Home & People January the chance to take many shrub cuttings

Press, 25 January 1979, Page 14

Home & People January the chance to take many shrub cuttings

Midsummer is when the garden enters the doldrum days. Growth is slow, foliage is hardening off in preparation for autumn, the early flowers are over, and the late ones are still on the way. The ground, except in the vegetable garden where it has been well cultivated and watered, is too dry for planting out.

But there is one job for which the time is ripe: taking cuttings of a wide range of shrubby and semi-shrubby plants. Many will grow satisfactorily only from cuttings taken in January.

These include soft-wood-ed plants like lavenders, cistuses, and helianthemums, a few silvers, and sub-shrubby perennials like Geranium incanum, Ursinia gayei, helichrysums, and wallflowers. Perennial wallflowers I find possible to propagate only at this time of year; midsummer is the only time when there is a suggestion of a lull in their flowering, making it possible to find young shoots without flower buds. The secret of successfully growing plants from summer cuttings is to find non-flowering wood; flowering shoots will simply go on trying to produce flowers instead of growing a proper root system, and even if they do survive they are apt to grow into poorly shaped adults.

The hardy lavenders can be grown from cuttings taken at almost any time of the year, but they will root much more quickly from summer cuttings (in a matter of weeks, rather than perhaps months for spring cuttings), and if wintered in a frame will be big enough to be planted out in spring. Some silver plants, too, are best grown from summer cuttings. The lovely silver-leaved cornflower, Centaurea gymnocarpa, will not strike from spring cuttings, but young shoots will root in a matter of a week or two in summer, as will cuttings of another lovely silver plant, Chry-

santhemum ptarmiciflorum, which resolutely refuses to strike before the end of December, but grows like a weed for several weeks afterwards. Neither of these is any too hardy, but the cornflower, which comes from Capri, will withstand quite heavy frost if its drainage is good, and will hang on for several years until it goes straggly and woody, at which time it is best to start again. In summer this cornflower doubles as a

flowering plant, covering itself with large carminerose blooms that go well with its grey leaves. I have just potted up several replacements for my clump, which is now three years old, and showing its age. The lovely Helichrysum bracteatum is too well covered with its sulphur yellow everlasting flowers to offer propagating wood (every shoot has a flower on it) but helichrysum virgineum, which has its straw-coloured everlasting flowers in spring, is a mass of grey rosettes ripe for the taking.

The curry plant, Helichrysum angustifolium, another silver, also grows from summer cuttings; I have just potted up half a dozen. This is the most un-helichrysum-looking softwooded shrub, with barely noticeable flowers. The popular name comes from its habit of wafting waves of curry scent for yards around on a hot day; I like it. Oddly, the leaves have very little scent when crushed. Fuchsias root readily from soft cuttings taken at this time, put in sand and kept moist and shady. Some people do not even worry about the sand and shade; they just leave their fuchsia cuttings in a glass of water on a window sill until roots grow, then pot them up. The method seems to work well enough, though I consider it less reliable and more likely to rot the cuttings than the sand method. Summer propagation offers the would-be fuchsia grower advantages, even in dealing with the hardier, small-flowered types such as Fuchsia magellanica (red and purple) and its varieties “Alba” (sometimes called “Ballerina”) and “Riccartonii” (which was named in Edinburgh, not Christchurch). Plants raised now have a head start of six to eight months over hardy fuchsias raised in conventional fashion from hardwood cuttings in late autumn. For all these cuttings,

plenty of latitude is allowable in the choice of a rooting medium. Mixtures in the ratio two sand/one peat, or one sand/one peat/one perlite (or even one peat/one perlite) are all satisfactory, but sand by itself is cheaper, and probably just as good. I like to trim my cuttings immediately they are taken, cutting to a node and removing the lower leaves (the tip, too, if it is

too soft). Before planting them, I soak them for half an

hour in a nutrient solution, then shake them dry and dip the ends in No 2 hormone powder. I do not know if this treatment does any good, but it cannot do harm. The cuttings go into a frame, which stays closed until they indicate whether they are going to live. At this time of year, that is often only a week or less. Some of the more reso-

lute survivors, such as dianthus, often start to grow roots within a week.

three to four weeks is average, but I have pricked out and potted up strongly rooted dianthus cuttings in six days. Some dianthus, such as the Sweet William types and mule pinks like good old “Emile Pare.” which dates from the nineteenth century, must get this treatment annually. They are so free-flower-ing that they put nearly all their energy into flower stems, and sometimes forget to make enough vegetative head-

way to carry them through winter. At this time of the year are nearly always a few nonflowering shoots that can be used to perpetuate them. If left on the plants these shoots, too will run to flower before winter. When that happens the plant is in grave danger of sudden death. I have lost more than one, including an irreplaceable Sweet William with rich red double flowers, in this way.