How to Take Salvia Cuttings – it’s easier than you think!

I thought I’d devote this blog to how to take salvia cuttings for one of my favourite perennial plants – the Salvia.

Salvias are real workers in a garden. They come in all sorts of lovely colours, from purples, electric blue, baby blue, pinks and reds through to creams and yellows. They flower for a long time and bees and butterflies love them.

That’s why I have loads of them in beds and pots. Salvia Trelissick, Salvia Black and Bloom, Salvia Wendy’s Wish , Salvia Royal Bumble and Salvia Nemorosa Caradonna to name a few.

Their one downside is I find they can be a bit tender. You can lose the odd one if there’s a particularly harsh winter. It’s so irritating – and devastating to lose a favourite plant.

So, I take out a bit of an insurance policy with them. Every year I take cuttings from my favourite Salvias. That way, if one get’s killed off, I have a replacement (or four) waiting in the wings.

The method I’m going to share with you is so successful that not only does it protect me against losing the odd plant, but it actually has helped me increase my stock of plants – without having to pay for them. And of course it’s so so satisfying seeing a healthy plant thrive, that you’ve grown from a lowly cutting. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

How to Take Salvia Cuttings – The Method

So without further ado, here’s the method.

• Do this in August and September
• You want to take a non-flowering side shoot that’s about 2-3 inches long (you’re looking for the shoots that are a bit like the side shoots you pinch out when growing tomatoes)
• If you are collecting a number of cuttings before planting them, pop them in a plastic bag to conserve their moisture
• If you are not going to hang about at all, you don’t need to do this (but you do therefore need to get on with it!)
• To prepare the cutting, trim its base – I do this just below a leaf node (i.e. where the leaves join the stem)
• Using a sharp knife (I use really sharp scissors) remove the lower leaves – leave the cutting with two leaves at the top
• If the two top leaves are very large, you may want to trim them in half
• Dip the base of the cutting in rooting compound (I’ve not bothered with this step in the past, and they’ve still taken. But I generally still do it to be on the safe side)
• You will need a small pot that has very free draining compost – I use normal potting compost mixed 50/50 with gardening grit – better to have too much grit than too little
• Using a knife ease the cutting in place between the edge of the pot and the soil
• Depending on the pot size you can put multiple cuttings to a pot
• Then give the pot a good drink

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Looking after Your Salvia Cuttings

• Place the pot somewhere that’s sheltered, not in full sun, but that gets lots of light
• This can be outside, or in a greenhouse
• I don’t have a greenhouse and actually put mine indoors on a well-lit windowsill. That way I don’t forget about them!
• You need to keep the air around the cuttings moist while they ‘take’. To do this I give them a spray with a mister a few times a day
• Another way to keep the air moist is to put a polythene bag around the pot for three weeks. I’ve tried this and it does work, but it’s a bit of a faff. You have to be careful that the bag doesn’t touch the cutting and the air doesn’t become too wet and clammy. Otherwise your cuttings will rot – which has happened! So now I favour the misting method.
• After three weeks the cuttings should be ready to put into pots on their own – same level of good draining mixture works fine. Be careful with their delicate roots when doing this
• I then ‘over winter’ the cuttings indoors on the same windowsill as they need to be kept in a frost-free place

Getting Salvias Ready for the Big Wide World!

• Then in Spring, I start acclimatising them to outside – popping them out in the day, bringing them in at night
• I keep my cuttings on tea-trays – so that all this to-ing and fro-ing is easy
• After a week or so of this, once I know the last frost has passed, I put them outside fully.
• I then plant them where I want them to grow. That might be in a larger pot for my patio, or in a bed.

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Job done! Now enjoy lots of lovely Salvias

Note…some plants lend themselves to being divided, and this is another great way of increasing your plant stock. If you want to explore this method checkout my blog on this topic.