September/October is the ideal time to take cuttings from your favourite strains of tender perennials to increase your stock for next spring or to make sure they live on if the parent plants do not survive the winter.
Once the weather gets colder and you have experienced at least one good hard freeze, the deciduous plants should be dormant and will have dropped their leaves, and you can now propagate them. Just make cuttings about 4” long, dip them in a rooting compound and stick them in the bed of sand.
“Grafting, budding, and plant propagation can be done on many types of plants during the winter, not just hardwoods.” High humidity and moisture are important during the post-cut and post-grafting periods.
Softwood cuttings are ideal for many tender plants like pelargoniums, petunias, verbena, argyranthemums and osteospermums. You can also take softwood cuttings from many deciduous shrubs, including lavender, rosemary, forsythia, fuchsias, hydrangeas, lavatera and buddleia.
As temperatures cool, you can start taking cuttings from tender perennials that are generally grown as annuals, such as coleus or geraniums. After a good frost, you can start dividing perennials and take hardwood cuttings. Fir, spruce, and pinecones can be gathered for spring plantings.
If you wonder what you can take cuttings from at this time of year, there are many to choose from. Most deciduous shrubs are ideal for taking winter cuttings, such as dogwood, flowering currants, roses, honeysuckle, gooseberries and figs.
Root cuttings are best taken in mid-to-late autumn or early winter when plants are dormant.
Hardwood cuttings provide an easy and reliable method of propagating a range of deciduous climbers, trees and shrubs, and as bonus, they are taken from mid-autumn until late winter when more time is usually available to the gardener.
From early fall through most of November is one of the best times of year to plant spring-blooming bulbs, cool-season annuals and vegetables, as well as many trees, shrubs, and perennials. On this page: WHY PLANT IN FALL. SPRING-BLOOMING BULBS.
You can propagate houseplants at any time of year. This being said, the best time to do it is during their growing season – which is typically spring-summer. They will grow more slowly during the dormant months of autumn-winter.
Perennials with fleshy roots such as peonies (Paeonia spp.), Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale) and Siberian iris (Iris siberica) are best divided in the fall. When dividing plants in the fall, time it for four to six weeks before the ground freezes for the plants roots to become established.
You can take softwood cuttings at any time after the new, fresh, green and flexible growth appears. Softwood cuttings are generally the quickest to form roots, and do so most easily. Semi-ripe cuttings are taken in late summer or very early autumn. These are usually taken after blooms have faded.
October is a great time to plant those fall flowers. There are many varieties that can be planted this fall and start blooming early spring. Garlic (Zones 5-10): Garlic is a vegetable that can be planted in the fall for a larger and earlier harvest this coming spring.
Now just cause it's winter doesn't mean the cuttings aren't vulnerable. Wind can quickly dry cuttings out even cold winter winds. Frosts will also dry your cuttings out. During a frost the moisture within the stem of a plant is drawn out and freezes, this can cause a small stem like a cutting to shrivel up and die.
Taking cuttings is a great way to propagate new plants. You can take cuttings at any time of year in a variety of ways, but the easiest (and most successful) method is by taking cuttings of plants' stems in summer.
Most softwood cuttings are taken in spring and early summer, from the tender new growth of the season. If potted by mid-summer they will develop sufficient roots to survive the winter, otherwise pot up in the following spring.
Take the cuttings any time between mid autumn and late winter. Different parts of the UK have very different weather conditions, take the cuttings when the leaves on the rose bush are starting to fall or have fallen completely in your area.
Propagating plants in winter does take a bit longer than in the summer, two to four months for roots to develop, but it's a great way to get free plants from winter prunings. Providing bottom heat will speed things up a bit, but isn't necessary.
You can root hydrangeas from "hardwood" cuttings taken in late fall or early winter when the year's new stems have grown firm and mature.
Take Herbaceous Plant Cuttings Now
October is a great time to take plant cuttings of your favorite perennials to propagate in your greenhouse or home over the winter.
Cuttings from many annual plants will keep over winter, sprout roots, and be ready for planting in spring. You may place them in pots or cups without drainage filled with moist perlite or vermiculite. Locate them at first in bright light, away from the sun. Move later to an area where they receive morning sun.