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Salvias
For those of us looking to refresh tired plants or increase our stock, this is the perfect time of year for taking cuttings - and it’s ridiculously easy.
Take salvias for example. They’ve been the stars of your mixed borders, flowering away all summer long and even given you a glorious second show of colour if you sensibly cut them back in July (mine are still going strong precisely because of that mid-summer trim) and they will be bursting with that soft but firm growth some refer to as semi-hard (I’m sure we all know what that looks like).
All you need do is snip off some healthy non-flowering lengths and prepare the cuttings as follows:
- Cut off the bottom length of each cutting immediately under a pair of leaves, leaving about 2 to 4 inches of fresh growth above.
- Strip off the bottom 2 leaves and dip the cutting into hormone rooting powder (this helps stop rot and promotes root growth) and pop the cutting straight into your potting mixture. I use a mixture of ordinary potting compost and garden soil. Label clearly.
- Remember to water a little and often always allowing the water to drain away freely (I stand my pots over a slatted shelf in the greenhouse).
With salvias, you’ll have tiny new plants within two to three weeks. Over-winter them somewhere sheltered and then plant them out in the spring. With other types of plant it can take longer (hydrangeas, for example, can take a month to develop healthy roots).
So, taking cutting is easy and it means you can produce more of your favourite plants with the bits you might normally throw into the compost. If you don’t want the plants yourself why not do pass them on as gifts to friends and neighbours?
Plants that respond really well to autumn cuttings include salvia, nepeta, lavender, fuchsia, hydrangea, hebe, vitis (the ornamental vine) passion flower, honeysuckle, and clematis but there are many more so have fun and experiment and see what you can propagate. And if some of the cuttings fail, you’ve lost nothing
