The simplest way to raise trees and shrubs is from cuttings. There are several types of cuttings you can use, but the simplest and most economical are hardwood cuttings. No special skills are required although occasionally you are going to come across some plants which prove difficult to root. Cuttings can be prepared from the current season’s growth or, in the case of some plants like the bougainvillea and mussaenda, from older and thicker wood. Sometimes gardeners have to take what cuttings they can get when they are trying to save an old and treasured possession which has passed its prime and is not producing good-looking cuttings’ material due to disease, but as a general rule cuttings should always be taken from healthy plants. Where possible they should be taken from the sunny side of the plant where the wood has been properly ripened by the sunlight. The great art in propagating is making sure you take cuttings from the plant which is producing the best looking flowers or fruit, and which doesn’t normally attract insects or suffer from diseases. In selecting cutting material make sure that it comes from the healthiest, strongest and straightest shoots. Stronger cuttings will always produce healthier plants than weak cuttings. Hardwood cuttings are easy to prepare and can be taken at any time of the year in Guyana. I prepare mine with a pair of sharp secateurs. My gardener habitually hacks them off with a cutlass, although it’s a bit risky. She has as much success as I do normally, although I always like to think of taking cuttings as a form of surgery, and I wouldn’t care too much for a surgeon to take a cutlass to me; I’d rather a finely honed knife. Generally hardwood cuttings should be no more than the length of a pencil. The top of the cutting is taken just above the leaf joint with the slightest slant to allow moisture to run off it. The base of the cutting is taken just below a leaf joint, with a good long slice to distinguish it from the top and enable you to remember top from bottom. No point in putting them in upside down! Cuttings of trees should have the lower buds rubbed off because you just want a single stem. With shrubs this need not be done because you don’t mind having many shoots coming from the base and forming a thick framework nearer ground level. Although it is not always possible to make cuttings the same thickness throughout their length, I have found that hibiscus cuttings of about pencil thickness root easily from hardwood cuttings. On the other hand, there is no doubt that bougainvillea, and in many cases mussaenda, root more easily when the cuttings are thick. In the case of bougainvilleas, pieces of stem over an inch thick will root very readily, and mussaenda cuttings ? of an inch thick taken from older wood on the main framework of the plant root quite easily. I always try and assist mussaenda cuttings by using hormone powder which quickens rooting, but it isn’t really essential, except in the case of the red flowered variety. Professional propagators tend to work in hundreds if not thousands of cuttings of one type or another, and have mechanised the planting of cuttings, but for the home gardeners it is still a small-scale operation and essentially consists of pushing the cuttings into prepared ground. The object is to get them to produce roots, and therefore the majority of the cuttings should be in the soil so that they can do just that. A half or two-thirds of the cutting should be below ground level. This will give the plant a chance to produce a mass of roots along its length. If the ground is a little bit heavy it is a good trick to trickle a little coarse sand into the hole before the cuttings are finally pushed home. This will help the drainage around the base and encourage the production of roots. The better the drainage around the area where roots are to be produced, the more air there is, and the quicker the wound will heal and new roots form. It is the same principle as letting air get to a small cut on your finger. A scab forms more quickly. At the base of a cutting the same kind of thing occurs. Good luck and may your God go with you.
