How to Take Cuttings: The Complete Cloning Guide

A cutting is a piece of a plant you persuade to grow its own roots. Done properly it takes about ten minutes, costs pennies, and gives you an exact copy of a plant you already know performs. Done badly it wilts, goes slimy at the base and never strikes. The difference is almost never the plant — it's the cut, the humidity and the temperature. Here's the whole process, from choosing the shoot to potting up a rooted clone about two weeks later.

Why take cuttings instead of starting from seed

A cutting is genetically identical to the plant it came from. Everything you liked about the mother — the vigour, the structure, how it handled your feed, how long it took — comes with it. Seeds are a lottery by comparison: even within one packet, plants vary in height, timing and appetite, which makes a tent full of them awkward to manage under one light.

The practical wins stack up quickly. Cuttings skip the seedling stage entirely, so they're several weeks ahead once rooted. They cost almost nothing — a tray of thirty is a few pounds of cubes and gel. And because every plant in the tent is the same age, size and appetite, you can set one light height, one feed strength and one schedule and have it suit all of them. That uniformity is the real reason commercial growers work this way.

What you actually need

This is one of the cheapest jobs in growing. The whole kit costs less than a bag of decent nutrient and lasts for years. You need something sharp and sterile to make the cut, rooting gel to seal the wound and trigger root initiation, a cube for the cutting to sit in, and a lid to hold the humidity up while the cutting has no roots to drink with.

A word on the blade: a scalpel or a proper pair of snips both work, but a blunt blade crushes the stem's water-carrying tissue instead of slicing it, and a crushed cutting struggles to take up water no matter what else you do right. Disposable scalpels are pennies each and are genuinely the better tool here — sterilise between plants, or just use a fresh one.

Taking the cutting, step by step

Get everything laid out first — cubes soaked, gel open, lid to hand — because the enemy here is time. A cut stem starts pulling air into its water channels within seconds, and an air-blocked stem can't drink. Work quickly, and go from plant to gel to cube in one movement.

A little more detail on each move. Choose a lower or middle side branch, not the growing tip — side shoots carry more of the natural rooting hormone and the mother barely notices them going. You want three or four sets of leaves and a stem about as thick as a pencil; whippy, floppy growth roots slowly and often rots.

Cut about 5mm below a node — the slightly swollen joint where leaves come off the stem — at roughly 45°. Roots emerge from node tissue, and the angle gives you more surface area in contact with the cube. Strip the leaves from the bottom two nodes so nothing is buried in damp medium, and cut the biggest remaining fan leaves in half across the tip. That last step feels brutal but it's the single most useful thing you can do: a rootless cutting loses water through its leaves faster than it can replace it, and halving the leaf area halves the loss.

Dip the bottom 2cm in rooting gel for ten to fifteen seconds, then push it into a pre-soaked cube and gently pinch the hole closed around it. Gel beats powder because it clings, seals the cut against air, and doesn't wash off the moment the cube gets watered.

Which cube should you root into?

All three of the usual options work. They differ in how much water they hold and how forgiving they are, which matters more than anything else at this stage — a waterlogged cube is the number one cause of failed cuttings, because roots need oxygen as much as they need moisture.

Organic root plugs (compressed composted bark) are the most beginner-friendly: they breathe well, they're hard to overwater, and they go straight into soil or coco with no pH fuss. Rockwool roots fastest of the three and is what most commercial propagators use, but it holds a lot of water and needs pre-soaking in pH 5.5 water for a few hours first — get it too wet and it will drown a cutting. Peat plugs are the cheapest by a distance, at pennies each, and sit somewhere between the two.

The first fourteen days

This is where cuttings are won and lost, and the whole job is keeping a rootless plant hydrated until it grows roots. It can't drink through its stem yet, so it drinks through its leaves — which is why the humidity inside the lid needs to be high enough that the cutting barely loses any water at all.

Bottom heat is the one upgrade that changes hit rates most. A room at 21°C leaves the cube itself a couple of degrees cooler thanks to evaporation, and that's slow, sulky rooting territory. A heat mat under the tray puts the cube where you actually want it — and in a cold garage or a British spring it's the difference between two weeks and never. If you're propagating in a tent that runs cool, our humidity guide covers holding RH steady without soaking everything.

For light, less is genuinely more. A single blue CFL or a dim LED a good distance away is plenty — cuttings need a signal that it's daytime, not a full photosynthetic load they have no roots to support. Run 18 hours on, 6 off. Mist the inside of the lid rather than the cuttings themselves, and from around day three or four start cracking the vents open a little further each day so they harden off gradually.

Potting up and the first real feed

When white roots are poking out of the sides and bottom of the cube — usually somewhere between day ten and day fourteen — it's ready. Don't wait for a mass of roots; a cube left too long gets root-bound and the plant sulks for a week after transplant. Two or three good roots showing is enough.

Pot the whole cube, intact, into a small pot of coco or light soil — around a 1 litre pot, not straight into an 11 litre one, which stays wet far too long for a tiny root system. Feed at EC 0.6 to 0.8 at most, with a root stimulant or a seedling-strength nutrient rather than full veg feed. Keep the plant somewhere humid-ish for another two or three days while it settles, then treat it as a normal young plant. Feeding a fresh clone an adult dose is one of the classic ways to burn a plant in its first week.

Why cuttings fail — and what the symptom tells you

Almost every failure falls into one of five buckets, and each one leaves a different signature. Wilted and limp within hours means humidity is too low or the lid was left open — shut it, mist the inside, and most will recover overnight. Yellowing from the bottom up over the first week is normal and not a problem: the cutting is cannibalising its oldest leaves for nitrogen, exactly as it should.

A brown, soft, slimy stem base is rot, and it comes from a soaking cube or a cube sitting in standing water — squeeze the cube out before you plant into it and never let the tray hold a puddle. Fuzzy grey mould on the leaves means humidity is high but there's no air movement at all; crack the vents. And a cutting that just sits there for three weeks, green but doing nothing, is nearly always too cold at the cube — get a heat mat under it.

Quick answers

How long do cuttings take to root?

Usually 10 to 14 days, with the first white roots visible at the base of the cube around day seven to nine. Rockwool tends to be quickest, organic plugs a day or two behind. Warmth is the main variable: at 22–25°C at the cube you're in that window, while a cube sitting at 18°C can easily take three weeks or stall completely. If nothing has happened by day 21, temperature is the first thing to check.

Do I need rooting gel to take cuttings?

No, but your success rate will be noticeably lower and slower without it. Rooting gel does two jobs: it supplies the hormone that tells stem tissue to make roots, and it physically seals the cut against air and bacteria. Gel is better than powder because it clings to the stem and doesn't wash away when the cube is watered. One small bottle does several hundred cuttings, so it's a few pence per plant.

Where exactly should I cut the stem?

About 5mm below a node — the slightly swollen point where leaves join the stem — at roughly a 45° angle. Node tissue is where new roots form, and the angled slice gives more surface area in contact with the cube. Use a sterile scalpel or sharp snips; a blunt blade crushes the stem's water channels, and a crushed cutting can't drink properly no matter what else you do.

Why do my cuttings keep wilting?

A cutting has no roots, so it takes up water through its leaves — and it can only do that if the air around it is very humid. Wilting almost always means humidity in the propagator dropped too low, usually because the vents were open or the lid was off. Close the vents, mist the inside of the lid, and keep humidity at 75–85%. Halving the largest fan leaves when you take the cutting also cuts water loss substantially.

Should I feed cuttings while they're rooting?

Barely. There are no roots to absorb nutrients, so anything strong just sits in the cube and burns the cut end. Plain pH-corrected water, or a very weak solution around EC 0.4, is all they need until roots appear. Once the cutting is rooted and potted up, move to about EC 0.6–0.8 with a root stimulant or seedling-strength feed and build from there.

Do I need a heat mat for cuttings?

Not strictly, but it's the single most effective thing you can add. Roots form best at 22–25°C measured at the cube, and evaporation keeps a cube a couple of degrees below room temperature — so a 21°C room gives you a cold, slow cube. A heat mat under the tray lifts it into the right band and typically cuts rooting time by several days. In an unheated garage or through a British winter it's close to essential.