more cuttings

The garden club monthly meeting last night consisted of another practical propagation session. Two rows of tables had been set up in the village hall, covered in polythene which I noticed was still frugally attached to the roll so that it could all be rolled up again and reused, and bundles of stems were laid out for us to chop into pieces and stick hopefully into the pots of compost and vermiculite provided.  Before we were let loose the chairman and the head propagator at Suffolk Plant Heritage gave a short talk on basic techniques, and then the audience fell upon the plants like crowds at the Harrods sale.

I thought I had missed my chance to get a piece of a dark red flowered salvia I'd had my eye on, before finding the bundle in the scrum.  Last year's salvia cuttings rotted before they could root, as did the rare hardy fuchsia, but hope springs eternal.  I did get two usable plants out of the last propagation meeting, an upright growing hardy pink Diascia, D. personata, and a rare geranium with lovely dusky pink undersides to its leaves, Pelargonium 'Gustav Emich'.  I have just planted the Diascia out in the stretch of border I revamped at the top of the sloping bed in the back garden, so perhaps I should take a few cuttings from my cutting in case it is not so hardy after all, or can't cope with the sand, even with additional compost.

I am not entirely sure what I would do with either of the willows I hopefully stuck in my pot, if they were to root, but it's partly the joining in that counts, and seeing what will grow.  After last year's session I experimentally tried rooting sections from the stems of a rather good pink form of Gaura that is growing in the gravel after spending its first summer in a pot by the front door, and before seeing the bunch of Gaura among the pile of cuttings material at the garden club it had never occurred to me that I could take cuttings of it.  Only two of my cuttings struck and made it through the winter, but that's still two more plants than I would have had otherwise, and since I had lost the labels from the pot I couldn't have bought more if I'd wanted to.

Now I am speculatively casting an eye around to see what else might be worth cutting up and sticking in a pot.  It looks as though snapdragons are worth a shot.  I have got two pots of 'Black Prince' on the go currently, and since they are not always the easiest things from seed I could try some cuttings.  I was wondering about overwintering the old plants if I can find room for their pots in the greenhouse, but I could try both methods and see which works better, or at all.  And I must remember to take slips from the pink Arctotis.