Plants for free

After having found out rather belatedly that my newly planted salvias may not over winter I decided to take some cuttings.

For the cuttings I used a mix of half grit and half multipurpose compost. Unlike many cuttings that are taken below a leaf joint, salvia cuttings root best when you cut between two leaf joints; they are called internodal cuttings.

As seems to be the currently preferred technique I placed the cuttings around the edge of the pot and then popped them under a propagator lid just to stop them drying out too quickly until they rooted.

In no time at all, the Amistad salvia cuttings rooted  and the roots quickly began to push through the holes in the bottom of the plant pot. These cuttings have now been potted up and the tops nipped out to encourage them to become bushy. They are growing away so now I just have to decide where to keep them overwinter. 

I’m not sure if the other salvias have rooted yet. There are no roots visible at the bottom of the pot and I don’t want to tip out the pot to see if any roots are beginning to form. I’ll just have to wait patiently and hope. These are a different type of salvia so I suppose they may take longer to form roots.

Taking the salvia cuttings made me wonder what else I could try. I wanted more lavender to complete the edging around some of our fruit beds. I’ve successfully taken lavender cuttings in the past and so these were added to my list of cutting material.

I’m also trying a few Michalemas daisy cuttings and some perennial nemesia which, if they are successful, along with some of the salvias will be used to fill in some gaps in one of our flower beds.

I was going to take some rudbeckia cuttings but noticed a few young plants growing around the base of our established clump and so have potted these instead.

I’d like a sambucus nigra in the garden but don’t want it to grow as large as the ones on the plot so I decided to grow one in a tub and have taken some cuttings from the plants on the plot. I’ve been successful taking cuttings from this plant in the past - in fact our existing plants started life as cuttings. I’ve given away quite a few young plants so here’s hoping all goes well again. No doubt I’ll either end up with no rooted plants or too many!

Another plant that I want to increase is Laminum - White Nancy. This didn’t look as though it would respond to the same method so instead I have pinned down some of the long stems to see it they will root in the ground so I can then detach them and pot them up.

My last lot of plants for free are the potted runners taken from our new strawberry plants. I’ve taken 15 from each variety which is more than I bought originally. I intended to cut off all the runners produced in case they weakened the plants in their first year of growth. The plants, however had other ideas and I couldn’t keep up with the runner production. Some runners managed the start to root in spite of my best efforts and so it seemed a shame not to pot them on. At least I’ll have some young plants to replace any winter casualties  and if the main plants make it through winter? Well you can’t have too many strawberries can you? It will just be a case of finding somewhere to plant them!