Making Willow Water - An Illustrated Guide

This recipe is courtesy of this site:  http://clippings.gardenweb.com/clippings/vlmastra 
I would like to thank the original poster to the gardenweb.com forum for providing the step by step instructions that are the best on the web and used almost word for word below.  My commentary to the steps are in italics.

1. Collect stems of nearly any species of willow (Salix spp.).


I have a salix hakuro nishiki which is trained as a standard.  Of course it wants to be a shrub, its natural state, so every spring I need to trim the base.  This picture is spring growth on the base.  The website I referenced suggests early growth - so this is perfect.  Just think of all those years it went straight into curbside recycling!
(No, the picture isn't tilted, it is the Willow's growth pattern.  We have it in the northern part of the garden and she is just a sun goddess.  If anyone is interested I can post a picture of the full tree.  We have worked with it to shape it over an arbor so it almost looks intentional.  Note the rocks shoved up under the southern edge did no good.  She is just going to be the sun goddess she is intended to be!)

2. Strip off and discard all the leaves. All you want are the twigs. Cut the twigs into 1" lengths.

3. Heat the mixture almost (but not quite) to the boil, and brew it like tea, letting it soak until thoroughly cool, and for several hours more, when the liquid develops a greenish-yellowish-brown color, rather like weak tea, You filter off the solids, keeping the liquid. It will keep in the fridge for several weeks, or may be used immediately.

4. When ready to root your cuttings, make a fresh cut at the base of the cutting, and place it in the willow water, like flowers in a vase. Leave it there several hours, so it has time to take up a significant amount of the willow water. At the end of the soak time,

Willow Water Experiment - Background Information

As an organic gardener I am very attracted to the idea of being able to create a rooting hormone at home with ingredients that are already growing in my yard.  Rooting Hormone's active ingredient comes from Willow trees.  Any plant in the Willow (Salix) family produces the chemical compounds that create Willow Water or Willow Tea. 

Great!  This is all good news!  The instructions on the web are variable and there is no science to back up any of the claims. Techniques on the web range from the use of boiling water vs never using boiling water, hammering the willow twigs vs stripping the willow twigs. 

After a few dedicated hours of searching I found the most fact based informative post by a researcher from Florida Southern.  The full post can be found at this site: http://clippings.gardenweb.com/clippings/vlmastra


The directions for making Willow Water below are copied directly from the link above. 



For any who want to try willow water for yourself, here is the "standard" method:


1. Collect stems of nearly any species of willow (Salix spp.). Weeping willow (S. babylonica) is probably most popular, but we use S. caroliniana with good success.
You want young first-year twigs, with green or yellow bark; not old enough to develop brown or gray bark.

2. Strip off and discard all the leaves. All you want are the twigs. Cut the twigs into 1" lengths. Now you have what looks like a pile of small matchsticks.

3. Add enough water to barely cover your twigs. At this point, methods vary among workers. You can either heat the mixture almost (but not quite) to the boil, and brew it like tea, letting it soak until thoroughly cool, and for several hours more, OR you can not heat it, and just let it soak, like "sun tea" for several days, in the room-temperature water. In either case, when the liquid develops a greenish-yellowish-brown color, rather like weak tea, You filter off the solids, keeping the liquid. It will keep in the fridge for several weeks, or may be used immediately.

4. When ready to root your cuttings, make a fresh cut at the base of the cutting, and place it in the willow water, like flowers in a vase. Leave it there several hours, so it has time to take up a significant amount of the willow water. At the end of the soak time, you can rewound the base and apply an auxin-based hormone, or not, depending on the type of cutting.