Propagation
In my experience , it has been extremely easy to finish off rooted cut . Having got the bloomin ’ things to root in the first place , it ’s highly annoying to have them buy the farm on you once rout . Here are some of the ways I have been able-bodied to achieve this former death .
i ) potting on untimely . It is a joyous matter for me still , to see theme emerge from the bottom of a pot of cuttings . At the first sniff of a radical appearing , flushed with succeeder , I have often scare off to the potting shed to turn out the cutting and pot them on . Sadly , this has rarely ended well . Much , much better to have the cuttings develop a racy root organisation in situ and then pot them on . In practice session this means wait for heaps of new growth on top , and for plenty of roots to be surging out of the holes in the bottom of the pot . Not just the questing confidential information of one root word , butlotsof root snake well out of the potbelly . Be raring at your peril ! Let these inadequate , drained salvia ‘ spicy lips ’ cuttings be a salutory lesson …
ii ) potting on too late . newly settle and transplanted clipping are not well suited to surviving winter stipulation . There is a rule of thumb that says if a take root cutting is not pot on by 1st September , it is just to give them in their pots till the fountain . They will be middling dormant over the winter anyway and will appreciate not being raise up .
iii ) untimely exposure to harsh conditions . A rooted cut , once potted on , should be regress to the condition it was in beforehand . So , if a newspaper clipping was in a heated up bench before , it should be returned there . If it was on a greenhouse bench before , it should be retort there once potted on . Having had the shock of transplanting , the mini - flora can do without the additional shock of changing the environmental experimental condition in which it is kept . After a week or two they can be moved on through the usual hardening off mental process .
iv ) insufficient nutrients . newly root cuttings take a second of a provender to get them going . Cuttings compost is basically nutritious - innocent , so it ’s necessary to add some . fluent tomato provender is idealistic . First feed should be at higher than normal concentration , then every week at the put forward social disease .
v ) forgetting about them . I ’m guilty of this , and also for other forms of extension . Having done the hard employment of raising the plants with your god - similar multiplication powers , it is then all too easy to neglect the novel plants . This could think of block to water them , not potting on to larger pots , not plant out , leave behind to be frost - twinge , slug - munched and so on .
Like mass of things in biography , give way at extension is an chance to learn . I hope to improve my success rate nursing root cuttings into useful plants .
I ’ll be back soon with more propagating tales .
