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Your parents probably tried to instill the virtues of sharing when you were
in your formative years. The reasoning is that it's a nice way to treat your
peers and it teaches you to be unselfish and thoughtful. When it comes to
gardening, sharing plants through propagation isn't just a friendly gesture
but is actually beneficial to your plants and an economical way to expand
your collection. Propagation forces you to take a few minutes and give some
individual care to a plant that may have been neglected otherwise. It also
involves cutting back a plant that may have become unruly, or digging up a
plant that may be too big for its current space. Economically, it provides
you with a number of plants you didn't have a few minutes before, which you
can then use to expand your garden or trade with friends for new plants.
There are many different ways to propagate new plants from your own plants.
The following are a few simple methods to get you started.
Offsets
Some plants will literally do the work for you by producing little plantlets
or offsets from the base or the stem of the "mother" plant. For instance
succulents and cacti will often produce miniature versions of the parent
plant around the base, which can be removed and planted in a new container
of soil, or moved to a new place in the garden. Spider plants (Clorophytum)
and strawberry plants will send off shoots containing small plantlets that
can be pinned down to some moist soil, where they will grow their own roots.
You can fashion a pin by bending a paper clip into a "u" shape. [see
instructions on side]. Once the plantlet has produced its own roots, the
shoot attaching the plantlet to the mother plant (an umbilical cord of
sorts) can be cut, leaving you with a new plant that can be given away.
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