Ever seen another person’s herb garden and wanted one exactly like it? Want to buy loads of lovely herbs but don’t have the money? Or want to start a plant business don’t know where to start?
Well my friend, I have two words for you. Plant cloning. It’s natural, free and very easy to do.
This method works best for herbs such as
- Basil
- Broadleaf Thyme/Cuban Oregano
- Mint
- Oregano
Basically, what it does is allow you to take a cutting from one plant, and grow an entirely separate plant from it. This means that you could have an endless supply of herbs - you can take 20 cuttings from a single plant, and when they’ve all grown you’ll be able to take another 20 cutting from each of those plants!
So how do you do it? Well it’s deceptively simple. Here’s how:
1. Start with your parent plant. Due to my recent obsession with basil, that’s the herb I’ve decided to go for.
2. Take a cutting - about 4-5 inches long. Make sure you do it just below a node (the place where the leaves join the stem, just like above in the picture)
3. If possible, try and cut the stem diagonally. This gives it a greater surface area to suck up water with.
4. OK, so this is pretty much what your cutting should look like. Make sure you’ve removed at least the bottom pair of leaves, but it’s good to remove a few sets as the plant can then concentrate on growing roots.
5. Place the cutting in some water so that the stem is comletley submerged. I found old plastic shot glasses worked great for this, but you can also use pretty bottles or cups or whatever.
6. Make sure you’ve picked the bottom leaves off, and that the nodes are in the water. This is because the new roots are going to grow out of these nodes, so obviously they’re going to need to be in the water.
7. Put them in a sunny place where you can keep an eye on them. Above is a picture of the babies with their mummy! After about a week, roots should have grown out of the nodes.
8. That’s it, you’re done! Once the roots are well developed, you can plant your herbs in to pots. Keep the soil moist and the herb in a sunny place, and soon it’ll be as big as the parent plant.
You can use this method to get free herbs - instead of buying them all, why not just take cuttings from a friend or family member’s herbs and use them for your own garden? (with their permission of course)
Or, take a lot of cuttings like I’ve done, pot them up and sell them for a profit!
Good luck and happy planting! ^-^
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