Viburnum and Spirea Cuttings

Last summer I took cuttings from one of my viburnums and a couple spireas. They have a good start this year and are beginning to put on new growth. The viburnum came from a softwood cutting that was about 3-4 nodes long. I need to transplant it into some better soil since all I used for it over the winter was some topsoil. Cutting corners on your soil is not a great idea! As you can see my viburnum is beginning to flower. I need to remove the flower to focus the plant's energy on root building and foliage growing.

 

The spireas make easy candidates for hardwood cuttings. A four node cuttings should root in less than six weeks and does so very reliably. I used rooting hormone (which you can find here at Amazon.com: rooting hormone) for the viburnum and spireas to help stimulate root growth and followed the usual procedures for taking cuttings. I may go ahead and plant these somewhere in the garden and see how well they do. As long as the rabbits don't attack they should do fine!

 

I plan on taking cuttings from our other viburnums as soon as there is enough greenwood this spring. Time to get outside and take cuttings!