Barberry is a plant that combines many positive qualities. Due to the high decorativeness of the bush, it is used as a hedge. Jam, marshmallows, sweets and drinks are prepared from barberry berries, they are added to sauces and marinades. Leaves, roots and bark contain coloring pigment. Barberry is a good honey plant, easily tolerates a haircut. Therefore, it is not surprising that gardeners want to plant this plant in their area.
How barberry propagates in vivo
Barberry is a large shrub that can grow up to 2 m in height. It is highly decorative all year round. Blooms in yellow flowers collected in clusters. The fruits have a ruby color, often decorate bare shoots even in winter. Autumn foliage takes on bright red tones.
Varieties were developed in which the leaves have patterns, a border or painted in unusual shades.
If you give barberry freedom for several years, then he, like a dogrose, will conquer the entire adjacent territory with a shoot. In addition, this bush propagates well by self-sowing. But if your goal is to get cultivated seedlings that preserve varietal qualities, then it is better to use reliable and proven propagation methods of propagation.
Thickets of barberry look very beautiful, but it’s simply impossible to look after such a continuous mass of shoots with sharp spikes
Ways to propagate barberry in the garden
Shrub propagates vegetatively and by seed. There is one important difference between the two methods. You will get barberry from the seeds, but it will not repeat the qualities of the mother plant, for example, it can produce berries of a different size and taste. When propagated by cuttings, layering, shoots, varietal properties are not lost.
Seed propagation
The method is the longest and most time-consuming, gives unpredictable results, but that’s why it is interesting. Barberry seedlings with their appearance delight the gardener more than the root shoot or rooted layering.
Barberry seeds are small - 0.5 cm long, elongated, glossy, dark brown
There are two options for growing barberry from seeds. If you like difficulties, miss the garden in the offseason, then choose a seedling method. Seeds must be stratified 3 months before sowing, that is, in December, place them in a moist substrate (peat, sand) and keep in the refrigerator. In March, you can sow, then dive seedlings and perform all the traditional techniques for seedlings.
The second way to get seedlings is easier:
- Collect ripe berries, extract seeds from them. By the way, the fruits of barberry do not crumble for a long time, they can sag on the branches until winter, so do not rush to collect seeds. You can do this on the day of landing.
- In October, arrange a small bed on the site.
- Make grooves 1 cm deep at a distance of 10-15 cm from each other, water them and spread the seeds every 5-7 cm.
- Sprinkle the grooves with earth, lightly tamp and cover with mulch from fallen leaves or dry grass.
- Take cover in the spring and wait for shoots.
Barberry shoots in the open ground will appear when the ground warms up
Seedlings obtained in open ground do not need protection from frost, they do not need to be tempered and accustomed to direct sunlight. Small barberries are adapted to natural conditions from the first days of life. You just have to water these seedlings and not give them offense to the weeds.
Propagation by root shoots
This is the easiest way, but it is available only if you or someone you know has an adult, well-grown barberry. Young bushes do not give overgrown. Root offspring grow from the buds on the roots, they appear not from the center of the bush, but along its periphery. Getting a seedling is easy:
- Carefully inspect the area around the bush. If you find young branches of barberry sticking out of the ground, then you're in luck.
- Dig a shoot with a shovel, gently, without pulling, remove from the ground.
- Cut the root connecting the mother plant and the young shoot with secateurs.
- Place the digging ground, and plant the seedling in the space provided for it.
Root offspring are recommended to be planted during the dormant period, that is, before the buds open or after leaf fall.
Root offspring grow at some distance from the base of the bush, connected to it by the root
Rooting horizontal layering
This is also an easy way, but you need to wait for the result during the summer. In spring, bend the shoot of barberry to the ground, pin and sprinkle with earth the entire length, leaving only the top on the surface. You can make a groove and lay the shoot in it. All summer, the soil at the digging site must be kept moist and free of weeds. By the fall of each bud, which turned out to be underground, young branches will appear. You can dig out the entire shoot and divide it into seedlings.
Barberry is absolutely not picky about the composition of the soil. It grows well on clay, sand, rocky soils. He does not like only damp and marshy places.
Barberry shoot is bent to the ground and sprinkled with earth along the entire length for rooting
Bush division
Digging and dividing a large and thorny bush is very difficult, therefore, this method is resorted to in an extreme case. For example, when you still need to dig out a barberry to transplant it to another place. Spend an event in the spring or in the fall.
- Cut off all the shoots, leaving 20-30 cm stumps.
- Dig up the whole bush.
- Divide with the help of a pruner or a garden hacksaw into parts so that in each there are 2-3 shoots with roots.
- Plant the seedlings in their permanent places. Small dividends, the viability of which you doubt, grow in separate beds or plant 2-3 in one hole.
To avoid hurt your hands on the spikes when working with barberry, use garden gloves for roses.
The barberry bush must be divided so that on each part there are 2-3 shoots with roots
Propagation by green cuttings
The most uncommon way, because with large labor costs, the survival rate of cuttings is very low.
Rules for propagation by green cuttings:
- Start cutting cuttings at the beginning of summer, take the middle part of annual growths.
- The length of the handle depends on the distance between the kidneys, there should be 2-3 internodes.
- The diameter of the handle is about 5 mm.
- Do the bottom cut at an angle of 45about, the top is straight.
- Tear off the lower leaves, shorten the upper ones by half.
- Deepen the cuttings 1-2 cm at an angle to a moist and loose substrate - a mixture of sand and peat 1: 3.
- Build a mini-greenhouse over the cuttings with a height of not more than 40 cm.
- Maintain optimal conditions inside: humidity - 85-90%, temperature - 20-25⁰C.
- Open the greenhouse several times a day to ventilate and spray the cuttings.
Green cuttings consist of three internodes, the lower cut is oblique, made under the kidney
The percentage of survival and the duration of rooting depend on the variety. It may take 20 or 30 days. The main sign of success is that new leaves appear on the handle. From this time forward, the future seedlings begin to temper, removing the shelters first for an hour, then gradually increase the duration of the open-air stay.
Video: how to root green cuttings
Propagation by lignified cuttings in the fall
According to gardeners, the percentage of rooting of barberry in this method is higher than with green cuttings. Planting material is taken from two-year-old shoots. The optimal time for such an event is late autumn, before the onset of frost.
- Cut completely lignified branches of barberry with a thickness of not more than 1 cm into cuttings 20 cm long. Make a lower cut at an acute angle.
- Before spring, dig in a trench and cover with lapnik, fallen leaves or other breathable materials. The second option: keep the cuttings in the cellar until spring, immersing them almost entirely in moist sand. The main thing during winter storage is to prevent the cuttings from drying out.
- In spring, plant the cuttings in a garden or in a hotbed, deepen so that only the top two buds remain on the surface, the third should be located near the ground or be slightly buried.
- Maintain a constant soil moisture.
- By autumn, seedlings with 2-3 shoots will grow from the cuttings. You can dig and transplant to a permanent place.
Cut the cuttings from the middle part of the shoot, plant them at a slight slope, leaving two buds on the surface so that shoots grow from the upper buds by autumn, and roots from the lower buds
Barberry reproduces in several ways. The easiest and fastest is to dig out a shoot. It takes about a month to get seedlings from cuttings, horizontal shoots take root from spring to autumn. In the offseason, you can do seed propagation and even breed your barberry variety in this way.
