Just after any tips on propagating Magnolia Little Gem cuttings. eg do they need bottom heating, preferred hormones, best media to use???? Any info would be great!!
Description in Checklist of Magnolia Cultivars portion of Magnolia Society web site says "Easily propagated in midwinter in greenhouse by rooting hormone-treated leafy hardwood cuttings. Flowers while still a young plant, often at no more than 18 inches tall."
from experience: best media......well we usually use about 50% pine bark, 50% coarse sand n it usually works just as well as other mixes (peat moss) and percentages. Media is usually soakes with a 10ml per letre of water clorine oxide (or other anti bacterial) solution before sticking. heat mats should be used if temperatures during winter or at night fall below 10 degrees as they usually can only tolerate 20-30 degree heat. soaking cuttings in water based hormones for 4 seconds produce slightly better results than gell based but gell based only need a second of soaking so is better when producing large quantities. because of the difficulty to root little gems it is hard to determine wether wounding provides higher sucess but I have read that it can increase rooting sucess dramatically...although unfortionally it also increases the time to produce cuttings. also remove any soft (unformed) leaves as they will rot, and also remove any flower buds as energy must be provided for roots not flowerinig. Lastly, cuttings should be from preferably last years growth (semi-hard to hard) and be anywhere from one to 5inches although 3 to 4 inched is recomended (leave 1 to four leaves...due to premature leaf drop causing some rotting of the base of the cuttings, i usually leave 1 leaf, sometimes two. Hope theres some useful tips in there.