By Ross Collins | The Accidental Gardener
As we move toward early spring, those of us who long for the new gardening season tend to become more and more impatient. Winter in the north country never seems to lose its grip—even if it’s a mild one as was much of this winter in the Red River Valley.
Our houseplants also get impatient. They seem understandably sick as we are of being cooped up in a dry, centrally heated house for months. Some plants react dramatically by dying. (I just can’t get rosemary to survive, can you?) Others may be a mere handful of leaves away from demise. Do I throw out my skeletal mandevilla despite a last few somewhat greenish leaves still clinging?
Dorothy would say no! She would suggest a different solution. Instead of cursing the (late winter) darkness, why not go forth and multiply? Multiplying in horticulture is called propagation, and late winter is the best time to do that.
“Days are getting longer, and resting plants are awakening from their slumbers,” Dorothy wrote in a 1993 garden article. “Indoor plants seem to sense that a new season is coming.”
Propagation to many of us means cutting off a healthy leaf or stem from a plant that’s become overgrown, ugly, or about dead—“on the verge of giving up the ghost,” as Dorothy put it. Just snip out the healthy portion and throw the rest in the compost.
We do this if we still like the plant and hope for revival. But Dorothy counted a more selfless reason to propagate our houseplants: fundraising. “Members o organizations, horticultural and otherwise, are being asked to make cuttings of their houseplants,” she observed. Even garage sales might be an option to raise pin money.
And if we don’t know of plant-needy organizations, Dorothy was firm: don’t throw out healthy cuttings! “Many people would want plants grown from them. They could be friends, relatives, neighbors, or they could be customers at plant sales.”
In a generous spring mood, then, we ought to thaw our gloomy winter nature and start propagating. But how?
When we think of propagation, some of us picture the old lady of the comic strips “pinching” a leaf from a friend’s African violet when she isn’t looking, and then coaxing roots in a mason jar. Well, okay, Dorothy said, there is one big advantage to rooting in water. It’s easy. Stick the cuttingin a jar by a bright (but not hot) window.
Now for the drawbacks. It doesn’t work for some plants. And it’s slow. “I rooted geranium slips late last summer that took over two months to root,” Dorothy wrote. And the rather brittle roots can be hard to plant and slow to adjust to soil.
The more industrious may choose a better rooting medium such as sand, perlite or vermiculite. (For those who remember the 1990s scare, gardening vermiculite today contains no asbestos.) Rooting in sand may be cheapest, but you’ll have to sterilize it yourself. Dorothy said standard recommendation was to bake it 30 minutes in an old cake pan at 180 degrees F. Not her choice. “It gets smelly, and the odor will permeate your kitchen. Instead, I pour boiling water through the sand.” And I opt for vermiculite.
You could skip the soil-less mixture step and root directly into potting mix. But Dorothy thought that was less reliable and slowed down root formation. Compromise: make a hole in the potting mix and fill with a medium as suggested above. The roots will grow through to the soil and eureka! No need to transplant.
If you don’t have enough pots for propagation, Dorothy suggested you rely on old tin cans with drain holes punched in the bottom. (Punched from the inside, Dorothy suggested.) I have seen gardeners use Styrofoam or plastic cups, also with bottom drainage. Insert cuttings, enclose pot or can in plastic wrap or bag, place in bright but not hot sun. Expect roots in about two weeks. Check condition now and then: “If it is dry, it never will root.”
How to tell when the plant is ready for a move? “By tugging ever so gently on the leaves. If it resists, it apparently is rooting.” If not, give it another week or so.
Dorothy didn’t address rooting powders or rooting hormones. These encourage quicker root formation, the quick-rise yeast of the hort world. I have tried powders to mixed success, but acquaintances swear by them, and there’s no down-side to dusting the cutting before tucking it into the growing medium. Except price, but they’re cheap.
This is Level One propagation. But some plants can be rooted by stolons (runners for us nonscience types), air layering or division. I have not tried those, as despite what my mother believed, I seldom can find anyone interested in my propagated plants. I still have a hoya and a half dozen cacti that wait mournfully in their sad chipped pots for rehoming to a loving family. Time for a spring garage sale.
Editor’s note: Dorothy Collins wrote a weekly garden column for the Fargo-Moorhead community from 1957 until 2008. Her last column appeared just a few weeks before her death at age 92. Many of her columns were based on experiences and challenges of her extensive gardens in south Moorhead where she lived during the entire time she wrote. Dorothy was an accredited flower show judge who herself collected boxes of ribbons for her own entries at flower shows and fairs.
Her son Ross, who grew up in Moorhead but now lives in Fargo, is a professor of communication at North Dakota State University. But he also tries his best to keep up his flower beds and gardens in his south Fargo home in the Hawthorne neighborhood. He calls himself the accidental gardener because while gardening was never really his hobby he did learn a lot as his mother dragged him from flower show to show and nursery to nursery as a kid. He also worked at Shotwell Floral for a short time, a job that pleased his mother because he could get a discount on plants. He has served as president of the FM Horticulture Society, a group his mother co-founded in 1977.
The gardening stories he relates here are based on his experiences growing up with one of the region’s best-known gardeners, as well as his gleanings from his mother’s thousands of columns. Dorothy’s book, Flowers Between the Frosts: How to Grow Great Gardens in Short Seasons, is available from the NDSU Press.