All these were free - I just helped myself! |
If you hate weeding, but like getting extra plants for nothing, look carefully around your garden this weekend and you might find you can turn a bit of weeding into something far more productive.
Many plants will freely seed themselves across your garden. Some will spread their seeds into all the nooks and crannies in paths, pots, walls, and between other plants in the borders. Others will spread horizontally, either underground by sending out roots from which shoots pop up some distance from the parent plant, or overground via runners that crawl along the surface and then put roots down somewhere along the way.
Verbena bonariensis popping up in this path |
Don't want this ash seedling - it will be 20m high one day! |
I have clipped domes and low hedges of Lonicera nitida and hebe, and these layer themselves frequently. Lower stems grow out along the ground, sit on the soil and start to take root. Once they've done that they start to grow as a separate plant and when this new baby is a few inches tall you can detach it from it's parent and pot it up on its own.
When I clip plants like Hebe and Lonicera nitida I inevitably leave some of the clippings on the ground. Gathering them all up is too fiddly and any left effectively become a mulch anyway. But some will take root, creating more free plants you can capture. This is a good way of having younger plants in reserve, to replace older ones when they get too leggy, go into decline, or fail to make it through the winter. It's part of the succession planning for your garden.
This Hebe clipping has rooted |
Little baby aucuba plants beneath the branches |
So here's what to do:
Find a seedling, layered plant or runner.
Gently pull it up, ensuring the roots come with it.
Follow
Pop it into a small pot of compost (have this on standby to keep the time out of the ground to a minimum).
Firm it in by pressing the surface down around it.
Give it a good water, and keep it from drying out until it starts to grow well.
Before you know it they'll be this big!
Couldn't be simpler. Have a look round your garden and see what you find. Let me know how you get on by commenting below, and sign up to get my next update straight to your inbox by entering your email in the box at the bottom of this page. I'll be back soon with another post, but meanwhile you can follow what's going on in my garden on my Facebook page and Twitter Feed.
Before you know it they'll be this big!
Hebe Sutherlandii potted on |
Couldn't be simpler. Have a look round your garden and see what you find. Let me know how you get on by commenting below, and sign up to get my next update straight to your inbox by entering your email in the box at the bottom of this page. I'll be back soon with another post, but meanwhile you can follow what's going on in my garden on my Facebook page and Twitter Feed.
This is a familiar tale! The Verbena Bonariensis is the best self-seeder of all. Also, some of my best plants are "volunteers" brought in by wind or birds.
ReplyDeleteHi Mark. The good thing about verbena bonariensis is you can never have too many! The more you have the better the pink haze you can create, so just keep pulling them up and moving them nice and close together. Aquilegias and foxgloves are less co-operative - they pop up in random colours without adhering to my colour scheme!
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