October 28, 2025 • 42 mins
Whether you live in a climate that allows for a veery long growing season or you’re like me and need to cram as much growing into a shorter season as possible, cloning is a shortcut to making the most of our best plants. In some cases it even makes sense to overwinter some of those plants so next season starts off weeks ahead of schedule.
So, today on Just Grow Something, we’re talking about the importance of cloning plants as a strategic shortcut to enhance gardening productivity. I’ll explain the key differences between cloning and seed saving, and the various methods of cloning, including water propagation and the use of rooting hormones, and the layering method. We’ll also talk about how to overwinter plants effectively and which ones are worth the effort, troubleshooting common issues, and the best practices for maintaining plant health during the winter months. Let’s dig in!
Key Takeaways:
Cloning allows gardeners to replicate successful plants for the next season.
Seed saving can lead to genetic reshuffling, while cloning preserves the exact traits of a plant.
Water propagation is an easy method for cloning many herbaceous plants.
Rooting hormones can significantly improve the success rate of cloning woody plants.
Layering is a method that allows plants to root while still attached to the parent plant.
Overwintering can help maintain productive plants for early spring planting.
Different plants require different care when overwintering, including light and temperature adjustments
Resources:
Download my free cloning guide at https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/clone
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, my gardening friends,it looks like maybe my first
frost is finally ready to hit here and take out the summer
annuals in my garden. And despite me saying that I'm
really ready for the garden to be done for the year, I know I'm
going to be missing it in probably just about a month or
so, and I'm going to have that itch to do something.
(00:22):
If you live in a climate that allows for a very long season or
even some winter gardening, or if you're like me and we tend to
try to cram as much growing intoa shorter season as possible.
Today we are talking about a strategic shortcut.
Cloning your best plants and where it makes sense,
(00:44):
overwintering them so that next season starts weeks ahead of
schedule. So if you've got a pepper plant,
say, that has crushed it this year or a Rosemary plant that
finally is thriving, we're not saying goodbye.
We are making copies. And then maybe we're tucking
those originals in for winter. So today under Score Something,
(01:05):
we're going to talk about cloning versus saving seeds, the
different ways that we can cloneour most productive plants, what
we can overwinter to jump start next season and which ones are
best to avoid by the end. You will have a step by step
workflow that you can follow this weekend to preserve your
best specimens for next season. Let's begin.
(01:27):
Hey, I'm Karen and what started as a small backyard garden 20
years ago turned into a lifelongpassion for growing food.
Now as a market farmer and horticulturist, I want to help
you do the same. On this podcast, I am your
friend in the garden teaching evidence based techniques to
help you grow your favorites andbuild confidence in your own
garden space. So grab your garden journal and
(01:48):
a cup of coffee and get ready tojust grow something.
So we're going to talk a couple of different cloning methods
today. And if you need a reference
sheet for everything that we aretalking about, I've got you.
I made a handout to go with thisepisode so that you will have a
CHEAT SHEET on which plants prefer which type of cloning
(02:12):
method and then how to perform that method.
And then also tips for overwintering.
So you can get that download by going to
justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/cloneand I will leave that link in
the show description. So why would we want to clone
our garden plants rather than saving seed?
(02:33):
And don't get me wrong, seed saving is fantastic and I want
you saving the seeds from your best and most beautiful
specimens every year if they arean open pollinated variety.
But seed saving is sort of a genetic reshuffle if you are not
(02:54):
working with a very stable, openpollinated variety.
So if you grew hybrids and you save the seeds, they are not
necessarily going to reproduce true to type, meaning it may not
be the same tomato for example that you grew this past season.
And even if you are working witha stable variety and you do have
(03:16):
really strong isolation, meaningyou kept that variety from cross
pollinating with any other open pollinated variety and then you
save those seeds, you still aren't guaranteed to get the
same type of growth from that plant the next year.
You're going to get the same variety.
So you're going to get the same type of tomato in general, but
(03:39):
you're not going to get the samegrowth habit necessarily.
Contrary to this, cuttings are clones.
And so if you were super happy with the growth habit this year
of that plant and how well it produced or how well it survived
pressure from certain insects orcertain diseases in your garden
(04:03):
this year, then cloning is goingto keep those exact traits.
It is quite literally the copy and paste button for your
garden. OK, so let's split this into a
couple of different buckets. You have plants that root really
well just in water, and then youhave plants that root really
(04:25):
well or prefer having some rooting hormone and some sort of
a medium to to start rooting in.So things that root really
easily in water are things like herbaceous herbs, specifically
anything that's in the mint family.
So mint or oregano basil really does well with just rooting in
(04:48):
water. Cilantro and parsley can be hit
or miss. You can root them in water.
Sometimes it takes them longer to draw those roots or it make
one or two take one or two triesto actually get this.
But it's worth a shot. And then if it doesn't work for
you, you can always try doing itin a rooting hormone with some
medium. Probably most infamous of of all
(05:11):
of these is tomatoes. You can root the suckers from
your tomato plants super easily,which means you can be out there
pruning those suckers off of your plants during the year,
taking those suckers, dropping them into a jar of water, and
creating a whole new plant. This is really great for people
(05:33):
who are gardening in really, really hot climates where you
have to be very specific about when you are growing your
tomatoes. So in a lot of the more southern
US areas, you are growing tomatoes very, very early in the
year and then you're not growingtomatoes at all during the
hottest part of the summer. But then you can plant again
(05:54):
later on in the year as the weather starts to cool off
because your season is really that long, but it's just too hot
to grow those tomatoes in the summertime.
So if you grow determinate varieties of tomatoes, meaning
they ripen or they mature very, very quickly, and they sort of
all come on in a very short period of time.
(06:14):
And then you take cuttings from those tomato plants, the ones
that are doing the best for you in your garden, and you root
those inside through the summertime when it's too hot for
things to grow outside. And then you turn around and you
replant those cuttings. All of those clones are going to
perform the same way that those ones did in the spring for you
(06:37):
during your late, you know, yourearly fall into your late fall,
you're getting a whole other round of tomatoes.
This also works in areas like mine for a second crop of our
most productive determinant plants.
So if I throw a round of determinant plants out there
that I know we're going to produce fairly early and they're
(06:59):
going to produce, you know, mostof their crop over a three-week
period and then they're pretty much done, I can take those
cuttings and I can do a whole second planting Midsummer
because my summers are not too hot for tomatoes to grow.
As a matter of fact, they love the weather here in the
summertime, with the exception of the humidity.
That's a whole other story. But it's a really great way for
(07:21):
me to take those determinant plants, not have to worry about
starting them all from seed and babying them, getting that same
production quality of the ones that did the best with very,
very little effort. And I can plant those as a
succession. OK, So this is just some reasons
why you might want to go ahead and do clonings rather than, you
know, starting from seed over and over again.
(07:43):
Now, some of the things that prefer to be cloned using a
rooting hormone plus some sort of a medium are things like
Peppers. You can root these in water, but
they are definitely much more reliable in a mix with that
rooting hormone. And if the idea of using a
rooting hormone is kind of scaryto you, trust me, it is super
(08:05):
basic. It is super easy.
It's actually very easy to find.You can get little bottles of
just powdered rooting hormone from the garden center.
You just look. You can also order it online.
There's a lot of different ways you can get it.
It's it's very inexpensive. You're quite literally just
dipping the end of the cutting into this powder before you put
(08:26):
it into a medium like perlite orvermiculite or a seed starting
mix. OK.
The same thing goes with eggplant.
It's also going to prefer this rooting hormone and using some
sort of medium. Do you have to use the rooting
hormone? Not necessarily, but I find that
you definitely get better success, especially with things
like Rosemary because it's semi woody.
(08:49):
It definitely benefits from using that hormone and then any
of those softwood cuttings from time or stage.
So we have these perennials in our gardens that are going to
put on softwood growth early in the season.
You can take cuttings of those and dip them in the hormone and
start them that way. You can also take some of the
(09:12):
semi hardwood later on and do this.
And so it's definitely, you know, more successful to use the
rooting hormone, but you can just try popping them into some
seed starting mix. You're just going to have to
make sure it stays really, really well watered.
We also have sort of a third group and this is the group of
(09:32):
plants that can be started or cloned from the layering method.
And so things like strawberries with their runners, right, Those
above ground stolons that they send out, cane berries, things
like pumpkins or squash or cucumbers, anything that has a
vining section. So we'll talk about the layering
method sort of later on. These may or may not necessarily
(09:54):
be things that you want to clone, but there's always the
possibility. And so of course, we're going to
teach you how to do it right. So we're going to start with the
water propagation method. This is really, really easy.
You get very fast results if you're using the right plant and
it's kind of gives you a little bit of easy success to get you
started on your cloning journey.So the first thing that you want
(10:16):
to do is just take about a four to six inch cutting from the
plant that you're trying to clone.
Now with tomatoes, again, the easiest thing to do is just
those suckers that you're cutting off.
But you can really take just a tip cutting of just about any
one of these herbaceous sort of plants or your your flowering
annuals root like tomatoes. You want to strip the leaves
(10:40):
from like the lower third of that cutting that you take off
you. We don't want leaves sitting in
the water that we're rooting in.So just pop the cuttings into a
jar of water. Make sure that you have leaves
out of the water line. We don't want it to get the
water funky because that's what's going to happen.
And then you're just going to take this jar and you're going
(11:01):
to put it in a spot in the house.
It's got bright indirect light. We don't want like a really hot
S facing window that's going to cook these plants.
I have a window in my kitchen that is perfect for this water
propagation method. It faces east, so it gets the
(11:22):
early morning sun. And then as the sun moves over
the house, it's just getting ambient light.
And it seems to be like the perfect spot.
So think something like that where it's just getting morning
sun or some really good ambient light.
You do want to change the water every couple of days.
We don't want that water to get stagnant.
And then after, you know, a weekor two, you're going to start
seeing these plants pull roots. We call it pulling roots and you
(11:46):
know, with tomatoes and basil and mint, I see this pretty
quickly as long as the conditions are right, that light
is necessary. So we want to make sure that
it's getting the right amount oflight.
Once you see these start to pullroots, it can look like little
like sort of white bumps at 1st and then those roots are going
(12:07):
to start coming out after they're about two inches long or
so. Then you can pot that plant up
into a lightweight potting soil and now you have a whole brand
new plant, right? It's literally that easy.
And I do this all the time. In fact, I've done it
unintentionally before when I have cut some basil and brought
(12:29):
it into the house and I didn't use all of it.
So I just threw it into a jar and stuck it just in my kitchen
and it got enough light where itstarted to pull roofs.
So, you know, it can happen unintentionally too.
That's how easy it is. Now if you want to use the the
rooting hormone and medium method, this is great.
Some plants just do better goingstraight into a medium with just
(12:51):
a little bit of help. So it's the same idea, clean
pruners and you're taking a cutting.
But you also want to make sure that you have a small pot or
tray on standby that has some seed starting mix or like a one
to one mix of perlite to vermiculite or maybe just one or
the other. These plants aren't super picky
and then some rooting hormone, either that powder or there's
(13:13):
also a gel that you can use. In this instance, you want about
a four to six inch cutting againand we're still going to remove
those lower leaves. You do want to make sure that
you have a good cluster of leaves at the top.
The key here is to take a pencilor something and pre poke a hole
in the medium that you're going to use to grow these in because
(13:35):
you don't want the rooting hormone to wipe off of of the
cutting as you poke it into the soil.
OK, so poke a little hole in your growing medium.
You're going to take your cutting and you're going to dip
the cut end into some water and then dip it into your hormone
powder and just kind of tap the extra off and then put that into
(13:57):
your little pre poked hole. And then just firm the medium up
around the stem. It's going to stand up if you've
got it deep enough. And that's it.
That's all you have to do if youwant to maybe miss it a little
bit. And a lot of time these plants
do better if they have some sortof a clear Dome or bag or
(14:18):
something to help track the humidity in.
So I have just used like a loosesalad bag and pop it over the
top. You can use a little plastic
sandwich bag, anything over the top that's going to be open at
the bottom to let the airflow come in.
But it's going to help to trap the moisture a little bit.
If you are doing this in the summertime and you live some
(14:39):
place where it's humid, you can absolutely do this outside.
You don't have to worry about the bag.
I have done this with what was it that I did this past summer?
Oh, mosquito plant, citronella. I was taking cousins of
citronella and I just had them outside out near my greenhouse
in an area where they were a little bit out of the direct
sun, but it was definitely humid.
(15:01):
And so they rooted just fine. But again, you know, I made sure
to poke the hole in that medium and dip them into the hormone
and pop them in. And I think I had about a 75%
success rate on those guys. So just you want it to be humid
and then again, you're going to put it in some place that's got
some bright indirect light. Now with this method, if you
(15:22):
were covering it like this, especially if it's dry in your
house, you're still going to want to sort of vent that plant
a little bit. So make sure that that plastic
is loose around the bottom. And you, you know, every once in
a while, especially like when you're watering it, you can take
that off and just give it some air, little bit of water and
(15:42):
then go ahead and cover it back up again.
You want the the growing medium to remain damp.
We don't want it to be sopping wet.
OK. And like I said, great
candidates for this are things like Peppers, eggplant,
Rosemary, thyme, sage, anything that is a slower grower and also
(16:03):
anything that has got sort of that woody stem to it.
Now there is a difference once we start potting these up
between the the roots that grow in the water and the roots that
grow in the potting medium. And so when we're potting up our
clones, we kind of have to understand the difference
(16:24):
between water roots and soil roots.
They differ a little bit in their structure and their
adaptation to their respective environment.
So when you look at water roots,you're going to see they are
typically thinner, they are white and they are a bit more
fragile than soil roots. The soil grown roots are a
(16:45):
little bit thicker, they're brown, they're sturdier.
OK. When we're potting up, we have
to remember that these water roots have developed in a low
oxygen environment. They've been in water.
And yes, there is oxygen in water, obviously, and by us, you
know, changing out that water aswe are pulling those roots,
(17:08):
that's helping to keep that oxygen refreshed.
But it's still a waterlogged condition.
And that's OK. These these roots are grown
specifically to be able to pull,you know, nutrients from water.
Soil roots are a little bit different and they're built to
transport water and nutrients from soil into the plant.
And they're also meant to anchorthat plant firmly in in place.
(17:32):
So whereas the water roots are adapted to survive in water or
very wet soil, soil roots are optimized for obviously growing
in the soil for terrestrial plants, right?
So what this means is if we wantto successfully propagate plants
in water and then transition them from water to a soil
(17:54):
environment, that they're going to need a little extra attention
sometimes to get off to their best start.
So if you were to take your tomato clone from that jar of
water and then take it out directly into the garden, plant
it, and just sort of let it fendfor itself, you're likely going
to get less than a 50% survival rate at best.
(18:17):
Unless you are in a particularlyrainy season.
Those water roots aren't going to have the structure number
one, to really be able to hold that plant up very well and #2
to be able to pull water and nutrients from the soil.
So you either would need to be sure that you are planting that
plant fairly deep and that you are watering very, very
(18:40):
frequently after transplanting into the garden and then slowly
backing off as the plant developed those terrestrial
roots, which is going to be kindof a guessing game.
I mean, is it possible that you could just like take a cutting
from a tomato plant and shove itright into the garden then and
there and allow it to root that way?
Yeah, sure. If you can pay attention to it
(19:02):
and keep it from getting super wilty and make sure that you are
watering it a ton. And if you're doing this from a
cutting that was inside and you're taking it outside, well,
now you're going to have to worry about the elements in the
garden as the plant gets settledin since we haven't like gotten
that poor plant acclimated to the outside yet, right?
Or you could just pot it up intoa smaller container.
(19:24):
So we're taking it out of the water.
We're putting it into a potting mix in a small container.
We're making sure to keep that soil very, very moist for like
the first week to 10 days and then slowly back off.
Because then if it's in that little container, we can check
the progress of those roots by just tipping the plant out of
(19:46):
its pot every once in a while tocheck with that root mass is
doing. So kind of like what we would do
with a seedling that we've started from seed to make sure
that the roots aren't getting root bound in there.
We want to check and see what that root mass is doing.
So we can do the same thing withthese to make sure that those
soil roots are sort of. Forming and then we know once
(20:06):
it's gotten itself established in the pot and you can see that
good root growth, then we can take it outside and we can
harden that plant off in the same way that we would any other
seedling before putting it out into the ground.
So that really is the best approach for something that we
have rooted in the water. Now if with our clones that are
(20:27):
rooted with a hormone and in some sort of potting medium,
obviously we don't have to quiteworry about that transition from
the water roots to those terrestrial soil roots.
But you still want to go throughthe hardening off process to
make sure that that plant is acclimated to the outside.
In fact, in both cases, this is especially important if you have
taken these cuttings from like end of season plants outdoors to
(20:53):
create clones, but then you've had them indoors all winter
before planting them out in spring.
So do yourself and the plants a favor and make sure that they're
hardened off before you put themback outside into the garden.
OK, So what about that group of plants that really does prefer
the layering method? Layering means that you are
rooting a plant while it is still attached to the parent
(21:19):
plant and then you are separating them later.
This has a few advantages because it reduces the stress
from the baby plant. Basically, you know you're
letting it grow these roots while it's still being fed by
the parent plant, and so you're not worried about nutrients or
anything at that point. And then once it has really
(21:41):
rooted in, then you just kind ofcut ties with that parent plant
and you have a whole new plant. This is very apparent when we
have strawberries. We have strawberries that send
out those runners. They have those above ground
stolons. And at the very end of that
stolon is a new little baby leafy plant.
And if you pin that runner into like a small pot of mix or you
(22:06):
know, if you want to do it rightin the ground, this is the most
the most common way to do it is just to let it root right in the
spot in the garden where you want it to kind of spread.
But if you want to make clones of your strawberry plants, you
can plant them elsewhere or you want to put them into like a
green stock planter or somethinglike that.
You can just put small pots of mix right beside the mother
(22:27):
plant and just pin that runner into that small pot.
You just have to keep them evenly moist.
And then once the roots have settled into that pot, again, we
can kind of tip it and see whether or not that root mass is
formed. Once those roots fill that pot,
then OK, snip. We're going to we're going to
cut that umbilical that's connecting the mother plant to
(22:47):
that runner, to that little babyplant.
And now you have a whole new plant that you can plant
elsewhere. OK.
When we do this with cane berries, so raspberries or
blackberries, generally speaking, you just take this
year's new growth and you can dowhat we call tip layering.
So you're going to bend the tip of that Raspberry or BlackBerry
(23:09):
cane into the soil and pin it there, and that is automatically
going to start roots. This is how BlackBerry plants in
the wild reproduce. They basically just kind of lean
over and they tip themselves into the soil and that new tip
roots and now you have a whole new plant and just kind of
continues on from there. That's how these BlackBerry
(23:31):
brambles form. You can do the same thing with
your ones that you're growing athome with some Raspberry plants.
They do better and some blackberries too.
They do better by taking soft wood cuttings and doing that
whole, you know, rooting hormoneinto a, you know, a, a potting
soil. So you can absolutely do it that
(23:52):
way too. Elderberry is also a good one
for this too. You can take, you know, fresh
growth from an elderberry plant at the end of the season and you
can cut them and you can root them in the same way, a little
rooting hormone and, and stick it in the soil and you're good
to go. And often times, depending on
where you are, elderberry isn't going to need the rooting
hormone. You can quite literally cut them
(24:13):
and shove them into the soil andyou're going to get a whole new
plant. Just make sure when you're doing
these clones that you're labeling them.
So especially if you have multiple varieties, like, OK,
I've got these raspberries and I've got these blackberries, and
they all look very similar. When they're coming up as new
plants, you want to make sure that you are labeling them so
you're not mixing up the varieties.
You know in your Berry patch. You can also do this layering
(24:37):
sort of technique with any of your vining curcubits.
So pumpkins, winter squashes, cucumbers, right?
We can do this same thing. This is especially helpful with
cucumbers because sometimes, depending on where you are, your
cucumbers are sort of short lived or they just don't seem to
(24:59):
produce as much in the later weeks as they do early on.
So the easy thing to do is just to pick a healthy internode.
Remember, the internode is that spot on the stem that is between
the nodes. The nodes are where those leaves
come out, so all you have to do is pick a healthy section of
that and just kind of scrape or nick the underside really
lightly lay it down and pin it to the soil and then cover it
(25:23):
with like an inch of the same soil or a mix of some sort and
just leave the tip exposed. In about a week or two, you're
going to have roots that are coming out from where you made
that nick and then you can just cut it off and put it in a pot
and now you have a brand new plant.
I mean, it really is that easy. So that's the layering approach.
(25:44):
And you can also often do this with house plants too.
That's a whole other story. All right, so that's cloning.
What about overwintering plants?When do we maybe want to just
keep the whole plant? Some species are perennials in
frost free areas, so like Peppers, right?
(26:05):
It's not a perennial in my area because we have frosts in
freezes. But if you don't get a frost,
yeah, Peppers tend to grow year round.
So those types of plants can absolutely be carried through
the the winter, you know, if we give them the right conditions.
When we might want to do this isif we have a plant that is
either really slow to mature or it is exceptionally productive.
(26:30):
And for me, this generally meansmy pepper plants, I always call
Peppers here is sort of a fall crop because yes, they start to
produce in the summertime, but they really shine like late
summer. Early fall is when I have tons
and tons of Peppers and they're usually the last thing that I'm
picking all the way up to our first frost.
(26:53):
I still have pounds of jalapenosand cayenne Peppers and bell
Peppers out there in the gardensright now, just waiting on the
first frost to hit. So if I have these plants that
take so long to start producing during the season, it might be
beneficial to me to be able to dig up a handful of those plants
(27:18):
to bring them into over winter so that I can put them back out
again in the early spring as soon as the soil warms up.
So I have a much more mature specimen that's going to start
producing right away. In addition, I could also be
taking cuttings of of those plants.
So I'm picking the best and the most beautiful specimens to
(27:39):
bring in an overwinter. Then I'm also taking cuttings.
So I'm reproducing that genetics.
I'm cloning it literally so thatI will not only have those
larger mature plants to put backoutside in the garden to start
reproducing or start producing immediately, but then I'm also
going to have all the little baby clones that are also going
to get planted out right. So I'm kind of, you know,
(28:00):
covering my bases on both ends. So if we're talking about
Peppers and in most instances it's any plant that we're going
to overwinter, you have two options.
You either do sort of a dormant storage where you're pruning
these plants back, you're givingthem very minimal light, very
minimal water, and you're keeping them at around 50 to
(28:22):
60°F and they just kind of sit there, right?
That's dormant storage. Then we have semi dormant or
what I call houseplant mode. So you're still doing a little
bit of a pruning, but you are keeping them at, you know, your
house room temperature. So anywhere from 60 to 70°F is
(28:43):
really good under a more bright light.
And that is going to just sort of maintain them.
You're going to give them water more frequently.
You are going to give them a little bit of plant food, but
that's going to keep them not actively growing, but just kind
of hanging out and staying green.
This is the one that I've had the most success with the
(29:05):
dormant storage for me. And I think part of my problem
was before that I that I pruned back too much.
I've seen videos with Peppers and eggplant and these other
types of plants that you might overwinter where they get pruned
back really heavily and you're stripping all the foliage and
you're just cutting it down to nothing but a little Y.
And then you're tucking them away with, you know, very little
(29:28):
light and just maybe water once a month.
And I have always had a very difficult time bringing a plant
back out of that deep of a dormant stage.
So I tend to lean towards even if I'm doing dormant storage,
leaving some of that those leaves on there to kind of keep
them, I don't know, a little bitless dormant, I guess through
(29:50):
the winter time. But the semi dormant or
houseplant variety or mode of this is has definitely worked
better for me. You can do this with with
eggplant as well. The the woodier types tend to
overwinter better than maybe your small miniature type
eggplants. You can also do this with herbs
too. So if you have, you know, the
big woody herbs like Rosemary that maybe isn't going to
(30:11):
survive over the winter, but you've spent all summer growing
this beautiful big Rosemary plant, Absolutely bring it in.
Treat it like a house plant. You can do the same with thyme
or sage or oregano. The the more herbaceous ones
don't seem to do as well. Like you can do parsley as long
as it's getting enough light. But for me, basil has never
(30:33):
really overwintered well. It always seems to just drop its
leaves off. And of course, that's the part
that we want to use, right? So I tend to do cuttings from
basil and just root them that way rather than trying to
overwinter them. If you're going to do this, you
do want to change out that soil.So when you dig up the plant,
(30:56):
you really want to sort of shakeout those roots, spray all of
that soil out of there and you want to pot them up into fresh
potting mix. Make sure that you are checking
for insects. If you need to use an
insecticidal soap or something to keep any of those extra
little buggies outside because you don't want them inside,
(31:16):
right? And that's going to give you a
better chance. Make sure that you're giving
yourself enough time to do this to where these these pots, these
plants can settle into their pots after you have refreshed
this mix. And that's going to give you
that advantage of being able to bring those big plants back
outside again and and get them started in the spring off to a
(31:38):
much faster start. Tomatoes can technically
overwinter indoors, but unless you really have good strong
lights and a lot of space, I really do recommend just taking
clones and starting them over again rather than dragging a big
old plant inside. Because again, the tomatoes
(31:58):
don't take quite as long to start producing as like a pepper
plant does or an eggplant does. And so it may not be worth it to
you to try to bring in a tomato plant and try to overwinter it.
You're just better off taking taking those clones, rooting
them in water, and then treatingthem as little baby plants
through the winter time until it's time to plant those
(32:19):
outside. So to decide whether or not this
is something that you want to doin terms of overwintering, just
kind of, you know, use your USDAgrowing zone and your particular
house conditions to decide. So if you are somewhere like
zone 8 through 10 where you havemild winters but you do still
(32:41):
see like a frost or a freeze, oftentimes you can overwinter
Peppers and eggplant and these things outside as long as you
have some protection or you're in unheated greenhouse.
As long as you can cover them and keep them protected when you
do actually have a frost. The if you do do this, I would
still say take some cuttings as some insurance to if you really
(33:04):
want to keep that plant going, just to make sure that you know,
if you do get a hard freeze thattakes out your plants, you still
have a backup, right? If you're in zones six to seven.
So this is more like my climate.I would say overwinter those
plants indoors, you know, go dormant if your house is is
regularly, you know, I kept it avery cool temperature, semi
(33:27):
dormant. If you've got enough bright
light, eggplant likes a little bit more light than the Peppers.
So just kind of keep that in mind.
That's the way that I have done it most successfully is that
sort of houseplant mode. If you were in zones 5 or
colder, I would stick to clones plus maybe a few of your best
(33:48):
plants in pots if you have a bright enough light.
Dormant storage does work great if you've got a 50 to 60°F
space, but keep in mind that those plants are going to be
indoors for longer in your area than in other regions just
because they're going to go backoutside much later in the spring
because you take longer to warm up.
(34:10):
So you have to decide whether ornot it's worth it to you to keep
a a large plant indoors for thatamount of time rather than maybe
just taking the clones and then some things that maybe aren't
worth the square footage to overwinter.
Your zucchinis and most of of your winter squashes really
don't need to be overwintered. They grow very, very quickly.
(34:32):
Plus when they're indoors, they tend to sort of sprawl and
unless you really have a bunch of really good grow lights,
they're not going to do very well.
So it's just not worth taking upthe room or the effort to
overwinter anything you know of your summer squashes or your
zucchinis. Cucumbers, same thing.
Unless you are legitimately running like an indoor setup
(34:55):
where you plan to actually harvest off of these things, it
doesn't make any sense to be trying to overwinter any of
these. The same thing goes for like
your annual greens, whether that's lettuces or spinach or I
don't know, kale or anything like that.
It is just makes more sense to just do succession sewings of
those outdoors instead of tryingto clone them.
(35:17):
And then in terms of overwintering, you can actually
grow fresh specimens of these indoors.
You just need a little bit of a lighting setup and then you can
harvest through, you know throughout the winter off of
these. So there is no need to bring
like your mature specimens of kale or Shard or anything else
indoors. I would just start fresh with
fresh seed. So about some troubleshooting,
(35:40):
if your cuttings in your in yoursoil start to get really wilty
or they start to collapse, you might be leaving too much leaf
load at the top or your humiditymight be too low.
So you can try trimming off thatleaf area, adding a humidity
Dome or a bag, and then just keeping that medium, you know,
(36:00):
barely moist, not not dripping wet.
If you're talking about water propagation, maybe your cuttings
are starting to rot. That could mean that the water
is too warm where you've got it sitting, or that water is
stagnant. So either try moving it to a
cooler spot, change your water more frequently, or if that's
not working, maybe try some perlite or some vermiculite that
(36:24):
is going to, you know, hold thatmoisture level, but maybe not
have it in the water the whole time.
If you're rooting in a medium and you're not seeing any roots
start to pull after three weeks.So if you're doing like your
Peppers or you're doing Rosemary, you might need to bump
up the temperature just a littlebit, make it a little bit warmer
(36:47):
in the area where they're tryingto root and maybe sort of
refresh it. So refresh that cut and cut
some, some the you know, some ofthe end off of it and then use
some fresh hormone, put it back in the soil again and then and
then warm it up a little bit. In terms of overwintering, If
you start to see the leaves drop, if you're you're putting
(37:10):
them either in the dormant or semi dormant stage, this is
normal, right? We're not actively growing.
So it's normal for those leaves to drop.
Just keep an eye on it so it's not dropping like all of the
leaves. If the, if the stems start to
shrivel, then you're likely not giving it enough water.
So if you're in the very dormantstage, you might want to just
(37:32):
give it one really good deep drink and then resume wanting
watering sparingly, which is about, you know, once a month or
so. If you're keeping it in the
house plant stage, give it a really good deep drink and then
you want to probably be wateringabout once a week.
And then if you end up with spider mites, this is probably
the most common pest that we endup seeing indoors in
(37:54):
overwintered plants, but you canalso get aphids as well.
We want to make sure that we're increasing that airflow.
So if you need a fan, that wouldbe great.
Rinse the plant off, do an insecticidal soap treatment on
like a five to seven day cycle until you've completely cleared
out any of the aphids or the spider mites.
For spider mites too, you can also use AQ tip dipped in
(38:16):
rubbing alcohol for really stubborn infestations.
My mom used to do this all the time with her house plants.
You'd get spider mites for whatever reason.
You just go through and you, youknow, you dip your Q-tip into
the rubbing alcohol and you go through and get each one of the
bees and underneath the leaves. And yes it can take some time,
but if you have a really stubborn infestation then this
is really the best way to go. So frequently asked questions.
(38:42):
Can you clone a plant that has had disease?
In most cases I would say skip it.
You want to clean or clone from clean stock only.
Just like when saving seeds. We only want to clone our
biggest and our best plants. The only exception to this would
be if the plant had a disease and it survived and then it went
(39:04):
on to produce beautifully for you throughout the rest of the
season and then you're trying toreproduce that resiliency,
right? In that instance, then yes, go
ahead and clone that. You have a very specific result
in mind, but be sure that you are taking cuttings from
sections of the plant that are currently disease free.
(39:25):
We do not want to be bringing that disease indoors.
And then how long from cutting to getting a transplantable
clone? If you're water propagating, so
your herbs and your tomatoes, that sort of thing, you're
looking at about a week to two weeks.
I have seen this happen in just a matter of like the roots start
(39:46):
pulling in a matter of two or three days.
And so I'm able to pot up in about a week.
Typically you're looking at about a week or so for those
roots to really start to pull and then you're potting up once
those roots are about two incheslong.
So anywhere from a week to 14 days for the plants that you're
rooting in a potting mix of somesort, you're likely looking at
(40:06):
about two to four weeks, sometimes longer depending on
how slow those roots are going. So with these you know the more
woody specimens or those slow growing ones like Peppers.
You definitely didn't have a little bit of patience.
Don't give up. If you don't see after a week or
10 days that there's any roots pulling it can take a really
(40:27):
long time, so just have some patience.
After the first month or so, if you're still not seeing any
results, then you might try refreshing the end of that, that
cutting, dipping it in some morerooting hormone, and sort of
starting the process all over again.
A common question is whether or not you need grow lights and if
you're rooting new plants. Normally just a bright indirect
(40:51):
window is going to be fine. If you don't have a window that
has enough light, you can put itunder lights, but you really
just need like a regular fluorescent light.
That's really enough as long as it's on the, you know the plant
for about 8 hours a day. If you're trying to overwinter
plants and you're doing like thesemi dormant, you know,
houseplant mode, then yes, lights are going to help a lot.
(41:14):
But again, if you are somebody who has house plants and you
have the lights where that houseplant normally sits, you can
just slide them on next to your regular house plants, right?
That level of light is going to be fine for dormant storage.
You definitely don't need grow lights.
Ambient light from whatever source is going to be just fine.
And then what pot size would youwant to overwinter a pepper or
(41:37):
another large plant in? One to three gallons is plenty,
especially since we're going to be pruning these back.
If you have bigger plants that you're trying to do, you can put
them like in a 5 gallon pot. Usually we only do this if we're
planning to actually have them fruit indoors.
So if you're wanting to continueto grow these plants, like your
pepper plants, and you're putting them under grow lights
(41:59):
and you're actively getting themto grow, then yes, you're going
to want it to be in a bigger container.
But I usually just use two gallon nursery pots, dig the
plant up, knock all the dirt outof it, spray it down and
actually trim the roots back a little bit, give it some fresh
potting soil, put it in there and call it good.
OK, so hopefully that has given you an idea of what plants you
(42:20):
can clone and how. Why would we want to do that?
And you know, the plants that you can actually bring in to
overwinter indoors. If this method caught your
attention, remember I've got that free CHEAT SHEET that I
made for you with all the types of plants and they're cloning
method and how to do it and all the good stuff.
Just go to justgrowsomethingpodcast.com
(42:43):
clone and I will put that link for you in the show description.
Until next time, my gardening friends, keep on cultivating
that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.
All right, my gardening friends,it looks like maybe my first
frost is finally ready to hit here and take out the summer
annuals in my garden. And despite me saying that I'm
really ready for the garden to be done for the year, I know I'm
going to be missing it in probably just about a month or
so, and I'm going to have that itch to do something.
(00:22):
If you live in a climate that allows for a very long season or
even some winter gardening, or if you're like me and we tend to
try to cram as much growing intoa shorter season as possible.
Today we are talking about a strategic shortcut.
Cloning your best plants and where it makes sense,
(00:44):
overwintering them so that next season starts weeks ahead of
schedule. So if you've got a pepper plant,
say, that has crushed it this year or a Rosemary plant that
finally is thriving, we're not saying goodbye.
We are making copies. And then maybe we're tucking
those originals in for winter. So today under Score Something,
(01:05):
we're going to talk about cloning versus saving seeds, the
different ways that we can cloneour most productive plants, what
we can overwinter to jump start next season and which ones are
best to avoid by the end. You will have a step by step
workflow that you can follow this weekend to preserve your
best specimens for next season. Let's begin.
(01:27):
Hey, I'm Karen and what started as a small backyard garden 20
years ago turned into a lifelongpassion for growing food.
Now as a market farmer and horticulturist, I want to help
you do the same. On this podcast, I am your
friend in the garden teaching evidence based techniques to
help you grow your favorites andbuild confidence in your own
garden space. So grab your garden journal and
(01:48):
a cup of coffee and get ready tojust grow something.
So we're going to talk a couple of different cloning methods
today. And if you need a reference
sheet for everything that we aretalking about, I've got you.
I made a handout to go with thisepisode so that you will have a
CHEAT SHEET on which plants prefer which type of cloning
(02:12):
method and then how to perform that method.
And then also tips for overwintering.
So you can get that download by going to
justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/cloneand I will leave that link in
the show description. So why would we want to clone
our garden plants rather than saving seed?
(02:33):
And don't get me wrong, seed saving is fantastic and I want
you saving the seeds from your best and most beautiful
specimens every year if they arean open pollinated variety.
But seed saving is sort of a genetic reshuffle if you are not
(02:54):
working with a very stable, openpollinated variety.
So if you grew hybrids and you save the seeds, they are not
necessarily going to reproduce true to type, meaning it may not
be the same tomato for example that you grew this past season.
And even if you are working witha stable variety and you do have
(03:16):
really strong isolation, meaningyou kept that variety from cross
pollinating with any other open pollinated variety and then you
save those seeds, you still aren't guaranteed to get the
same type of growth from that plant the next year.
You're going to get the same variety.
So you're going to get the same type of tomato in general, but
(03:39):
you're not going to get the samegrowth habit necessarily.
Contrary to this, cuttings are clones.
And so if you were super happy with the growth habit this year
of that plant and how well it produced or how well it survived
pressure from certain insects orcertain diseases in your garden
(04:03):
this year, then cloning is goingto keep those exact traits.
It is quite literally the copy and paste button for your
garden. OK, so let's split this into a
couple of different buckets. You have plants that root really
well just in water, and then youhave plants that root really
(04:25):
well or prefer having some rooting hormone and some sort of
a medium to to start rooting in.So things that root really
easily in water are things like herbaceous herbs, specifically
anything that's in the mint family.
So mint or oregano basil really does well with just rooting in
(04:48):
water. Cilantro and parsley can be hit
or miss. You can root them in water.
Sometimes it takes them longer to draw those roots or it make
one or two take one or two triesto actually get this.
But it's worth a shot. And then if it doesn't work for
you, you can always try doing itin a rooting hormone with some
medium. Probably most infamous of of all
(05:11):
of these is tomatoes. You can root the suckers from
your tomato plants super easily,which means you can be out there
pruning those suckers off of your plants during the year,
taking those suckers, dropping them into a jar of water, and
creating a whole new plant. This is really great for people
(05:33):
who are gardening in really, really hot climates where you
have to be very specific about when you are growing your
tomatoes. So in a lot of the more southern
US areas, you are growing tomatoes very, very early in the
year and then you're not growingtomatoes at all during the
hottest part of the summer. But then you can plant again
(05:54):
later on in the year as the weather starts to cool off
because your season is really that long, but it's just too hot
to grow those tomatoes in the summertime.
So if you grow determinate varieties of tomatoes, meaning
they ripen or they mature very, very quickly, and they sort of
all come on in a very short period of time.
(06:14):
And then you take cuttings from those tomato plants, the ones
that are doing the best for you in your garden, and you root
those inside through the summertime when it's too hot for
things to grow outside. And then you turn around and you
replant those cuttings. All of those clones are going to
perform the same way that those ones did in the spring for you
(06:37):
during your late, you know, yourearly fall into your late fall,
you're getting a whole other round of tomatoes.
This also works in areas like mine for a second crop of our
most productive determinant plants.
So if I throw a round of determinant plants out there
that I know we're going to produce fairly early and they're
(06:59):
going to produce, you know, mostof their crop over a three-week
period and then they're pretty much done, I can take those
cuttings and I can do a whole second planting Midsummer
because my summers are not too hot for tomatoes to grow.
As a matter of fact, they love the weather here in the
summertime, with the exception of the humidity.
That's a whole other story. But it's a really great way for
(07:21):
me to take those determinant plants, not have to worry about
starting them all from seed and babying them, getting that same
production quality of the ones that did the best with very,
very little effort. And I can plant those as a
succession. OK, So this is just some reasons
why you might want to go ahead and do clonings rather than, you
know, starting from seed over and over again.
(07:43):
Now, some of the things that prefer to be cloned using a
rooting hormone plus some sort of a medium are things like
Peppers. You can root these in water, but
they are definitely much more reliable in a mix with that
rooting hormone. And if the idea of using a
rooting hormone is kind of scaryto you, trust me, it is super
(08:05):
basic. It is super easy.
It's actually very easy to find.You can get little bottles of
just powdered rooting hormone from the garden center.
You just look. You can also order it online.
There's a lot of different ways you can get it.
It's it's very inexpensive. You're quite literally just
dipping the end of the cutting into this powder before you put
(08:26):
it into a medium like perlite orvermiculite or a seed starting
mix. OK.
The same thing goes with eggplant.
It's also going to prefer this rooting hormone and using some
sort of medium. Do you have to use the rooting
hormone? Not necessarily, but I find that
you definitely get better success, especially with things
like Rosemary because it's semi woody.
(08:49):
It definitely benefits from using that hormone and then any
of those softwood cuttings from time or stage.
So we have these perennials in our gardens that are going to
put on softwood growth early in the season.
You can take cuttings of those and dip them in the hormone and
start them that way. You can also take some of the
(09:12):
semi hardwood later on and do this.
And so it's definitely, you know, more successful to use the
rooting hormone, but you can just try popping them into some
seed starting mix. You're just going to have to
make sure it stays really, really well watered.
We also have sort of a third group and this is the group of
(09:32):
plants that can be started or cloned from the layering method.
And so things like strawberries with their runners, right, Those
above ground stolons that they send out, cane berries, things
like pumpkins or squash or cucumbers, anything that has a
vining section. So we'll talk about the layering
method sort of later on. These may or may not necessarily
(09:54):
be things that you want to clone, but there's always the
possibility. And so of course, we're going to
teach you how to do it right. So we're going to start with the
water propagation method. This is really, really easy.
You get very fast results if you're using the right plant and
it's kind of gives you a little bit of easy success to get you
started on your cloning journey.So the first thing that you want
(10:16):
to do is just take about a four to six inch cutting from the
plant that you're trying to clone.
Now with tomatoes, again, the easiest thing to do is just
those suckers that you're cutting off.
But you can really take just a tip cutting of just about any
one of these herbaceous sort of plants or your your flowering
annuals root like tomatoes. You want to strip the leaves
(10:40):
from like the lower third of that cutting that you take off
you. We don't want leaves sitting in
the water that we're rooting in.So just pop the cuttings into a
jar of water. Make sure that you have leaves
out of the water line. We don't want it to get the
water funky because that's what's going to happen.
And then you're just going to take this jar and you're going
(11:01):
to put it in a spot in the house.
It's got bright indirect light. We don't want like a really hot
S facing window that's going to cook these plants.
I have a window in my kitchen that is perfect for this water
propagation method. It faces east, so it gets the
(11:22):
early morning sun. And then as the sun moves over
the house, it's just getting ambient light.
And it seems to be like the perfect spot.
So think something like that where it's just getting morning
sun or some really good ambient light.
You do want to change the water every couple of days.
We don't want that water to get stagnant.
And then after, you know, a weekor two, you're going to start
seeing these plants pull roots. We call it pulling roots and you
(11:46):
know, with tomatoes and basil and mint, I see this pretty
quickly as long as the conditions are right, that light
is necessary. So we want to make sure that
it's getting the right amount oflight.
Once you see these start to pullroots, it can look like little
like sort of white bumps at 1st and then those roots are going
(12:07):
to start coming out after they're about two inches long or
so. Then you can pot that plant up
into a lightweight potting soil and now you have a whole brand
new plant, right? It's literally that easy.
And I do this all the time. In fact, I've done it
unintentionally before when I have cut some basil and brought
(12:29):
it into the house and I didn't use all of it.
So I just threw it into a jar and stuck it just in my kitchen
and it got enough light where itstarted to pull roofs.
So, you know, it can happen unintentionally too.
That's how easy it is. Now if you want to use the the
rooting hormone and medium method, this is great.
Some plants just do better goingstraight into a medium with just
(12:51):
a little bit of help. So it's the same idea, clean
pruners and you're taking a cutting.
But you also want to make sure that you have a small pot or
tray on standby that has some seed starting mix or like a one
to one mix of perlite to vermiculite or maybe just one or
the other. These plants aren't super picky
and then some rooting hormone, either that powder or there's
(13:13):
also a gel that you can use. In this instance, you want about
a four to six inch cutting againand we're still going to remove
those lower leaves. You do want to make sure that
you have a good cluster of leaves at the top.
The key here is to take a pencilor something and pre poke a hole
in the medium that you're going to use to grow these in because
(13:35):
you don't want the rooting hormone to wipe off of of the
cutting as you poke it into the soil.
OK, so poke a little hole in your growing medium.
You're going to take your cutting and you're going to dip
the cut end into some water and then dip it into your hormone
powder and just kind of tap the extra off and then put that into
(13:57):
your little pre poked hole. And then just firm the medium up
around the stem. It's going to stand up if you've
got it deep enough. And that's it.
That's all you have to do if youwant to maybe miss it a little
bit. And a lot of time these plants
do better if they have some sortof a clear Dome or bag or
(14:18):
something to help track the humidity in.
So I have just used like a loosesalad bag and pop it over the
top. You can use a little plastic
sandwich bag, anything over the top that's going to be open at
the bottom to let the airflow come in.
But it's going to help to trap the moisture a little bit.
If you are doing this in the summertime and you live some
(14:39):
place where it's humid, you can absolutely do this outside.
You don't have to worry about the bag.
I have done this with what was it that I did this past summer?
Oh, mosquito plant, citronella. I was taking cousins of
citronella and I just had them outside out near my greenhouse
in an area where they were a little bit out of the direct
sun, but it was definitely humid.
(15:01):
And so they rooted just fine. But again, you know, I made sure
to poke the hole in that medium and dip them into the hormone
and pop them in. And I think I had about a 75%
success rate on those guys. So just you want it to be humid
and then again, you're going to put it in some place that's got
some bright indirect light. Now with this method, if you
(15:22):
were covering it like this, especially if it's dry in your
house, you're still going to want to sort of vent that plant
a little bit. So make sure that that plastic
is loose around the bottom. And you, you know, every once in
a while, especially like when you're watering it, you can take
that off and just give it some air, little bit of water and
(15:42):
then go ahead and cover it back up again.
You want the the growing medium to remain damp.
We don't want it to be sopping wet.
OK. And like I said, great
candidates for this are things like Peppers, eggplant,
Rosemary, thyme, sage, anything that is a slower grower and also
(16:03):
anything that has got sort of that woody stem to it.
Now there is a difference once we start potting these up
between the the roots that grow in the water and the roots that
grow in the potting medium. And so when we're potting up our
clones, we kind of have to understand the difference
(16:24):
between water roots and soil roots.
They differ a little bit in their structure and their
adaptation to their respective environment.
So when you look at water roots,you're going to see they are
typically thinner, they are white and they are a bit more
fragile than soil roots. The soil grown roots are a
(16:45):
little bit thicker, they're brown, they're sturdier.
OK. When we're potting up, we have
to remember that these water roots have developed in a low
oxygen environment. They've been in water.
And yes, there is oxygen in water, obviously, and by us, you
know, changing out that water aswe are pulling those roots,
(17:08):
that's helping to keep that oxygen refreshed.
But it's still a waterlogged condition.
And that's OK. These these roots are grown
specifically to be able to pull,you know, nutrients from water.
Soil roots are a little bit different and they're built to
transport water and nutrients from soil into the plant.
And they're also meant to anchorthat plant firmly in in place.
(17:32):
So whereas the water roots are adapted to survive in water or
very wet soil, soil roots are optimized for obviously growing
in the soil for terrestrial plants, right?
So what this means is if we wantto successfully propagate plants
in water and then transition them from water to a soil
(17:54):
environment, that they're going to need a little extra attention
sometimes to get off to their best start.
So if you were to take your tomato clone from that jar of
water and then take it out directly into the garden, plant
it, and just sort of let it fendfor itself, you're likely going
to get less than a 50% survival rate at best.
(18:17):
Unless you are in a particularlyrainy season.
Those water roots aren't going to have the structure number
one, to really be able to hold that plant up very well and #2
to be able to pull water and nutrients from the soil.
So you either would need to be sure that you are planting that
plant fairly deep and that you are watering very, very
(18:40):
frequently after transplanting into the garden and then slowly
backing off as the plant developed those terrestrial
roots, which is going to be kindof a guessing game.
I mean, is it possible that you could just like take a cutting
from a tomato plant and shove itright into the garden then and
there and allow it to root that way?
Yeah, sure. If you can pay attention to it
(19:02):
and keep it from getting super wilty and make sure that you are
watering it a ton. And if you're doing this from a
cutting that was inside and you're taking it outside, well,
now you're going to have to worry about the elements in the
garden as the plant gets settledin since we haven't like gotten
that poor plant acclimated to the outside yet, right?
Or you could just pot it up intoa smaller container.
(19:24):
So we're taking it out of the water.
We're putting it into a potting mix in a small container.
We're making sure to keep that soil very, very moist for like
the first week to 10 days and then slowly back off.
Because then if it's in that little container, we can check
the progress of those roots by just tipping the plant out of
(19:46):
its pot every once in a while tocheck with that root mass is
doing. So kind of like what we would do
with a seedling that we've started from seed to make sure
that the roots aren't getting root bound in there.
We want to check and see what that root mass is doing.
So we can do the same thing withthese to make sure that those
soil roots are sort of. Forming and then we know once
(20:06):
it's gotten itself established in the pot and you can see that
good root growth, then we can take it outside and we can
harden that plant off in the same way that we would any other
seedling before putting it out into the ground.
So that really is the best approach for something that we
have rooted in the water. Now if with our clones that are
(20:27):
rooted with a hormone and in some sort of potting medium,
obviously we don't have to quiteworry about that transition from
the water roots to those terrestrial soil roots.
But you still want to go throughthe hardening off process to
make sure that that plant is acclimated to the outside.
In fact, in both cases, this is especially important if you have
taken these cuttings from like end of season plants outdoors to
(20:53):
create clones, but then you've had them indoors all winter
before planting them out in spring.
So do yourself and the plants a favor and make sure that they're
hardened off before you put themback outside into the garden.
OK, So what about that group of plants that really does prefer
the layering method? Layering means that you are
rooting a plant while it is still attached to the parent
(21:19):
plant and then you are separating them later.
This has a few advantages because it reduces the stress
from the baby plant. Basically, you know you're
letting it grow these roots while it's still being fed by
the parent plant, and so you're not worried about nutrients or
anything at that point. And then once it has really
(21:41):
rooted in, then you just kind ofcut ties with that parent plant
and you have a whole new plant. This is very apparent when we
have strawberries. We have strawberries that send
out those runners. They have those above ground
stolons. And at the very end of that
stolon is a new little baby leafy plant.
And if you pin that runner into like a small pot of mix or you
(22:06):
know, if you want to do it rightin the ground, this is the most
the most common way to do it is just to let it root right in the
spot in the garden where you want it to kind of spread.
But if you want to make clones of your strawberry plants, you
can plant them elsewhere or you want to put them into like a
green stock planter or somethinglike that.
You can just put small pots of mix right beside the mother
(22:27):
plant and just pin that runner into that small pot.
You just have to keep them evenly moist.
And then once the roots have settled into that pot, again, we
can kind of tip it and see whether or not that root mass is
formed. Once those roots fill that pot,
then OK, snip. We're going to we're going to
cut that umbilical that's connecting the mother plant to
(22:47):
that runner, to that little babyplant.
And now you have a whole new plant that you can plant
elsewhere. OK.
When we do this with cane berries, so raspberries or
blackberries, generally speaking, you just take this
year's new growth and you can dowhat we call tip layering.
So you're going to bend the tip of that Raspberry or BlackBerry
(23:09):
cane into the soil and pin it there, and that is automatically
going to start roots. This is how BlackBerry plants in
the wild reproduce. They basically just kind of lean
over and they tip themselves into the soil and that new tip
roots and now you have a whole new plant and just kind of
continues on from there. That's how these BlackBerry
(23:31):
brambles form. You can do the same thing with
your ones that you're growing athome with some Raspberry plants.
They do better and some blackberries too.
They do better by taking soft wood cuttings and doing that
whole, you know, rooting hormoneinto a, you know, a, a potting
soil. So you can absolutely do it that
(23:52):
way too. Elderberry is also a good one
for this too. You can take, you know, fresh
growth from an elderberry plant at the end of the season and you
can cut them and you can root them in the same way, a little
rooting hormone and, and stick it in the soil and you're good
to go. And often times, depending on
where you are, elderberry isn't going to need the rooting
hormone. You can quite literally cut them
(24:13):
and shove them into the soil andyou're going to get a whole new
plant. Just make sure when you're doing
these clones that you're labeling them.
So especially if you have multiple varieties, like, OK,
I've got these raspberries and I've got these blackberries, and
they all look very similar. When they're coming up as new
plants, you want to make sure that you are labeling them so
you're not mixing up the varieties.
You know in your Berry patch. You can also do this layering
(24:37):
sort of technique with any of your vining curcubits.
So pumpkins, winter squashes, cucumbers, right?
We can do this same thing. This is especially helpful with
cucumbers because sometimes, depending on where you are, your
cucumbers are sort of short lived or they just don't seem to
(24:59):
produce as much in the later weeks as they do early on.
So the easy thing to do is just to pick a healthy internode.
Remember, the internode is that spot on the stem that is between
the nodes. The nodes are where those leaves
come out, so all you have to do is pick a healthy section of
that and just kind of scrape or nick the underside really
lightly lay it down and pin it to the soil and then cover it
(25:23):
with like an inch of the same soil or a mix of some sort and
just leave the tip exposed. In about a week or two, you're
going to have roots that are coming out from where you made
that nick and then you can just cut it off and put it in a pot
and now you have a brand new plant.
I mean, it really is that easy. So that's the layering approach.
(25:44):
And you can also often do this with house plants too.
That's a whole other story. All right, so that's cloning.
What about overwintering plants?When do we maybe want to just
keep the whole plant? Some species are perennials in
frost free areas, so like Peppers, right?
(26:05):
It's not a perennial in my area because we have frosts in
freezes. But if you don't get a frost,
yeah, Peppers tend to grow year round.
So those types of plants can absolutely be carried through
the the winter, you know, if we give them the right conditions.
When we might want to do this isif we have a plant that is
either really slow to mature or it is exceptionally productive.
(26:30):
And for me, this generally meansmy pepper plants, I always call
Peppers here is sort of a fall crop because yes, they start to
produce in the summertime, but they really shine like late
summer. Early fall is when I have tons
and tons of Peppers and they're usually the last thing that I'm
picking all the way up to our first frost.
(26:53):
I still have pounds of jalapenosand cayenne Peppers and bell
Peppers out there in the gardensright now, just waiting on the
first frost to hit. So if I have these plants that
take so long to start producing during the season, it might be
beneficial to me to be able to dig up a handful of those plants
(27:18):
to bring them into over winter so that I can put them back out
again in the early spring as soon as the soil warms up.
So I have a much more mature specimen that's going to start
producing right away. In addition, I could also be
taking cuttings of of those plants.
So I'm picking the best and the most beautiful specimens to
(27:39):
bring in an overwinter. Then I'm also taking cuttings.
So I'm reproducing that genetics.
I'm cloning it literally so thatI will not only have those
larger mature plants to put backoutside in the garden to start
reproducing or start producing immediately, but then I'm also
going to have all the little baby clones that are also going
to get planted out right. So I'm kind of, you know,
(28:00):
covering my bases on both ends. So if we're talking about
Peppers and in most instances it's any plant that we're going
to overwinter, you have two options.
You either do sort of a dormant storage where you're pruning
these plants back, you're givingthem very minimal light, very
minimal water, and you're keeping them at around 50 to
(28:22):
60°F and they just kind of sit there, right?
That's dormant storage. Then we have semi dormant or
what I call houseplant mode. So you're still doing a little
bit of a pruning, but you are keeping them at, you know, your
house room temperature. So anywhere from 60 to 70°F is
(28:43):
really good under a more bright light.
And that is going to just sort of maintain them.
You're going to give them water more frequently.
You are going to give them a little bit of plant food, but
that's going to keep them not actively growing, but just kind
of hanging out and staying green.
This is the one that I've had the most success with the
(29:05):
dormant storage for me. And I think part of my problem
was before that I that I pruned back too much.
I've seen videos with Peppers and eggplant and these other
types of plants that you might overwinter where they get pruned
back really heavily and you're stripping all the foliage and
you're just cutting it down to nothing but a little Y.
And then you're tucking them away with, you know, very little
(29:28):
light and just maybe water once a month.
And I have always had a very difficult time bringing a plant
back out of that deep of a dormant stage.
So I tend to lean towards even if I'm doing dormant storage,
leaving some of that those leaves on there to kind of keep
them, I don't know, a little bitless dormant, I guess through
(29:50):
the winter time. But the semi dormant or
houseplant variety or mode of this is has definitely worked
better for me. You can do this with with
eggplant as well. The the woodier types tend to
overwinter better than maybe your small miniature type
eggplants. You can also do this with herbs
too. So if you have, you know, the
big woody herbs like Rosemary that maybe isn't going to
(30:11):
survive over the winter, but you've spent all summer growing
this beautiful big Rosemary plant, Absolutely bring it in.
Treat it like a house plant. You can do the same with thyme
or sage or oregano. The the more herbaceous ones
don't seem to do as well. Like you can do parsley as long
as it's getting enough light. But for me, basil has never
(30:33):
really overwintered well. It always seems to just drop its
leaves off. And of course, that's the part
that we want to use, right? So I tend to do cuttings from
basil and just root them that way rather than trying to
overwinter them. If you're going to do this, you
do want to change out that soil.So when you dig up the plant,
(30:56):
you really want to sort of shakeout those roots, spray all of
that soil out of there and you want to pot them up into fresh
potting mix. Make sure that you are checking
for insects. If you need to use an
insecticidal soap or something to keep any of those extra
little buggies outside because you don't want them inside,
(31:16):
right? And that's going to give you a
better chance. Make sure that you're giving
yourself enough time to do this to where these these pots, these
plants can settle into their pots after you have refreshed
this mix. And that's going to give you
that advantage of being able to bring those big plants back
outside again and and get them started in the spring off to a
(31:38):
much faster start. Tomatoes can technically
overwinter indoors, but unless you really have good strong
lights and a lot of space, I really do recommend just taking
clones and starting them over again rather than dragging a big
old plant inside. Because again, the tomatoes
(31:58):
don't take quite as long to start producing as like a pepper
plant does or an eggplant does. And so it may not be worth it to
you to try to bring in a tomato plant and try to overwinter it.
You're just better off taking taking those clones, rooting
them in water, and then treatingthem as little baby plants
through the winter time until it's time to plant those
(32:19):
outside. So to decide whether or not this
is something that you want to doin terms of overwintering, just
kind of, you know, use your USDAgrowing zone and your particular
house conditions to decide. So if you are somewhere like
zone 8 through 10 where you havemild winters but you do still
(32:41):
see like a frost or a freeze, oftentimes you can overwinter
Peppers and eggplant and these things outside as long as you
have some protection or you're in unheated greenhouse.
As long as you can cover them and keep them protected when you
do actually have a frost. The if you do do this, I would
still say take some cuttings as some insurance to if you really
(33:04):
want to keep that plant going, just to make sure that you know,
if you do get a hard freeze thattakes out your plants, you still
have a backup, right? If you're in zones six to seven.
So this is more like my climate.I would say overwinter those
plants indoors, you know, go dormant if your house is is
regularly, you know, I kept it avery cool temperature, semi
(33:27):
dormant. If you've got enough bright
light, eggplant likes a little bit more light than the Peppers.
So just kind of keep that in mind.
That's the way that I have done it most successfully is that
sort of houseplant mode. If you were in zones 5 or
colder, I would stick to clones plus maybe a few of your best
(33:48):
plants in pots if you have a bright enough light.
Dormant storage does work great if you've got a 50 to 60°F
space, but keep in mind that those plants are going to be
indoors for longer in your area than in other regions just
because they're going to go backoutside much later in the spring
because you take longer to warm up.
(34:10):
So you have to decide whether ornot it's worth it to you to keep
a a large plant indoors for thatamount of time rather than maybe
just taking the clones and then some things that maybe aren't
worth the square footage to overwinter.
Your zucchinis and most of of your winter squashes really
don't need to be overwintered. They grow very, very quickly.
(34:32):
Plus when they're indoors, they tend to sort of sprawl and
unless you really have a bunch of really good grow lights,
they're not going to do very well.
So it's just not worth taking upthe room or the effort to
overwinter anything you know of your summer squashes or your
zucchinis. Cucumbers, same thing.
Unless you are legitimately running like an indoor setup
(34:55):
where you plan to actually harvest off of these things, it
doesn't make any sense to be trying to overwinter any of
these. The same thing goes for like
your annual greens, whether that's lettuces or spinach or I
don't know, kale or anything like that.
It is just makes more sense to just do succession sewings of
those outdoors instead of tryingto clone them.
(35:17):
And then in terms of overwintering, you can actually
grow fresh specimens of these indoors.
You just need a little bit of a lighting setup and then you can
harvest through, you know throughout the winter off of
these. So there is no need to bring
like your mature specimens of kale or Shard or anything else
indoors. I would just start fresh with
fresh seed. So about some troubleshooting,
(35:40):
if your cuttings in your in yoursoil start to get really wilty
or they start to collapse, you might be leaving too much leaf
load at the top or your humiditymight be too low.
So you can try trimming off thatleaf area, adding a humidity
Dome or a bag, and then just keeping that medium, you know,
(36:00):
barely moist, not not dripping wet.
If you're talking about water propagation, maybe your cuttings
are starting to rot. That could mean that the water
is too warm where you've got it sitting, or that water is
stagnant. So either try moving it to a
cooler spot, change your water more frequently, or if that's
not working, maybe try some perlite or some vermiculite that
(36:24):
is going to, you know, hold thatmoisture level, but maybe not
have it in the water the whole time.
If you're rooting in a medium and you're not seeing any roots
start to pull after three weeks.So if you're doing like your
Peppers or you're doing Rosemary, you might need to bump
up the temperature just a littlebit, make it a little bit warmer
(36:47):
in the area where they're tryingto root and maybe sort of
refresh it. So refresh that cut and cut
some, some the you know, some ofthe end off of it and then use
some fresh hormone, put it back in the soil again and then and
then warm it up a little bit. In terms of overwintering, If
you start to see the leaves drop, if you're you're putting
(37:10):
them either in the dormant or semi dormant stage, this is
normal, right? We're not actively growing.
So it's normal for those leaves to drop.
Just keep an eye on it so it's not dropping like all of the
leaves. If the, if the stems start to
shrivel, then you're likely not giving it enough water.
So if you're in the very dormantstage, you might want to just
(37:32):
give it one really good deep drink and then resume wanting
watering sparingly, which is about, you know, once a month or
so. If you're keeping it in the
house plant stage, give it a really good deep drink and then
you want to probably be wateringabout once a week.
And then if you end up with spider mites, this is probably
the most common pest that we endup seeing indoors in
(37:54):
overwintered plants, but you canalso get aphids as well.
We want to make sure that we're increasing that airflow.
So if you need a fan, that wouldbe great.
Rinse the plant off, do an insecticidal soap treatment on
like a five to seven day cycle until you've completely cleared
out any of the aphids or the spider mites.
For spider mites too, you can also use AQ tip dipped in
(38:16):
rubbing alcohol for really stubborn infestations.
My mom used to do this all the time with her house plants.
You'd get spider mites for whatever reason.
You just go through and you, youknow, you dip your Q-tip into
the rubbing alcohol and you go through and get each one of the
bees and underneath the leaves. And yes it can take some time,
but if you have a really stubborn infestation then this
is really the best way to go. So frequently asked questions.
(38:42):
Can you clone a plant that has had disease?
In most cases I would say skip it.
You want to clean or clone from clean stock only.
Just like when saving seeds. We only want to clone our
biggest and our best plants. The only exception to this would
be if the plant had a disease and it survived and then it went
(39:04):
on to produce beautifully for you throughout the rest of the
season and then you're trying toreproduce that resiliency,
right? In that instance, then yes, go
ahead and clone that. You have a very specific result
in mind, but be sure that you are taking cuttings from
sections of the plant that are currently disease free.
(39:25):
We do not want to be bringing that disease indoors.
And then how long from cutting to getting a transplantable
clone? If you're water propagating, so
your herbs and your tomatoes, that sort of thing, you're
looking at about a week to two weeks.
I have seen this happen in just a matter of like the roots start
(39:46):
pulling in a matter of two or three days.
And so I'm able to pot up in about a week.
Typically you're looking at about a week or so for those
roots to really start to pull and then you're potting up once
those roots are about two incheslong.
So anywhere from a week to 14 days for the plants that you're
rooting in a potting mix of somesort, you're likely looking at
(40:06):
about two to four weeks, sometimes longer depending on
how slow those roots are going. So with these you know the more
woody specimens or those slow growing ones like Peppers.
You definitely didn't have a little bit of patience.
Don't give up. If you don't see after a week or
10 days that there's any roots pulling it can take a really
(40:27):
long time, so just have some patience.
After the first month or so, if you're still not seeing any
results, then you might try refreshing the end of that, that
cutting, dipping it in some morerooting hormone, and sort of
starting the process all over again.
A common question is whether or not you need grow lights and if
you're rooting new plants. Normally just a bright indirect
(40:51):
window is going to be fine. If you don't have a window that
has enough light, you can put itunder lights, but you really
just need like a regular fluorescent light.
That's really enough as long as it's on the, you know the plant
for about 8 hours a day. If you're trying to overwinter
plants and you're doing like thesemi dormant, you know,
houseplant mode, then yes, lights are going to help a lot.
(41:14):
But again, if you are somebody who has house plants and you
have the lights where that houseplant normally sits, you can
just slide them on next to your regular house plants, right?
That level of light is going to be fine for dormant storage.
You definitely don't need grow lights.
Ambient light from whatever source is going to be just fine.
And then what pot size would youwant to overwinter a pepper or
(41:37):
another large plant in? One to three gallons is plenty,
especially since we're going to be pruning these back.
If you have bigger plants that you're trying to do, you can put
them like in a 5 gallon pot. Usually we only do this if we're
planning to actually have them fruit indoors.
So if you're wanting to continueto grow these plants, like your
pepper plants, and you're putting them under grow lights
(41:59):
and you're actively getting themto grow, then yes, you're going
to want it to be in a bigger container.
But I usually just use two gallon nursery pots, dig the
plant up, knock all the dirt outof it, spray it down and
actually trim the roots back a little bit, give it some fresh
potting soil, put it in there and call it good.
OK, so hopefully that has given you an idea of what plants you
(42:20):
can clone and how. Why would we want to do that?
And you know, the plants that you can actually bring in to
overwinter indoors. If this method caught your
attention, remember I've got that free CHEAT SHEET that I
made for you with all the types of plants and they're cloning
method and how to do it and all the good stuff.
Just go to justgrowsomethingpodcast.com
(42:43):
clone and I will put that link for you in the show description.
Until next time, my gardening friends, keep on cultivating
that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.
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