Propagating Hydrangeas & Roses from Cuttings, Extreme Garden Maintenance in the Hydrangea Room

Well, hey friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day out there in your gardens today We need to do some extreme garden maintenance in the hydrangea room And i'm probably going to have to follow this video up with another one titled probably the same thing extreme garden maintenance in the raised bed area Because oh my word i've been gone every weekend in august and the garden looks like a hot mess Yeah, there's no other way to put it nicely. Everything looks like a hot mess So we're going to be doing a lot of weeding today cutting things back to try to improve airflow in the garden But I want to start our day off with a fun project. I want to do some hydrangea propagation I have an entire video on propagating hydrangeas By just rooting them in water and then transferring them to soil But it's late august and it's a really great and easy time to take hydrangea cuttings Stick them directly into soil and put them underneath your lighting system Where you can overwinter them for the winter season and then plant them out late april So let's grab snips a pencil or a paintbrush rooting hormone and some potting soil and we will get right to work Also, what is going on? What is this? What is this? You know what? I'm definitely going to have to change my outfit because i'm getting bit on the legs right now So we'll start out in shorts, but i'm sure we'll end up in a beekeeper suit by the end of this video So today i'm going to be taking cuttings from a big leaf or also called a microphylla hydrangea You can see they have the big beautiful glossy leaves These produce white pink or blue blooms. This one produces blue or pink blooms Now this is the hydrangea that we propagated in that prior video. I'll show you an overlay of the mother plant She's over in the driveway garden and she existed prior to us moving in And so this is the clone we made of her probably three or four years ago in that old video So i'm going to take some cuttings from this plant and some cuttings from the mother plant over in the driveway garden So i'm going to be taking semi-ripe or semi hardwood cuttings today, which is this year's growth that has hardened up So if I were to try to bend this hydrangea stem, it doesn't really give too much like brand new growth wood That would be a softwood cutting we've got softwood brand new Semi-ripe or semi hardwood that's this year's growth, but it's hardened up and then we have hardwood. That's the previous year's growth So let's go ahead and take this cutting what I want to do is cut right below a node Find a set of leaves cut right underneath that so right here is where I want to cut Okay Next thing I want to do is I want to take these leaves off these lower leaves So the plant can root from the base it can also root from the sides here i'm going to take these next two leaves off I want this node under the soil level two to give me a second chance at rooting I'm going to take the next set of leaves off and then i'm also going to cut the top leaves And i'm going to leave that much left So what happens is you take a cutting from a plant and you cut off This set of leaves and this set of leaves so that the plant can root from there I eliminate these leaves and half the leaf up here So that the plant doesn't die while rooting because the plant is going to continue to transpire which means Lose moisture and if it was trying to hydrate all of those leaves that we just cut off The cutting would most likely fail because the plant is putting all of its energy into keeping all these leaves alive So we decrease the surface area of the leaves and then we have a much better chance Of this cutting rooting. I took a lot more cuttings from the mother plant over in the driveway garden Ideally, I want to select a stem that did not produce a flower this growing season But sometimes that can be really hard if you have a hydrangea that performed really well It might be covered in blooms this time of the year. So first choice choose a cutting That did not bloom Cut off all these lower leaves I don't need the cutting to be that big decrease the surface area of the top leaves to avoid moisture loss, but Let's say like this one This one right here It would be flowering this fall. So what I want to do with this particular cutting Go ahead and cut these two leaves these two leaves But then I would also go ahead and just remove the bloom itself so that the plant is no longer trying to bloom My understanding is if a stem has flowered this growing season That stem has already put forth a lot of energy and it may be harder to root it Versus taking a cutting from a stem that has never bloomed this growing season You have a better chance of it rooting because it has more stored energy Inside the stem. So let me just go ahead And prepare the rest of these For cutting. Oh my gosh these mosquitoes i'm gonna have to change right after this part of the video I'm, so over the mosquitoes this year So when it comes to cuttings, you really want to work as quickly as possible I'm, just going to take some rooting hormone this rooting hormone actually belonged to my grandma. So it's very special to me I'm going to put just a very small amount in this cap And what i'm going to do is make holes for the cuttings Before I stick them in If I were to dip one of these cuttings in rooting hormone and then stick it Right into the soil without making the hole in advance I'm going to lose a lot of that rooting hormone and I want to keep that rooting hormone on the base of my stem Just use anything you have around the house. I'm just using this paintbrush Now i'm going to go ahead Dip the base of that cutting in the rooting hormone It's going to look just like this And then i'm going to stick that Into my potting soil just using standard potting soil Now i'm seeing that these cuttings are a little bit too big for the size cell that i've chosen. So i'm gonna Decrease the cutting now. It looks like this. I'll still be able to get two of those nodes under the soil surface In retrospect, I probably should use um four inch pots But hopefully you can see there. I was able to get two nodes Underneath the soil surface. That's what i'm hoping for. But you know what? If you get one under there, it's probably going to root just fine Like I say that second node is really just a fail safe And I just want to give you all the confidence in the world that you can absolutely do this I really think that hydrangeas are one of the easiest shrubs to propagate You know always be sure that you're doing the right and responsible thing Don't propagate any kind of plant that currently has A plant patent usually plant patents expire after 20 years Just google it just google what you want to propagate. It'll tell you if it's legal or not. We want to always respect People who own plant patents because they did all that hard work for us But the thing is this hydrangea has existed on the property for at least 15 years So i'm fairly certain That it's not under patent because once we moved in it was already I don't know four by four feet tall In case I didn't mention it. I did pre-moisten the potting soil. I will go ahead and keep the soil moist Not super wet not bone dry that perfect place in the middle moist until roots form Remember at this point you're basically just trying to keep the cuttings from drying out We will put a humidity dome on this when we take them down into the basement But I want to do a rose cutting with you as well Because once we go down into the basement, you'll see I have a whole tray of rose cuttings down there, too So I want one Two three nodes i'm going to cut right underneath that third node. Okay Boom. All right. So there's what it looks like and I always want to keep track of what's the top and what's the bottom On the top i'm going to take this down to right above the leaves that i'm going to keep I'm going to cut off this leaf right here And there's our node right there That's what I want to be underneath the soil surface and i'm going to decrease these leaves Also, I don't need to leave all seven of these leaves. Let's go ahead and leave four Okay, once again dip that into rooting hormone Make my hole first Stick my cutting bada bing bada boom So there's our before shot And hopefully the after shot will happen years from now when we have a new hedge Of blue hydrangeas that we propagated together Now i'm using a fancier lighting system over here. This is absolutely not necessary Please don't ever feel like you have to buy anything expensive when it comes to propagating plants First of all, you don't even need a lighting system to do this You can just stick them on a sunny window seal But if I want to do trays of plants, it just makes more sense for me to put these under lights Like I say, this is an expensive system that i'm using right now It has timers and everything but okay, you're about to see a lot of dirty laundry But we're in my laundry room in an unfinished basement These shop lights work just as well 20 bucks for a shop light. You're good to go Pretty soon. You'll have a million hydrangeas too. All right, let's get back upstairs. We've got to get to work So now that we've got our cuttings safely placed under the lighting system I'll just keep them there until they root in about I would say six weeks That's the point where i'll go ahead and bump them up to probably a four by four inch pot Maybe even a six by six inch pot, but i'll just keep an eye on them You'll see roots coming out of the base Of the cells and that's how you know You can take a look at the plant and you can start to bump it up gradually Now it's too late in the growing season for me to plant these cuttings out this year because our first expected frost is october 30th Today is august 30th. So two months is not long enough for these plants to become Substantial enough plants for me to plant them out and then expect them to survive the winter season I'm going to keep them under lights and keep babying them all winter long. I don't mind that it gives me something to do So let me know if you have any questions about hydrangea cuttings and i'll also link the video where I talked about rooting them in water And it's so wonderful to be able to see the entire process, you know If you watch that video and then you watch this one You can see what that hydrangea looks like about four or five years later and it did flower I think the last two or three years not a lot of flowers, but it still flowered. So i'm thankful for that Okay Now we need to tackle the hydrangea room. So here's what happened Starting around the middle of july my husband and I we were just traveling a lot We were enjoying life. We were going to concerts. We were visiting different gardens And basically I wasn't doing any garden maintenance if i'm being honest and now Every garden looks terrible every garden like if you wanted to come over right now I would be so embarrassed and I would probably have to tell you no So we're just going to tackle one garden at a time one garden per video at least Today we're going to try to tackle the hydrangea room Let me turn the camera around show you how bad things are looking and then we'll just get to work I mean the whole thing needs weeded. I have mulberries that have popped up again. They're already five feet tall We've got lamb's quarters and pokeweed that need to come out I think i'm going to go ahead and deadhead these invincible ruby hydrangeas They really don't look good. We're going to deadhead all of those Deadhead this one too. Look at that weeds popping up everywhere and they're flowering and setting seed More weeds in here The dahlias probably need tied back onto their stakes. It looks like they're starting to fall over Oh more four foot tall lamb's quarters right there We've got grasses growing in the garden beds more pokeweed. We've got some milkweed. I can leave that We've got goji berry popping back up again. I cut that back down to the ground Now you see this right here. This is some kind of an aster I think I'm gonna cut that back down to the ground too. It's just making everything look like a mess. Let me show you another problem Creeping charlie has started to take over the floor of this side of the hydrangea room You can see it right there I don't even know if i'm going to try to work around all this fever few I might just go ahead and pull everything We've got more lamb's quarters more pokeweed More creeping charlie other weeds in there that need taken care of. Let's come this way grace You can see I also haven't cut the grass in about two weeks More creeping charlie here that needs to come out. We could probably re-edge this entire bed. We'll see how bad it looks After I go ahead and weed everything We just got to tackle this garden. We got to tackle all these gardens wait till you see how bad the raised beds look All right. Let's just get straight to work Sorry, I'll have to keep going. I have to get this here Yeah, you'll see she's doing nothing that's a good funny shot of gracie relaxing the new work That's great, I mean that's what's that's the shot right there Yeah, like why haven't you cleaned that up yet? How could you let it get so bad? So my garden is surrounded by plants. So I do not have good airflow throughout the garden I did that on purpose because they tell you when you're growing a cut flower garden to basically create this wind break But in doing so you also create an airflow issue now Thankfully, I have an apple tree over top of the hydrangea room and i'll prune that in early march So we'll get a lot more airflow in by doing that. But what I can do right now Is prune up this cryptomeria a little bit more I'm scared to do this because i'm afraid of the way that it might look but I think at this point The airflow is more important than the look. So let's take a few of these limbs off up another weed right here It's just crazy all the weeds Let's take that one And I think i'm going to take a risk and take this big one off, too What do you think grace? Take all these little guys off Just got bit on the face by a mosquito grace Must be august And where did I put my snips? They're probably buried in this wheelbarrow somewhere, aren't they? I think i'm going to take some stems off of this crepe myrtle, too Just so we can get some more airflow And we have a mulberry over here, too This is so embarrassing But you know what this is what happens, right? Can't do everything Just do what you can Some suckers coming out of the bottom. I'll go ahead and take those down all the way to the ground I've got some verbena here That's nice but making it look a little bit messy so let's pull that Oh my gosh, is this a weed? Oh my gosh. Look how tall this is Gotta be kidding me grace Careful grace careful careful careful careful carefully Made it I got all these weeds for you. Awesome. Looks like we need to go to the dump rocky Yeah, you agree Well friends, I think i'm calling it for the day You know what at least the hydrangea room looks like I spent some time doing maintenance in it It doesn't look gorgeous, but I think it definitely looks better than when we started I mean it was really looking bad, wasn't it? Now I could probably go back in here and be more meticulous and cut off just the brown heads or you know Pull more weeds or rake more leaves, but i'm gonna give myself grace I'm gonna say this is good enough for this garden because grace speaking of grace Hey, it's natural. It's natural, right? I'm gonna have to put some water on that now so it doesn't turn brown We weed it along the sides We cut down that mulberry. Oh my gosh. I missed this. Oh for goodness sake. I missed this bindweed Oh my gosh All right. You know what i'm gonna have to come back through here again tonight And see where that bindweed is coming from. I thought I got it all out But guess what also happened as I was weeding in here I discovered that buried beneath the weeds we have some anemones Oh my goodness Sometimes I feel like I need three daniels instead of one daniel We cleaned up all of this and guess what happened? a fun surprise I revealed a place for another hydrangea Okay, just kidding I might actually put some gara over there Eh, who am I kidding? I'm gonna put another hydrangea right there. Of course I am Silly me saying we're gonna put more gara in the hydrangea room when we have the opportunity to put another hydrangea in the hydrangea room Of course, we're going to do that. This is north lawn after all Well friends, thanks so much for hanging out with me in today's video in the next video We're going to tackle the raised bed garden, which believe it or not looks even worse than the hydrangea room did Bye friends