Everything you need to know about successful plant propagation (even if it’s your first time).
If you are looking for a sure-fire way to grow plants using propagation techniques, then this may be the most important letter you’ll ever read…
Are you sick and tired of paying for new plants every spring, handing over your hard earned cash, for plants…that honestly… sometimes are looking a bit worse for wear.
Why not grow your own baby plants….it’s pretty easy, all you need to do is follow a well tested set of guide lines to ensure you have success, with healthy young plants to put in to the garden or even give away to friends and family.
Or if you are looking for answers but feel overwhelmed with all the information on the internet, then trying to sort thru all the facts and anecdotal drivel……it’s hard work!
I met my lovely wife while travelling in Europe and eventually we settled down and brought our home….and for the first time in my life decided I wanted to garden. I had grown up with my parents running a plant nursery from our family home.
Apart from working for them in school holidays to earn some pocket money I had never really taken much interest in gardening around the house.
Now I was married with our first child on the way…..my paternity instincts kicked in and………….I HAD AN URGE TO GARDEN…
It costs money and lots of it…there’s soil, Fertilisers, tools, plants, seeds…Etc.
I don’t know about you but I go into one of the BIG centres down the road from where we live and I see all the cool tools, plants, garden features and just go into some type of trance…..so much so my wife doesn’t come in with me anymore she stays at home.
I decided I would start growing from seeds and cuttings as it couldn’t be that hard, my dad had done it all the time when I was a kid.
So I did….well sort of….the seeds went ok if I brought them in a packet, as for the propagation …not so good….total failure actually. I could not believe it.
I had travelled 2 ½ hours to get my cuttings, (from my wife’s parents place), AND NOT A SINGLE ONE HAD GROWN ANY ROOTS………WHAT HAD HAPPENED???
I even splashed out and brought some good (well I thought it was) potting mix to really give my future plants the best start…..
But maybe, I thought, I had tried to grow plants that couldn’t be grown from cuttings…..
Could it be that I hadn’t used the correct tools, or the right type of cutting, or maybe putting the cuttings in to a plastic bag wasn’t the done thing.
Even the seeds I collected didn’t grow….was it me or maybe the bees had been too busy elsewhere to pollinate the tree I had taken seed off….
His answer was “I’ll send you one of the last copies of my book, “Plants for Free.”
Not really… as it was around the same time I got my driving licence and started working full time……so I wasn’t home much.
After reading the book and especially the chapter “growing from seed” I realised what I had done wrong, and that different seeds require different methods to get the little things to sprout
Then I learnt the simple and basic knowledge required to get a cutting to take root…which If I had known before I started taking cuttings would have saved me a fair bit of heart ache
The “GOOD SOIL” I had brought was the wrong stuff, but now I know better and now my cuttings have the greatest chance of growing roots
So I told my dad about how great his book had been in helping me, that friends had asked if they could their own copy
I had thought about it for around a week when a friend told me she had brought a “Guilt Free Chocolate Cook Book” as an E-Book
“Press the BUY NOW button put in your payment details and then fast as you like it’s in your inbox ready to start reading”
But before we go any further I think it’s time to tell you about the author of this International Best Selling Book… my dad…Andrew.
Which all started back in 1970 when he started attending “West of Scotland Agriculture College” where he completed his Diploma in Commercial Horticulture?
Whom he married in 1974 and she persuaded him to travel to the other side of world to live in Auckland New Zealand.
He then went on to work in commercial wholesale nurseries, propagating a wide range of plants as well as training staff in plant propagation.
But like most in the nursery industry he thought of growing plants himself and making money. While the business was starting out he took a part time job as a Field Officer for the “Horticulture Apprenticeship Scheme” which trained people for work in fruit orchards, greenhouse and out-door vegetable growing and flower growing.
When the business grew he had to focus on growing plants until the mid 80’s when he experienced what is perhaps the real bane of nursery life…back pain.
He had an operation to alleviate the problem, and his doctor told him “You should be doing something else”
So he got a full time teaching job at the local Horticultural College, lecturing on a range of horticultural topics. The family nursery was being run as a side line with mum doing most of the work with help from a few part time employees.
In the early 90’s dad started writing a column for “Commercial Horticulture” magazine, which were candid interviews with industry leaders about what was happening in their nurseries. Read more…