Willow Cuttings

I will start taking orders for willow cuttings in November 2026 to local(ish) folks, ie, people in Kansas. So if you’re interested and can let me know what you’d be interested in by the end of December, I can save cuttings for you. They are $2.50/stick. Use the contact page to place an order, and we can communicate about how best to get them to you.

If you want to grow basketry willows (as opposed to finding and harvesting wild willow, which tends to be scrappier and snappier), know that it is one of the easiest plants in the world to propagate. You just take a stick of live willow and stick it in the ground. Keep it watered, and keep the weeds away from it (I use mulch–either old hay or wood chips–and hand weed my willow, though most people use landscape cloth), and it will root and grow. Prepare the soil like you would before planting anything else (ie, get rid of perennial weeds and loosen up compacted soil). Willow needs full sun to grow the best.

I plant mine about a foot apart in rows with about two feet between rows. I usually plant my cuttings during warm week in February, though really anytime in the late winter through about April in Kansas is fine. Several months of cooler wetter weather gives them a good start. Cuttings I planted in December actually did fine too.

You want them close together so they grow up towards the sun rather than sprawling outwards. Each cutting will make two or three rods the first year, and then after cutting them back near the ground the following winter when they’re dormant, many more rods the next year. It takes about three years to become fully productive, but you’ll get plenty to weave with the second year (plus you can take your own cuttings to further propagate them). After the first year, they ought to be fine without any watering other than what comes down out of the sky, though the more water they get, the more they’ll grow.

Here’s the varieties I could make cuttings from:

Packing Twine: This is the variety that grows the absolute best at our farm, and what I’d recommend for anyone in Kansas. It is tall, slender, and dries a dark gray-green, and is fabulous for making baskets. I have will have plenty of these.

The rest of these have also done really well, and make LOTS of rods in Kansas conditions. I can sell a limited number of each of these.

Dicky Meadows: A very common purpurea used for basketmaking. LOTS of long, slender rods that dry a dark red-brown.

Jagiellonka: Almost identical to Dicky Meadows. Both make a ton of long, slender rods that dry a dark brown-red.

Americana: Stockier rods than Dicky Meadows and Jagiellonka, but very productive. I’m not entirely sure but I think this was the variety that in 2026 soaked up black, which was really cool. (The reason I’m not sure is that my labels disintegrated during soaking.)

Goldstones: Rods are supposed to dry a vibrant green, but I haven’t really noticed that. Green Dicks: Very slender rods, very green. This one is a bit shorter than the other purpureas (and thus more vulnerable to weed competition, but if you can keep the weeds away, it’s a GREAT variety for weavers for baskets. No extra cuttings of these.

Natural Red: This is a fragilis cross that is super vigorous in good soil (with full sun). Rods are thick and strong, good for hoops for frame baskets, and spokes for big baskets. Dries a light reddish brown. I’ve also peeled bark from this variety to make bark baskets.

Curly Twist: This is a curly ornamental willow. I love bringing in cuttings for winter decoration.

Flame: This is a monster! It is super-vigorous, making thick branching rods. It’s a brilliant yellow in the fall and winter, so looks great in otherwise drab landscapes. It’s supposed to grow straighter and less branching after it gets older, but for me, it hasn’t in three years, despite planting the cuttings close together. I got it for yellow accents for baskets.

I do have a lot of other varieties that I’m trialling, but I don’t yet have an abundance of them, but if you want a very small number od cuttings of any of them, we could probably work that out. See the Willow Varieties page for all of them.