When taking cuttings, a lot of people will advise the most important part is sterile working conditions. This is true, but don't rack your brains over it. As long as you follow these main easy steps, you're success rate should stay above 85%:
First I like to start out with a good soil medium like the one we made above, and a tray like this:
Fill the tray with the soil and now we are ready to cut. Here is my little work station:
Fill a container with clean, pure water so that when we make our cuts, they go directly into the water without much air contact. Make clean angled cuts below a couple of the newest growth tips nodes. You should end up with a cup full of this:
Strip the bottom most leaves and cut 60% off of the remaining leaves. The cuttings will not need much light during this time, and the absence of a root system will only make it that much harder to feed the leaves, so you don't want fully mature leaves to remain on the cuttings. You should end up with something like this:
If you like you can use rooting hormone. It sure does help, but it isn't a must. Now stick each cutting gently down into the cells filled with your medium. In the end you'll end up with a nice tray that should look something like this:
Place your trays in a warm, shady spot for a week or two and make sure to keep the medium moist. Some like to place humidity domes over the trays and bring them in under florescent lights. That would be fine to. But make sure your root zone stays WARM. In as little as a week you should start to see new growth and/or roots when you check the bottoms of the cells. You can also pull gently on a cutting to see if it is rooted into the medium, if it pulls out easily it hasn't taken root yet. But make sure to look for small round nodules forming on the stem. This is where the roots will shoot out from.
Oh, I almost forgot the most important part! Hydration
As seen here:
Enjoy THP!