Asexual Propagation: Beginner’s Overview of How to Clone a Plant

In this episode we’re diving into asexual propagation: making clones of a plant we want. For beginners! There are more ways, but these are the easiest!! 

AKA- Why My Baby Strawberries are Yucky. 

AKA- How to steal plants. 

Think of it as taking the complete DNA of a plant you love and bringing it home to grow in your garden.

I cover:
 🌱 Root cuttings – the basics, tips, and tricks for plants like comfrey that practically clone themselves.
🌱 Cuttings – how to take branch cuttings, caring for them, and maximizing your “strike rate.” (This needs its own episode!)
🌱 Grafting – a more advanced way to join plants for strong root systems and delicious fruit.
🌱 Root division and runners – from grasses and sugarcane to strawberries, learn how to multiply your plants efficiently.

Along the way, I share my own experiments, confessions, and share the joy of “free” gardening—getting plants from friends, neighbours, or the park 🙊

By the end of this episode, you’ll see why asexual propagation is perfect for creating more of the plants you love. 

Grab a fork, a spade, or just your curiosity—and let’s grow something amazing together!

Transcript

sam: 0:00

welcome back to White Strawberries. I'm Sam, and we are talking about asexual propagation and I was playing around with the ideas of what to call this and I'm thinking, why am I strawberries, making yucky babies? That could be an option. Or free gardening, how to grow cool stuff for free. Or I was thinking how to steal other people's plants and keep them for myself. You let me know what I should have, ridden it as. But we are talking about how to make plants from other plants without collecting seed. Nothing to do with seed. In this case, what we're doing is. Taking the complete set of DNA from a plant that we want in our lives and taking it home with us and putting it in our ground, So, uh, the first thing is root cuttings. Root cuttings is exactly what it sounds like. You get a fork, a big fork, not a kitchen fork, not like a little trail fork. I'm talking like a big one, and you carefully dig the plant up. All part of the plant. Look this, this is all very nuanced. It depends on the plant, but I'm thinking about comfy right here because all of my plants have been done by root cuttings. And you gently bring the comfy plant up, and remember, because they grow from root cuttings, that plant is gonna keep growing. In fact, if you dig up with a fork, a plant that grows from root cuttings and you've left any roots behind. You might find that now you have 10 of those plants because maybe you've taken the middle root out, but you've left a bunch of root there. That certainly is what happens with comfrey. So be, be beware if you don't wanna leave 10 plants behind. So, generally, uh, what you wanna do is just lift the plant gently shake off the soil so you can see the root system. And I would recommend, depending on the size of the plant, like a good 10 centimeter part of the root. Then that can be directly sewn into either a pot if you want to like look after it and give it some love and remember it's there and water it and all that sort of thing. Or you can put it directly into the garden bed. In the case of Comfy, sorry, comfy, I, it's just, it propagates so easily this way that I just go for it. And you can put it in the ground. And what I'd like to do if I put some comfy around the drip line of a tree, I've mentioned comfy in past episodes, but it's a mineral accumulator. It's gonna bring lots of good stuff up to the surface. And it has deep, deep tap roots that, um, that get lots of minerals outta the soil basically, and then I chop and drop the leaves. So I love having comfrey around the drip line of a tree. Obviously when the tree grows, the drip line also can move. So I make some more, uh, root cuttings and I plant them. And what I do, if I plant it straight into my food forest, my orchard area, I guys confession. I feel guilty. No guilty. I feel like a liar saying I have a food forest because I think of, when I think of forest, I think of like New Zealand bush forest. And I think of like huge canopies, and there's some trees that are above my head, but for the most part, the ones that I've cultivated, uh, are still little. And I'm keeping my, my fruit trees little, so I need to call it an orchard, but it's a wannabe food forest. And what I'll do is, um, just put in a stick, a stick off, something I've pruned in the past or a stick, uh, you know, that, that. Whatever I found outta the mulch pile or something, and I will just, whatever's close, buy a bamboo stick or something and I'll put it there so that I don't walk on it. And I can remember when it comes up, oh yeah, that's not a weed. I actually root propagated something. I took a root cutting and I put it in the ground there. Now, best case scenario, I've dug a hole. I've made sure there's good drainage. I've put some compost or some nutrients into that hole. Then I put the root cutting in. Then I've laid some cardboard around it, but not directly above it. Then I've wet the cardboard, then I put mulch on top. It depends how much you care how much you love this plant, how much you want it to to last, how much, how much you're like desperate to look after it, because I've got a lot of covering. That is how I do it in a lazy way. If I was to get a root cutting from someone else, and I'm gonna add to this like, um. Uh, Dahlia bulbs or ginger or turmeric, I'm way more precious about them. I'm very precious about my turmeric and my, I've got some gang gang gangel. Hmm. Gal, yes, that's the one. Ginger. And I really want it to live. And I keep it in a pot because it's subtropical. So I've gotta keep it indoors or in my cold frame over winter. But also I just, I'm quite precious about it. I'm excited to grow it com free. Not so excited. So choose how you wanna plant it. Uh, the next one, uh, I kind of just alluded to this, checking a stick in the ground, but are cuttings. You guys, cuttings are genius. I have so many plants here that I've just taken from cuttings and they're beautiful because you can just take a cutting, you can uh, okay. Creme de la creme with a cutting is you wanna cut a bit of a branch off. Typically I would recommend the size of one of your fingers. Little fingers fine. You can go a bit thinner, but you're risking it for the biscuit. And I wouldn't go too much bigger than your thumb'cause it's hard to pot up. Then you wanna make sure that it's got two buds. So if this was an alder berry bush, for example, you would want to cut maybe two centimeters under a bottom bud. And that little bud down the bottom is gonna go into the soil in the pop. Then you're gonna go up, have a look at the stem, up your cutting, and you wanna cut maybe two centimes above two centimeters or an inch above the second bud. That is now gonna become. Your leaves, your, your branches, that kind of thing. So what you wanna do is make sure there's only if, if you're taking this cutting during a time where there are leaves on the plant. So, um, if you are, I recommend taking cuttings on plants that when the, if they're deciduous, when all the leaves have dropped off. But what you can do if you don't have the option. And like I've just been posting a few videos about me just wandering around my nana's garden and I've been taking seed pods, seeds from plants that are probably a bit too early to take seeds and therefore have less germination rate. But I don't care'cause I'm at my nana's house and she lives three hours away. Same for you. Best case scenarios, you wanna wait for that deciduous tree to lose its leaves, but if you can't help it'cause you're at a friend's and she's got a certain kind of alberry that you really want, or she's got a really cool. Apple tree that she grew from seed. And you want that branch? Do it. See what happens. What have you got to lose?

6:49

You wanna go up one bud and cut above that? If there are leaves, take them off. All of them, bar one, and if they're really large, leaves like a fig, you can even cut half of that leaf off. That's because the cutting will need to put all of its energy into its roots and will be susceptible to losing moisture through its leaves. So take most of them off. Um, if this is a plant, like a hebe, which I think I'll do a post about because I actually, I grabbed some last time I was on holiday. Just run your fingers down. The leaves, in the opposite direction, then they're growing and just push most of them off and leave a couple of them at the top.

sam: 7:28

you can even have two buds above the root bud if you want. Why not? Let's live on the edge and cut a couple of centimeters above that one. Then what you can do is put it in soil. Keep it wet and damp in that soil until it starts forming roots. That's the lazy way. Some things you could do to make it more likely to propagate, uh, elderberry. Hydrangea. What are some other super, super easy ones? I don't know. There are some plants that just are pretty easy. Your deciduous trees seem to be easier, but like hydrangea has like a 99% strike rate or something like that. That's what we call it. You guys strike rate. How many times these cuttings are actually gonna strike? IE grow roots? Some core additions. You might like to cut the bottom of the cutting on an angle and the top of the cutting on the flat because this will help you remember what is at the bottom and what's at the top.'cause you guys, I have taken some grape cuttings and I've gotten home and kiwi fruit cuttings. Actually, a lot of vines tend to do this and I'll take some cuttings and get home and be like, hmm. I could, I would not bet money. There is a 50 50% chance that either of those ones, um, was the bottom of the plant and the other one was the top of the plant. So the bottom of the plant, that's what you wanna put in the soil. So if you want to, you could cut the bottom of the cutting on an angle so you know if that's gonna be the bottom of you're cutting. Another thing you might like to do is actually. Form a hole with a pen. I've got a pen in my hand. That's why I'm just saying pen chopstick. I can see that on the shelf right now. Or something else, like a twig or something, so that you're not actually like damaging the cutting as you sort of jam jam into the soil. You might wanna be really kind to, uh, that cutting and, and formulate a whole first before you put it in. The other thing you might wanna do is instead of having a full soil mixture, you might wanna be two parts soil. Uh, one part compost, one part sand. What this will do is it'll make sure that there's lots of nutrients, uh, for that plant because that plant is gonna grow quickly, right? It's, it's not growing from a little seed. It, it's just, it's going to, you know, it's gonna have a lot of leaf and it, it could get quite big quite quickly. So it needs some, could need some nutrients in the. It also, uh, you might wanna add some sand so that it's a bit more flow. Um, easy draining. And this means the roots can get into that soil easier. Again, I'm gonna leave this up to you. I like to test the limits on how lazy Hmm, efficient I can be with my cuttings. I don't think it's been a long time since I've used sand. And the other thing you might wanna do. Especially if there's a plant that you really, really want. This is what I'll be doing next time. I try get my hands on a kiwi fruit vine because the last ones I got did not take and that, that was a sad day for me'cause I didn't have access to that, that place again. Um, someone was selling their house and they said, come around and, and take whatever you want for a sexual propagation, which what we're talking about. And I was like, yo, yes. And so I got myself a female and a male kiwi fruit and I also got a kiwi berry. None of them took. So I would do this. I'd cut it on an angle so I knew what was at the bottom'cause it was probably half my problem. And then I would dip it into some routing hormone. You can pick this up at garden centers. I actually will make my own routing hormone. Well, I used to, because we used to have a wild willow on the property. It is now down because it was in our native bush and it's not a native plant. So I had to go, but I would soak, uh, willow branches in a tub of water and I'd just kind of like. And do that whenever I thought I was gonna start taking cuttings or whenever I was down there, and you can see it's quite cool, you leave some willow sticks at the bottom of the bucket water and those willow sticks, even though they're completely submerge in water, will start growing root systems. I mean, it comes with its own rooting hormone. Then chuck the willow sticks away, not somewhere you wanna willow tree to grow ops. And um, and then I, you can water your plants with that willow water or you can leave the bottom of your cuttings. Uh, and that will, what I don't recommend submerging the whole stick, but at least the bottom for a couple of days before they plant it out. Or if you're buying the hormone, uh, the tub of hormone powder, I think it comes in sometimes or liquid. You can just dump the sticks, the cuttings in there before you put'em in the soil. So that's cuttings. You are going to have exactly the same DNA for a root cutting or for a branch cutting. Then it's parent, which is pretty cool. But there are some downsides. The plus side is obvious. What you see is what you get. You're gonna get the same color flower, you're gonna get the same looking fruit. It's probably gonna taste the same, uh, other than the fact that it's living in a different environment. It's gonna be the same. It's gonna be a clone downside. If you say have 10 of that same exact apple tree, and one apple tree gets attacked by a bug, an insect. Or a bacteria or a fungi or whatever, all of those 10 trees are going down. So I don't actually recommend cloning, in general, in life for the world. Like we want biodiversity. That's the aim of the game is biodiversity. But look. If you want berry and some kiwi fruit plants from up the road or you just need some more comfy then, then by all means, you know, do this.

12:51

The third type of asexual propagation that is more advanced, I would say, is grafting, and this is where a sky on. Uh, so like a chute of a desired plant is attached onto a root stock of a compatible plant, so they grow as one. So when you actually look at it, it looks like one tree. Uh, this is commonly used in fruit trees like apples, where the root stock is like a healthy pest resistant root stock. Um, it might be, might need. Less watering than other root stocks. It might need. Um, it might grow larger than other root stocks for whatever reason, that's like an ideal root stock. And um, and then the apple that's full of flavor has been grafted onto that root stock grafting is great. Like it's great to be able to add a plant that you want onto an existing tree.

sam: 13:44

So we can go wrong with this as if you're like, oh, I really like that apricot, that apricot's amazing. I'm gonna take a cutting of that, and you're gonna go whack it in the ground. That apricot tree will grow, but it's not gonna have the same root system as its parent did. Um, so. The root system could be weak and a bit useless. I have the opposite problem where I have two really strong root system dupes and neither of them have ever fruited because they were meant to be grafted. One I threw a fork at and the other one, the wind knocked it off, and so I actually have, the root systems have turned into beautiful big trees, but they don't have any fruit on them. Um, at least not that I've ever seen. And I keep them there because I'm like, I will one day I'm gonna graft onto you. Okay? So grafting is our third way of cloning, there's several ways you can do this, but one way you can do it is by cutting the branch or the trunk of a small sapling. You wanna line up a branch from the plant that you are wanting to grow and fruit onto the plant that you are grafting onto. And that's certainly more complex than cuttings and certainly more complex than root cuttings. Okay. I think we need a whole episode just on grafting. If you want it, let me know and I will do it for you. It's also probably a visual thing, so if I do release an episode about, uh, grafting, I'll need a few visuals on socials as well. And I'm always there at White Strawberries. Podcast. You'll find me on in state and Facebook if you have any questions. Another way of getting a clone. Is by root division. So I'm thinking of things like your grasses, so like your nice grasses that you want, or um, plants like sugarcane or bamboo, for example. You can cut a part of that plant off. In this case you don't wanna fall. You want a sharp spade and you just wanna slice it and take a section of that plant and that is gonna be a complete clone. You are then either put into a pot so you can baby it, or you put it straight into the orchard and put a stick beside it so you remember. It's not a weed, et cetera, however you wanna look at it. And you can follow what you would do with the cutting or with, the root cuttings. Okay. The last one we'll talk about are runners, and this is where I'm gonna be talking about strawberries. So a runner is when you've got the main plant and then the plant sends out an arm. And then it's like a little round arm. And then where the fingers touch, the arm looks like a rainbow. And where the fingers touch the soil, they start growing roots again. That is a clone. Now with your strawberries, your typical strawberries, not the white alpine strawberries. They are across cultivator. So their mommy and their daddy are two different types of species. And so, if you are growing standard supermarket, red. You've read strawberries and if you wanna know more about strawberries, by all means, go back to the episode where I talked about why this podcast is called White Strawberries. Um, then what you can actually do is wait for that second little runner to be established with a pair of scissors. Cut the two. Over time what will actually happen is the plant will actually cut itself, like it will cut its arm off. So then it is two different plants. But you can speed up this process by cutting it yourself, and then you can dig up essentially the baby plant, which is a clone of its mum. Or Dad, huh, With my white alpine strawberries. I will say that the way that I've used them in the past was through Division Root Division. So they were originally given to me by someone. That lived, not too far away from me. And she just put a, a sharp spade through a clump'cause they get really, really big with the red supermarket strawberry types type strawberries. They tend to send, they tend to send out the runners, in which case with the purse, um, scissors or secretaries cut that arm off and move that away. I have a really yucky wild strawberries. In my garden. And they're annoying because they look a little bit like the alpine strawberries. And last year I gave them the benefit of the Dao, but no more. They have been coming up. They taste yucky, yucky is an overstatement. Have ours in the wild. I for sure eat them, but they don't taste like yummy strawberries.

18:01

And they're actually now starting to take up space in my garden. And what has happened is that my strawberry plants have cross pollinated. So they have had sexual reproduction.

sam: 18:13

Okay, you guys said sex on the podcast. Um, instead of asexual cloning, which is what we're talking about here. So I actually needed to get rid of them. And that's because they have now gone back to their heritage. So that's that my friends. There you go. Asexual reproduction, AKA. Why? I had Jackie red strawberries in my garden. AKA. How to get Cool. Free plants. Free plants is where it is at because A, you're hanging out with your community talking about plants and literally nothing better than that. B, you're wandering around someone else's garden and you're oohing and eyeing in all the right places and you're telling them what a good job they're doing and can you please have some of this plant?'cause they have such great taste. And for free. So it is all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff that life has to give you. What do you think? I'm just kind of talking at you. I hope that this is okay. Give me some feedback. I'm trying something different and I'm just kind of having a yarn. So good that you're with me. Thank you so much for that. I look forward to hearing from you and may your garden be abundant. And may your strawberries be white.