A beautiful, dense beech hedge is many a gardener's dream. The price for the young trees alone makes many people shy away from it. If you have a little time and patience, you can simply propagate your beech hedge yourself. It will take longer, but it will be your pride and joy later.
How to propagate a beech hedge?
To propagate a beech hedge yourself, you can sow beechnuts, cut cuttings or use planters. Sowing and cuttings require a cold phase or half-woody shoots, while sinkers are bent to the ground and cut.
Methods for propagating a beech hedge yourself
To propagate a beech hedge yourself, you have several options to choose from:
- Sowing
- Cuttings
- Lowers
For all methods you need he althy beech trees from which you can collect seeds or cut cuttings.
Sowing beech trees
You collect beechnuts in autumn from a free-standing beech tree that is at least 30 years old.
The seeds must go through a cold phase before sowing in order to overcome the inhibition of germination. To do this, put them in the fridge for a few weeks and sow them in small pots in spring.
How to get cuttings
Cut cuttings in late summer. Choose semi-woody shoots that you either put in small pots with garden soil or directly in the ground.
Use cutting sticks. These are cuttings where the tip has been cut off. Make sure you insert the cuttings right side into the ground.
Propagation by reducers
To lower, bend a shoot that is not too woody onto the ground. Score it (€179.00 on Amazon) several times with a knife and cover it (€179.00 on Amazon) with soil. However, this form of propagation does not work as well as breeding from cuttings.
Buy plants for the beech hedge or propagate them yourself?
If you are in a hurry, it certainly makes more sense to buy the beech trees for a hedge, and even larger plants, so that the beech hedge quickly becomes dense.
Propagate beeches yourself is time-consuming. It takes a few years longer to create an opaque, taller hedge. However, it often turns out that home-grown beech hedges are more robust and grow faster.
Tip
You can buy plants for beech hedges at your local nursery. Younger beech trees are cheaper, but often of lower quality and without advice, available from mail order companies. Here you have to take into account that not all of the trees will grow and that you will have to buy more later.
