Own Grown Gardening

It is a wretchedly wet New Year's day here in Devon, UK, but I didn't let this dampen my spirits. I used it to propagate our honeyberry bushes ( Lonicera caerulea ) . You probably remember these two little guys from my previous post last spring. Just looking at those photos, I hadn't fully appreciated how big both bushes grew last summer. Here is a snap from today of one leafless honeyberry, looking rather naked and forlorn on this winter's day. Now there are several choices to make when thinking about propagating honeyberries. You can, of course, grow them from seed. Doing so, however, does not allow you to preserve the parent plant's variety and, as such, it is not recommended. We definitely want to retain good sized sweet berries. One of my bushes is the named variety of Kamtschatica 'Duet' while the other is an unnamed variety of Kamtschatica. I found it super difficult to source any honeyberries in the UK, so I felt blessed finding two different Kamtsc...

Today, I'm focusing on the practical topic of taking semi-hardwood cuttings of soft fruit , specifically gooseberries and black currants. You can do this in the autumn or spring, but I prefer the autumn to give the roots more time to develop before the buds burst and top growth develops for the new season. To ensure you maximise the chance of roots forming and a healthy plant, it is best to take cuttings from this year's growth. Such growth is quite easy to identify when you know what to look for. The bark is lighter in colour and you can see a sort of joint in the wood between this new growth and older growth like in the photo below. I take long cuttings, about 20cm, to ensure they have a good string of buds along their length. About ten is great.   At the very base, it is best to cut right below a bud. This encourages root formation.   If the cuttings still have leaves, gently pull them off by hand as this creates a clean wound.   Removing all but the very top leaves m...

I'm so pleased with this little success. I've never had any luck rooting rosemary or lavender before. I pop the cuttings into potting soil, augment with perlite for  drainage, water them fastidiously, and then watch them slowly wilt, drop their leaves, and die... So, I felt a new sense of hope a couple months ago when I read about rooting in water instead. I thought, gosh, what an interesting idea. If I put the cuttings in a glass jar, I could actually watch for root growth. What had I got to loose? Well, guess what? It worked! For the rosemary at least. Look! Let me show you how I did it.  Step one: I cut sprigs off this year's growth (white and soft rather than brown and woody) from the healthiest sections of my mother plants. Step two: using my sharpest pruning knife, a penknife would work just as well, I trimmed off the leaves running up the stem just leaving a little sprig at the very top. Step three: I trimmed the stem just below the bottom leaf node. The leaf nodes h...