hormone rooting

Dip the cut ends into hormone rooting powder before planting.

If you use hormone rooting powder, keep the container in a fridge and replace every few months because of its short effective life.

Adding some hormone rooting powder to the wound can help the plant establish new roots.

Dip the base in a hormone rooting compound.

Dip the very ends of each cutting in hormone rooting powder, making sure that any excess is tapped off.

Dip a quarter-of-an-inch of the rooting end into hormone rooting powder and tap off the excess.

If you don't have any hormone rooting powder, don't worry, since softwood cuttings are the easiest cuttings to root.

Dip the base in hormone rooting powder and insert in very free-draining rooting compost, or equal parts peat and sand, four or five cuttings round the edge of a 5in pot.

Dip the base of the cutting in hormone rooting powder and place in trays of free-draining cuttings compost (a good mix is 50:50 perlite/grit and peat substitute such as coir).

Whole leaf with stalk (African violet, peperomia): cut a leaf near the base of its stalk, dip the end in hormone rooting powder and insert in compost up to the leaf base.

Dip this end into hormone rooting powder while it is still moist from the cut so that some powder adheres, shake or tap off the surplus and lay it aside for a few minutes while the others are being prepared.

Dip in a rooting aid such as Murphy's Hormone Rooting Powder (£1.09/50g, from garden centres), then poke them halfway in, 1 in apart, around the rim of a pot filled with two parts potting compost to one part sand.