Taking Cuttings from Vines

There are two ways of taking a cutting from vines.

One of them relates to one of the ways nature reproduces the vine plant itself, by layering, which means the growth of the plant naturally falls to the floor and if attached to one place long enough begins to produce a daughter plant with roots and stem growth from the soil contact point.

This arrangement is modified a little for our convenience, but the principal is exactly the same. So you will see that you could quite easily produce a new vine from an existing one, by placing an attached stem across the top of a compost-filled plant pot and anchoring it down.

The compost would need to remain moist, and the following spring you would have a new plant being produced. It would need to stay attached to the parent plant for around three months before it could be moved elsewhere, although doing it this way you would cause bleeding from your vine in the growing season once you separate the daughter from the parent plant, and that way would be reducing your yield of fruit.

But to make life easier for you, the gardener, when you prune your vine, around the new-year to late January (that is the time that no bleeding occurs, then you will have lengths of cuttings to work with.

If you find a bud on a wooden stem and snip off a length of around one inch (25cm) either side of that bud, you will have the starting point for a new vine.

By bending the ends upwards with the bud uppermost, to an angle of around 90 degrees, you will be weakening the fibres opposite the bud, if they break, that’s fine, which gives the future roots a better chance of being produced.

Alternatively, you could cut a nick in the bark, opposite the bud, and offer the cutting the same easier option.

Both types need to be fastened down (a partly opened out paperclip – along the lines of a staple – works out nicely for this type of cutting) and held to damp compost.

By placing the cutting outside in the weather, but away from drying sunlight and winds, then you will produce new growth in the spring.

My experience with this type off cutting success rate is that around 70% survive, but the failures have occurred mostly because of the surface of the compost drying out.

A better method is to use a cutting with three buds on it.

With the remainder of the cutting removed above the top bud and the bottom bud, simply insert the cutting the right way up into moist compost so that there is only one bud showing above, and quite close to, the top of the compost.

By doing it this way, the cutting anchors itself and the root end of your cutting is deeper in the compost and therefore is not as likely to dry out so much, and a 90% success rate is easily achievable this way.

                George