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Garden journal entry |
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first tray-ful of attempts |
June 01, 2017. As expensive as plants are here around Houston, it's very attractive to make more of your own. For many years, I was an avid seed-starter, and I may return to that next season. But this season, my seed efforts (all outdoors – I have no good place to start them inside) have mostly fizzled. So my next attempt is asexual propagation – using cuttings. I've tried my hand at cuttings before, as evidenced by my 2008 post about my Nearing frame, but I never had much luck. I have an inkling that the heat-loving plants in our current garden are on average better candidates for growing from cuttings than the cooler-zone plants I attempted previously, so I invested in some new rooting powder, snipped a bunch of cuttings from a variety of our new plants (both herbaceous perennials and shrubs), and stuck them in small pots filled with potting soil. They're left to establish themselves on our patio, which should offer reasonably favorable conditions: bright without direct sunlight, temperatures vary between 70 and 90°F from night to day, and the climate is naturally humid. So far (a few days onward) most of them are at least still green; I won't know my success rate till a few weeks from now. |
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| Jeanette | Jun 11, 2017 | Good luck. The shrubs have tried have mostly stayed alive, but have hardly grown, still quite small after (in some cases) years. But I've had success with penstamon and persicaria and of course geraniums. Now trying a Erysimum (muurbloem) which seems to be working. I have rooting powder but can't be bothered to use it. Doesn't seem to make much difference.
I think some of my attempts are going to be successful. I'll report back when I've assessed rate of success. |
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