Plant propagation by encouraging layering

• 12 Oct, 2010
• 13 likes

The plants on the trolley were divided in just over 30 minutes.All the plants in the photo were propagated by division between early April and late May. The Plants on the trolley include lemon and golden thyme, ornamental grasses, sedum acre, crocosmia and campanula

On average most of the plants I grow can be divided 4 to 6 ways per year . Some, such as Golden Thyme can be divided 6 ways in early May after over wintering ,, a further 4 ways in early July and a further 4 ways in early September. So that's 96 plants from one plant in a year ! This is pushing it a bit so I normally stick to a 24 fold increase per annum.

Once I really tried to maximise propagation and I bought a ground spreading golden thyme from a garden centre in April. I immediately potted it up into a 15 cm diameter pot and sprinkled a thin mixture of 2 parts sharp sand and 2 parts potting compost over the leaves and watered well so the compost washed off the leaves and sank down to surround each of the small stems of the plant

. I kept the leaves of the plant very damp for 4 weeks and in full sun to maximise growth by which time all the little stems had put out very fine white roots into the 50/50 compost. Then using a bread knife I sawed the plant up into about 15 sections and repotted into 13 cm pots. After 6 weeks I divided these 4 ways and after another 4 weeks I divided them a further 4 ways..

So in just over 3 months one plant costing £1.35 was turned into 240 plants only slightly smaller than the original!

I reckon if I really pushed it I could get this up to 1000 plants from one in one year