The other day, I posted something on how to grow trees from twigs. There was a lot of response from that one post alone. In it I mentioned that one could use rooting hormone to speed up the process. Well it just turns out that today I ran into this homemade rooting hormone recipe.

The secret ingredient in this recipe is willow. Which you can grow in your garden or if you are lucky enough it will grow by itself. The plant itself has both anti fungal properties and the hormone that promotes growth. When the two combine they help improve the your rooting success rate.

Here’s What You’ll Need:

• willow twigs
• utility knife
• heat proof container or mason jar
• water
• medium pot
• colander

Start by trimming the young new twigs of the tree which are less than a pencil thick. Make sure it is fresh colored or grey under the bark. After you remove the leaves, you want to chop the twigs or branches into small pieces a maximum of 2 inches long. Dump your pieces into the container, until it is about half full.

Next, you want to boil some water in a pot while you leave the jar to sit in a warm spot like your kitchen window sill. Let the water cool after boiling, before you pour some into the container. Cover the container and allow to sit for at least 48 hours, before you can strain the willow pieces out using the colander. The water that remains is your homemade rooting hormone.

You can follow step by step instructions on The Attainable Sustainable blog, here…

How To Make Willow Rooting Hormone

You can watch the video below on how to make rooting hormone from willow…

.