Thuja or tree of life can be propagated yourself. However, you have to have a lot of patience and maintain he althy mother plants in the hedge or as a solitary plant. How do you propagate thuja correctly?
How to successfully propagate a thuja?
Thuja can be propagated by cuttings or seeds. Cuttings are easier by tearing off young branches, treating them with rooting powder and placing them in potting soil or directly outdoors. Seeds, on the other hand, are harvested in autumn and require cold germination conditions to germinate.
Methods for propagating thuja
There are two methods to propagate thuja: propagation from seeds or from cuttings.
Growing a tree of life from seeds is very time-consuming and is therefore rarely practiced. Growing from cuttings is less complicated and you are sure to get offshoots that have the same characteristics as the mother plant.
Whether you want to harvest seeds from your thuja or use cuttings for propagation: remember that the arborvitae is highly poisonous. This especially applies to the seeds, which must under no circumstances be consumed. Be sure to wear gloves when taking cuttings.
Propagate the tree of life from seeds
Some varieties of the arborvitae bloom profusely in the spring and develop fruits that bear the seeds in the fall. You can release these carefully in October.
Sow the seeds immediately in prepared pots with potting soil and leave them outside over the winter. Thuja is a cold germinator and needs low temperatures to overcome germination inhibition. If you don't want to sow the thuja until spring, store the seeds in some damp sand in the refrigerator over the winter.
It takes months for the seeds to germinate. During this time they must always be kept moist but not wet.
Propagation of Thuja via cuttings
- Tear off cuttings
- shorten something
- Treat interface with rooting powder
- put into prepared pots
- alternatively put directly into the open ground
- keep well moist but not wet
- Cover the cuttings in the pot with foil
- plant out after new growth
To grow Thuja from cuttings, tear - do not cut! – In early summer they release so-called cracklings from the young branches. A piece of bark from the branch must remain at the bottom. Then the cutting will root faster.
If you are rooting the cuttings in the pot, a small greenhouse is ideal. But you can also put transparent plastic film over it.
Coat the cutting with rooting powder (€13.00 on Amazon) and ensure that it does not dry out. Successful root formation is demonstrated by new shoots.
Transplanting self-sown thujas
If you do not remove the flowers or later the fruits of the thuja, the seeds will ripen inside. The fruits open and drop the seed to the ground. Under favorable conditions they will germinate there over the next few months.
You can carefully dig up such self-sown thujas and transplant them to the desired location in the hedge or as a single tree.
Tip
In contrast to Thuja Brabant, Thuja Smaragd only blooms very rarely. You can therefore almost never harvest seeds yourself from this tree of life variety. If emerald blooms, it is better to remove the seed heads to give the tree of life more strength to form leaves.