Late summer, and it’s time to propagate plants for next year. We’ll be doing some propagation this afternoon with rosemary and lavender from the station garden, pinks from the Preston Circus planters and perhaps even the dark begonias that we invested in for the shady triangle earlier this summer.

Like quite a few of our number, I love propagation. It’s a sense of getting something for nothing, but also about ‘real’ interaction with plants and the growing cycle, rather than just getting them from the garden centre and putting them in with a bit of compost. And propagation is clearly key for a community garden where funds are limited, and sustainability is key. AND it’s just a fun thing to do.

There is an instinctive side to it. Heucheras, for example, get leggy and seem to cry out for you to cut off one of the legs to create a new plant. Our sedums have similar behaviour. Then there are the plants like mint and what I call lambs’ ears that you can just put in water, wait, and they send out roots. Pinks, lavender and rosemary are also pretty straightforward: you just take a healthy shoot that hasn’t flowered and use that as your cutting. Pinks are amazing: just pull, and they’ll give you a propagatable cutting.

So today, we’ll go through the following process:

• 1) clean our 9cm pots, last used for seedlings earlier in the summer
• 2) mix up our potting compost, using vermiculite and peat-free compost (probably 2 parts compost to 1 part vermiculite, with some grit mixed in for lavender and rosemary
• 3) take cuttings and prepare, cutting the tip just below a bud or a node (from where the roots will sprout)
• 4) dip in hormone rooting powder or perhaps a vitamin C tablet in water???
• 5) push the cuttings into the compost around the edge of the pot
• 6) water well, and place somewhere warm (probably my greenhouse) but not TOO warm

Plants for cuttings

• Station garden: rosemary, lavender, perhaps heuchera
• Preston Circus planters: pinks, sedum, geranium (pelargonium)

More on propagation

• RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening
• Great guide from North Dakota State University.
• BBC Gardeners’ World ‘project’ guides to propagation