Kitchen Garden Forum

Following on from the earlier threat about currants, I've never tried this and wonder if cuttings kept from currant bushes will develop roots if kept in rainwater, rather than planted in soil.

I always regenerate my basil by snipping off cuttings and keeping them in water, where they usually grow new roots within a week. I wondered whether hard wood cuttings from fruit bushes would perform the same way, or would simply rot after a period of being submerged in water. Have already pruned mine so it's too late to experiment this year.

Hi Primrose,
Many herbaceous plants will sprout in water but when it comes to hardwood cuttings it is another ballgame.
By all means 'suck it and see' but I have grave reservations using this method for Currants.
Even herbaceous plants will sprout good roots but perish at the transfer to soil stage.
With hardwood cuttings they need to callus over and I feel that in water this process will not take place. On true hardwood cuttings the roots do not emerge until next spring and in water, for this perod of time, I suspect they will have rotted.
JB.

With this method you surely get roots but it is a false gain as they receive a setback on potting up. An open, damp, gritty medium such as 50:50 peat:sand is a better bet, when potted up most of the roots survive, indeed no hurry to pot up as you can feed them where they are for some time.This isn't my original idea, this is the expert advice. Full marks JB
Allan

Good Lord,
Does this means that after 30 odd years as a professional propagator and employer that I learn that all those years I was actually doing the right thing and that the worthless pieces of paper that I hold are not quite so useless after all.
Allan, I very much doubt if you will even get roots on a Currant Hard Wood Cutting immersed in water because it would be deprived of Oxygen which is needed to allow the end of the cutting to callous over. But hey who am I to say anything!
Suck it and see if you want to prove me wrong but I for one will not be bothering.
JB.

The following proves nothing- just(true)stories of freak rootings. Friend of mine found where the deer were getting in and he cut a branch from a nearby oran (alder). It was between 3 and 4 inches thick. Hammered it into the gap. A month or two later the thing was producing growth, and it did actually root!
A long time ago, I was trying to layer a climbing Sutter's Gold rose- yellow roses hard from cuttings and all that. Stem was close to half an inch thick at the bend where I'd wounded it.Just as I was finishing tying the end upright to a cane the damned thing broke in the ground under the heavy stone. The parent-side end came pinging out of the ground, the end jagged. I made one or two observations in Anglo-Saxon and left it as it was. The bit in the ground was rooted and growing away in a couple of months! I think it was something I said.

I.