Plant Propagation for

Beginners
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Want to get back to nature, but can’t leave your
apartment? Become a plant parent. We will go
through some top tips on getting started with
houseplants and growing your collection the
natural way.
If you’re just starting your planting journey, these three
plants come highly recommended as easy to love (aka
hard to kill):
● ZZ plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia)
● Snake plant (Sansevieria)
● Pothos aka Devil’s Ivy (Epipremnum aureum)
They all adapt well to varied apartment environments, they’re very
forgiving of low light and neglect, and they’re easy to propagate.
AGENDA
1. Sexual Reproduction
2. Asexual Reproduction

● Cuttings
● Layering
● División
● Budding and Grafting

3. Plant Nodes
4. Roots

PLANT TIME
Tools Needed
• Sharp scissors or an X-Acto knife
• Rubbing alcohol or a mixture of one part bleach, nine parts water.
• Glasses full of water to hold cuttings.
• Pot(s) for planting
• Indoor or all-purpose potting soil for planting
• Coarse Sand
• Vermiculite
• Soil
• Water
• Mixture of peat and perlite
• Rooting Medium (optional)
Sexual Propagation

Sexual propagation involves the union of the pollen

(male) with the egg (female) to produce a seed. The seed
is made up of three main parts: the outer seed coat, which
protects the seed; a food reserve (e.g., the endosperm);
and the embryo, which is the young plant itself. When a
seed is mature and put in a favorable environment, it will
germinate, or begin active growth.
What Does it Mean to Propagate Plants?
Propagation is the act of creating a new
plant from an existing one—asexual
reproduction, right before your eyes. It’s a
somewhat simple way to expand your
collection and grow your love of plants. And
because you’re not starting from seeds, it’s
relatively quick.
 Propagation or Asexual Reproduction
The major methods of asexual propagation are cuttings, layering, division,
budding and grafting. Cuttings involve rooting a severed piece of the parent
plant; layering involves rooting a part of the parent and then severing it; and
budding and grafting is joining two plant parts from different varieties.

A B C D
 Cuttings
A cutting is a vegetative plant part which is severed from the
parent plant in order to regenerate itself; thereby forming a whole
new plant.
• Stem
• Root
Types • Tip
of • Medial
Cuttings • Single Eye
• Double Eye
• Heal
Stems still attached to their parent Layering
plant may form roots where they touch
a rooting medium. When severed from
the parent plant, the rooted stem
becomes a new plant. This method of
vegetative propagation, called layering,
is highly successful because it helps the
cutting avoid shortages of water and
carbon dioxide that often affect
cuttings from other methods of
propagation. Rooting medium should
provide aeration and a constant supply
of moisture. Some plants like the spider
plant layer themselves naturally.
Air Layering is used to
propagate some indoor
plants with thick stems, or
to rejuvenate them when
they become leggy. Slit the
stem just below a node.
Pry the slit open with a
toothpick. Surround the
wound with wet
sphagnum moss and tie in
place. When roots pervade
the moss, cut the plant off
below the root ball.
 Division and Separation

You can divide plants with more than

one rooted crown and plant the
crowns separately If the stems are
not joined, gently pull apart the
plants. If crowns are united by
horizontal stems, cut the stems and
roots with a sharp knife to minimize
injury. Divisions of some plants
should be dusted with a fungicide
before they are replanted. Division
commonly is used on snake plants,
iris, prayer plants, and daylilies.
 Grafting and Budding
Grafting and budding are techniques of asexual plant propagation that join
plant parts so they will grow as one plant. These methods are used to
propagate cultivars that will not root well as cuttings or whose own root
systems are inadequate. One or more new cultivars can be added to existing
fruit and nut trees by grafting or budding. The portion of the cultivar that is
to be propagated is called the scion. It consists of a piece of shoot with
dormant buds that will produce the stem and branches. The rootstock, or
stock, provides the new plant’s root system and sometimes the lower part of
the stem. The cambium is a layer of cells located between the wood and bark
of a stem from which new bark and wood cells originate. Four conditions
must be met for grafting to be successful: the scion and rootstock must be
compatible; each must be at the proper physiological stage; the cambial
layers of the scion and stock must meet; and the graft union must be kept
moist until the wound has healed.
A node is a set of growth tips, Nodes
almost always nestled in the
elbow of two fan leaves. Each of
these growth nodes can become
a new cola if exposed to light
and air.
If plants could walk they would not need roots
 Water -vs- Soil Roots
Strangely enough the roots that a plant produces in water are different
from roots it produces in soil, soil roots are thicker ad sturdier, all the
better for finding and taking in water from the environment. As plants
that live in water have no issues finding and retaining water, often they
make smaller and more fragile roots. You’ve got to take this into
account when moving a water propagated plant into soil, or it may not
survive the move.

Plants will differ widely in how long they take to produce roots in water.
Generally, when you see a few inch-long roots, you can move your
cutting from water into soil. Waiting into there are several roots will
increase the chance of survival during the transplant. But, you don’t
want the roots to be too long, as they can easily get tangled.
WATER SOIL