I notice there has been insufficient propagating going on in this blog recently. I do mention it in passing on occasion, but I seem to have got out of the habit. This simply won’t do. I’ll be putting up a quick post every time I take a cutting, or divide something, or sow some seeds, hopefully to be followed some weeks later with news of rooting, or new growth, germination and the like. Expect many posts.
Here is post the first.
A month or two back I bought a couple of aster plants, having seen their like in full chat in the gardens at Waterperry. One of them I immediately divided into two decent chunks. The other, ‘Star of Chester’ sat there for a while, teasing me. It had numerous little outgrowths around the edge of the pot. ‘Star of Chester’ is a tall one, growing to 5 or 6 feet and forming a pretty good clump. A good back-of-the-border doer for some late summer, early autumn colour.
Tempting. Asters are one of that happy group of plants that provide easy pickings for the nervous propagator. When the clump is established in the ground, it is a simple matter of going in with a knife, a hori-hori, or even a trowel, removing teeny plantlets. They could be plonked straight in the ground, or potted up and put somewhere sheltered to convalesce. This is more or less how the plant expands its territory if left to its own devices, we are just lending a helping trowel, speeding things along. This one was even easier, I just removed it from the pot and carefully cut away (hacked) a few plantlets from the rim of the fairly pot-bound plant.
I was going to wait till the spring but was unable to contain myself, so tempting a prospect was it. I potted each up in to a 9cm pot, John Innes No3 compost with some added grit. They are living it up in the heated bench for a little while.
This was a couple of weeks back. This last weekend, I felt the call of the same plant and removed another three in similar fashion. I now have the parent plant, which come spring will probably throw up new growth from the edges, plus six babies. Seven (so far) for the price of one.
I’ll be back in a while with an update on progress.
The Propagator 
Wonderful, you are inspiring.
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Aw thanks Jackie.
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The desire to create more plants is a glorious disease
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As vices go, it’s fairly benign.
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Like you I love getting more for the price of one and I recently turned one small Liriope into five. So easy it wasn’t worth mentioning really. A couple of years ago I propagated asters and now they are well into an inexorable march across the garden, so I’m afraid they have to go.
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I may come to regret it, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes. I’ll probably offload some of these somehow.
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I remember those. Division of asters is too easy. Does that even count as propagation?
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Sure it does! Turning one plant into several is sort of the definition.
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You know, after cutting back zonal geraniums, I processed the scraps into cuttings and plugged them into the garden . . . all over the place. I feel so naughty about it, as if I was planting weeds. However, it does not seem so bad if I consider it to be ‘propagation’. (Not to suggest that zonal geraniums are in the same league as aster, of course.)
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Nothing wrong with a pellie.
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Well, I know that, and apparently you know that, but I also know how some others feel about them.
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