Fresh news delivered to you every day. Visit our Circulation department for print subscription information. Frogale, as propagator of plants at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, Va., said all kinds of ornamental shrubs can be reproduced using stem cuttings. Dipped in rooting hormone, placed in pots of moistened sand or perlite and then covered with plastic, these twigs sprout new roots after a month or two.
Many gardeners wait until late summer, when the fresh growth has hardened, to take cuttings.
But Frogale is a fan of softwood cuttings, which expand the range of plants that can be used. They also root more readily. June and July are the optimum months to take softwood cuttings. Some people call them semi-hardwood cuttings, Frogale said, because they have moved beyond the stage of the fresh, flaccid growth of early spring. Those shoots are not suited to cuttings.