it develops will be native to the tree. You could end up with a big tree. Additionally as most rootstocks are to limit the tree size they also have the side effect of getting the tree to fruit earlier in its life. So the cutting could take a number of years to bear fruit.

In general you want a cutting to be new green wood. So best time is probably about now or even a little earlier as you want a nice new shoot.

Some people dip them in a rooting compound, some don't. My experience is it makes little difference as not many actually root.

Compost may make a difference the general advice is a light compost that sort of "forces" the cutting to make roots.

Really seems little in the way of a rule. The only thing I have recently got to root is cuttings from a Bay tree. One is small with roots, second is small and no obvious root (but has maintained healthy green leaves for over year, third died. So out of 3 I have one in about every possible stage. Puzzled by the second one as it has nice green leaves all healthy and last I looked not a root in sight.

Suggest you search out propogating from cuttings as there a few options, layering and air layering being 2 additional approaches.

[devonuk]

It varies so it's worth googling plant by plant. Figs should do fine from 6 in cuttings in winter, I wouldn't bother trying cherries. Rooting hormone costs next to nothing and presumably does no harm. In some cases eg currants and gooseberries from hardwood cuttings you really don't need it though. I've rarely tried the water technique as it strikes me that rooting itself may work fine but why subject the plant to the transition from living in water to living in soil?

[wild]

Thank you for your thoughts, folks

Very helpful x