It's that time of year, time to be buying and planting tons of little seedlings! Unless, of course, you are a planner and already have trays of little starts ready to go. I am sometimes, but not this year.
Instead, I'm trying another angle to get lots and lots of little plants for super cheap...
Clay, being the more serious gardener in our family, has gotten much further into it than I have. But my goal is to read it cover to cover, because I'm pretty sure once I'm through I will be a master at making more plants!! Don't you kind of love the idea of turning one little plants into a dozen little plants?! About the first hundred pages orient you to the science of propagation, the why and the how. From there the book is broken down into chapters on the various techniques: cuttings, leaves, grafting, division, geophytes (didn't even know what that one was until now!), and roots. There are WAY more ways to grow more plants than just the simple snipping off a bit of geranium you probably did in high school biology. At the end he has a concise guide on how to propagate each type of plant (just the genus, or the list would be way long, but he says that the rules generally apply to all plants in that genus).
This book is definitely taking up residence on our gardening shelf as a permanent and oft-referenced volume. I can see myself turning to it for practical advice as well as for those times in the winter months when I need to drift away temporarily to somewhere green and lovely. The pictures really are gorgeous as well as being illustrative. Let me leave you with the statement Mr. Druse opens with:
I was born in the spring, and I never got over it. I am obsessed by seasonal changes; am far too susceptible to the blahs as daylight hours shorten in autumn, get a little too high for my own good when the evening light lingers. I love plants-- the way they look and smell, leaves crisp in the fall and flower buds bursting into bloom in the spring.
photo credits: The Little Herb Farm
