carnation cuttings

have a nice classic carnation in the garden grown from see four years ago but i heard its wise to get cuttings from established plants as they over flower and ultimetly kill themselves any ideas how i do this?

Really easy to take cuttings.  Not sure I can explan though.  I have placed them in water in a glass in the house and you can see the roots appear or place half a dozen around a pot and place in a sheltered space in your garden and forget about them for a while.  You need to just snap off a non flowering shoot and remove the lower leaves pop in compost and hey presto.

hey thanks for that il try both techniques i suppose its only trial and error

I don't know how you're supposed to figure out which are non-flowering shoots. I thought I'd done that, but it started to develop a bud anyway. I clipped it off but now it appears to be trying to make some more. Am I doomed to failure because I started with the wrong thing?

Also, I'm growing my cuttings (carnation and verbena so far) in little 'greenhouse' trays on the windowsill, and they are rapidly growing too tall for the containers. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just keep trimming them down?

At the moment I'm checking them daily, giving them water and rotating the pots a smidgen to make sure they don't lean towards the window. I do wonder if I can keep this up until the spring - and whether the cuttings will too...

karenfletcher wrote (see)

I don't know how you're supposed to figure out which are non-flowering shoots. I thought I'd done that, but it started to develop a bud anyway. I clipped it off but now it appears to be trying to make some more. Am I doomed to failure because I started with the wrong thing?

Also, I'm growing my cuttings (carnation and verbena so far) in little 'greenhouse' trays on the windowsill, and they are rapidly growing too tall for the containers. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just keep trimming them down?

At the moment I'm checking them daily, giving them water and rotating the pots a smidgen to make sure they don't lean towards the window. I do wonder if I can keep this up until the spring - and whether the cuttings will too...

Too warm and poor light-windowsills are not ideal-from another thread you say you dont have a greenhouse so you are at a disadvantage

You can only do what you are doing- perhaps a well lit cool room window would be preferable

Thanks for your response. That windowsill does get a good bit of light (it faces south), but I gather that temperature is significant - does that make things grow too quickly for the time of year?

Would it be a problem if I let it flower? I don't really understand the significance of the 'non-flowering shoots' requirement. At the moment I've got three cuttings in one pot, I've already potted the verbena on and they had quite a lot of roots but I don't know about the carnation - I'm speculating that the flowers would be taking all the energy that's required for developing roots - is that right?

Thanks!

What you are looking for is sturdy plants -if it get too warm and with insufficient light they grow fast but get leggy with lots of soft growth-not good

What you are looking for is root development rather than flowers at this stage-so that is why non-flowering shoots are preferable and also why flowers buds are removed

But it if you want to let it flower then why not-it just depends on what you want to do with the plant long-term

Okay, thanks for the explanation. I must say they are quite leggy, so that's probably the light/warmth thing (though I'm surprised if light is the issue - maybe the double glazing strips out something important). I might try and let one flower and see what happens. Mostly I'm just experimenting to see if I can avoid having to buy so many plants in the spring!