I thought I wanted to share with you all, an easy way of getting many plants out of a few. A lot of you know about this of course, but I know, that there are also people out there, who have never heard about this before, so I wanted to do this for the sake of reference.

The most common ways of reproducing plants vegetatively is by division and cuttings. To divide a plant, you need a plant that's big enough to be divided, and cuttings can often be a pain in the b*tt , if I may say so. Especially when the weather is warm.
Soil layering (or ground layering) is just as easy as dividing a plant. It's basically done, by forcing the stem horizontal to the ground, and letting it grow roots by the leaf nodes. This way, the clone, will be able to get water and nutrients from the original plant, while growing it's new roots.

My first example is a Moroccan mint. -Now, mint is a fast grower, and sends out runners, so it will multiply in no time on it's own... I just wanted it to go even faster.

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This poor mint was rescued from an open showcase cooler in the vegetable section of the Supermarket next door. I've hardened it off for a few days, and it's now ready to be planted.

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Without the plastic it looks a lot smaller.

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The pot contained four cuttings...

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Because Moroccan mint isn't very flexible, I'm planting it a bit "sideways".

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All four plants.

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A small peg fashioned out of a piece of wire.

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Stem pegged into the soil, right in front of a leaf pair.

*PLEASE NOTE: I left the leaves attached on a few layerings as an experiment to see if they would grow roots anyway. The answer so far is, that IF they do, then they will do it more slowly (some plants don't care and will create roots anywhere, really, but most prefer the leaves removed). A better way is to remove a leaf pair, and place the peg right over that (the bend, actually induces root growth as well).

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Enjoy the fruits of your (not so) hard labour with a nice glass of mint tisane.

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A month later, the plant has produced rooted clones and a runner.
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Ready to get transplanted...

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... into a small pot in the rose container.

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Lemon thyme: Three weeks ago, I stripped some stems of some of their leaves, pushed them a bit into the "soil" and placed rocks over them.

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What it looks like under the stone now...

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Roots (after three weeks)
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This year, I'm also doing this to some oregano and oswego tea, that had very poor germination- and survival rate (only one plant of each germinated and ONE of each survived). -And yesterday, I removed some leaves from a lemon verbena, and placed that under some small rocks.
Most things can be propagated in this manner. A few things may be a bit harder, but in general it works. On more woody stems (like roses) you might want to make a small cut on the lower side of the stem, for the roots to form. I'll probably be doing that to my rose next year, and will try to remember to update this post.

VG

This post was edited by vgtar on Wed, Jul 3, 13 at 22:40