The holiday decorations have been stored for next year and the revelry of New Year’s Eve has subsided. Life has returned to its humdrum pace, with one exception.
For most, the holiday bills will soon come due. An air of anxiety arises every time the postman delivers the mail. Each unopened envelope has the potential to spoil the monthly budget and engender an accusatory conversation.
For the seasonally generous, it is time to tighten the financial belt for a while, but it is also time to begin updating the home landscape, garden and orchard. With a little planning and effort, both can be accomplished without overdrafts or credit limit violations.
This can be accomplished by propagating cuttings and collecting seeds from native plants. These techniques can be successfully used by novice gardeners (and those more advanced with a green thumb) to save some money and get some new plants and trees for personal use.
Wild clematis, a native vine with colorful blooms, is one plant from which seeds may be collected with the hopes of germinating. The viability of wild seeds is quite variable. Environmental conditions can prevent any from germinating, but the grower may get many that sprout. Native wild seeds are one way to expand plant varieties in the home landscape.
Taking cuttings and turning them into a viable shrub has been done for eons. Early vintners in ancient cultures used cuttings from grape vines to expand their orchards.
Contemporary commercial nurseries raise millions of plants annually by rooting cuttings and growing them to marketable size. The cuttings come to the nurseries via overnight shipping from growers who propagate specific cultivars popular with the public.
The novice gardener needs only a sharp cutting tool, an organically rich potting mix and containers in which to place the cuttings. A helpful addition to the list is a rooting hormone which will help stimulate root growth.
A variety of landscape shrubs can be cultivated from cuttings. Azaleas, gardenias, loropetalum and many others can be grown with this method.
Take a hardwood cutting about eight inches in length with several nodes or joints. Leave one or two leaves on the upper portion of the cutting and dip the other end in the rooting hormone, if using one.
Place the cutting vertically in the potting mix with the leaves upward. Place in a shady, protected location and keep the soil moist (not saturated).
Always prepare more than needed because not all will root, but most of them should.
To be on the safe side, always make sure to have the permission of the plant’s owner to take the cutting. This courtesy can save the prospective plant propagator from recrimination and possibly a trespass and vandalism charge.
Collecting the seeds of blooming plants is a bit more challenging, but it can have its rewards. Some annual wildflowers still have seeds in January and can be clipped and the whole plant bagged.
The entire plant can be scattered on the site where the gardener hopes to cultivate the plants. Success is likely to be mixed as the viability of the seed is unknown.
Patience is required because germination will likely occur months away, and if the plant species is not known, it will be indistinguishable from weeds until it blooms.
Some perennials like Mexican firebush and wild clematis are easier to identify, but the germination of wild seeds is still a gamble.
As with cuttings, it is always a good policy to ask the plant’s owner permission to collect its seeds. Saving money and eliminating the potential for conflict go hand in hand.
Leave a Reply