The Cut Flower Podcast

BEST PLANTS FOR PROPAGATION BEGINNERS

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 154

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 7:18

Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

Roz Chandler shares practical tips on the easiest plants to propagate in your first year, focusing on seed saving, division, and cuttings. Perfect for beginners looking to build confidence and success in propagation.

Takeaways:


Easy plants to propagate: Cosmos, Calendula, Cornflowers, Sweet Peas
Propagation methods: seed saving, division, cuttings
Specific plants: mint, salvia, dahlias, pelargoniums, strawberries, perennials
Propagation tips for confidence and success
Roots to Shoots course for structured learning

Join our 5 month propagation course here


Rosalind Chandler (00:00)
So hello and welcome back to the Cut Flower Podcast. Now this is part number three of our propagation mini series. So we've been talking about propagation and we've been talking about the different ways of propagation and we just want to talk today about the easiest plants to propagate in your first year. So hello lovely people and welcome back. And right today we're going to get practical because one of the biggest mistakes I see is people start propagation with the hardest plants and then they think they failed.

They haven't, they just started in the wrong place. So today I'm giving you some simple, reliable, confidence building plants, things that work, things that will give you easy wins. And we're going to cover seed saving, division and cuttings. So let's go. First of all, Cosmos, absolute no brainer. Grow it once and you'll have seed forever. Let the flowers go over, let the seed heads dry, collect and store the seeds. Done. What a brilliant plant Cosmos is.

Second, calendula. Even easier, it practically sells seeds, in fact it does. You'll start spotting little plants popping up for free. Third, cornflowers. Same again, row once, save seed, repeat. Brilliant for beginners. Fourth,

sweet peas. Now these you usually grow from broad seed initially but once you get into seed saving you'll absolutely collect your own and of course they're true to the mother plant which is unlike a lot of other plants and they're a great place to start and practice on. Now let's move on to cuttings.

Fifth is mint. If you can't propagate mint, I'd be really worried because it's an invasive plant and it takes over. Pop a stem in water or soil, it roots quickly. So satisfying. And mint is so wonderful in bud vases and in arrangements. And it's amazing. We grow seven types of mint here on the farm.

Salvia, this is soft cuttings in the growing season, really good success rate and hugely useful in a cutting patch. Recommend definitely you take count soft cuttings of salvia. Seventh, this Dahlia's. Now this is where people really get excited. Now Dahlia's is one of the most productive plants you can have. On its own, it produces a lot. It's a cut and come again, so it produces a lot of flowers, long stems, but the tuber itself is very exciting. You can take cuttings from Dahlia's early in the season.

you can plant up the daily tuber under cover

in March and April and early May and you can just make sure the compost is moist don't water it again until it starts sprouting when it starts sprouting start to water and then you'll be able to take cuttings so from that one Dahlia tuber you have got cuttings as well as the initial Dahlia tuber for that season's Dahlia's you can divide the tubers I would suggest that you can divide your tubers by lifting them at the end of the season

and then you can divide them making sure you've got the crown, the head and the eye which is the bit that you need to make it viable. You can divide your tubers, I wouldn't do it till the spring so I'd store them over winter and do it in the spring. One plant all of a sudden becomes many. This is where propagation becomes really really powerful. Eighth, Pelagoniums.

Classic snip popping compost keep frost free away you go Pelagony and centipelagony like rose at our Beautiful. They are great foliage plants as well that you can use in bouquets and so on but Pelagony are an underrated plant Just watch that they're tender perennials and you need to bring them indoors in the winter. They won't even survive in the greenhouse Nine I'll go for a fruit this time strawberries. They're runners little baby plants forming off

main plant. Peg them down, let them root. Hey, you've got new plants for free. Tenth, perennials. Perennials like Achillea mollusk. You could do hosta or daylilas as well but lift and divide. Now for instance, Achillea mollusk or ladies' mangrove becomes a really huge plant over the years so you do need to lift it and divide it. One clump easily becomes three, four or five and you get instant impact.

Now listen, you do not need to do all of these. Pick one or two, start there, build your confidence and layer it all in. Because propagation is not about doing everything. Walk around your garden or your cutting patch, work out what you'd really like more of. It's about doing something consistently. Now if you're thinking right now, I mean, I actually want to learn this properly, then this is exactly why we've created Roots to Shoots course. Because the masterclass will give you a spark. The masterclass we ran on the 27th and 28th within a Facebook group. But Roots

to Shoots gives you structure, walks you through what to propagate, when to do it, how to do it, lots of demonstrations and crucially why. So you're not guessing but you're building a system of propagation and whether you're growing for yourself or you're building a flower business this is one of the most valuable skills you can have. Now very importantly this course is only open for short window and closes on the 3rd of May. We are going to put the link to the Reach to Shoots course where you can sign up below in the show notes so I hope you will

join us because we'll support you all the way and we'll do it together so if you're thinking about it just don't sit on that fence come and join us learn about it properly and by this time next year you'll have a completely different garden or business or cutting batch and really that's no exaggeration. Alright lovely people start simple take action and I'll see you in the master classes and hopefully within the Roots to Shoots course. Take care.