Pam from Maribel, WI writes:
“Can you cut slips from a variegated red twig dogwood”
Pam, thanks for writing in. Yes, propagating red twig dogwood (or yellow twig or the many cultivars) is fairly simple from cuttings. (For those of you unfamiliar with terms like “slips” and “propagating”, these terms refer to methods of creating new plants from cuttings of existing plants.)
Spreading Shoots in Light Areas are Ready Divisions
Here in Western Washington it is often as simple as taking a cutting of younger growth, removing the lowest internode, and sticking the cutting into the soil. It is such a vigorous grower, that quite often it will take off on its own. However, dipping your twig dogwood’s cut end in a bit of rooting hormone may give you a little added insurance.
By-the-way, did you know you can soak fresh willow in water for 24-48 hours and use that water as rooting hormone? Before you could buy rooting hormone in a jar, this was a traditional rooting stimulator.
There are other methods I’ve read about for propagating twig dogwoods by taking cuttings in fall and storing the cuttings indoors in sawdust over winter to create a bareroot type cutting. When I studied horticulture in college, a few fellow students experimented with this method only to come up with useless twigs by spring. However, it is a known method if you want to give it a shot.
Finally, I always suggest looking around the perimeter of your twig dogwood for spreading shoots. My Midwinter Fire twig dogwood has started spreading underground over the last few years, so it is fairly simple for me to create new plants by digging up the unwanted spreaders.
