FREE PLANTS from late season cuttings...

It's not too late!

You can still make new plants for your garden, FREE, from the other plants you already have. A case in point:

A couple weeks ago, although it's getting late in the season, I bought two Stachys officinalis 'Hummelo' at a local nursery while on a search for flowering indoor plants. I first came to appreciate this plant at The New York Botanical Garden, where I grew it in the alpine meadow...and where it still grows today. It's dependable, rock solid, a beautiful vertical accent and popular with the butterflies.

It's late season and the plants, although blooming, were a bit ratty with leftover stems from the previous round of flowering. Before I could plant them they'd have to be cleaned up. All the old stems were trimmed off and the nice resulting plants popped into position.

I was left with a pile of stems and thought, hmmmm, what if? I cleaned them up, prepared them as cuttings, and stuck them in perlite.

In just this short time, I've got signs that the cuttings are rooting and that I'll have more plants of Stachys officinalis 'Hummelo' to put in the garden---for FREE!

Granted, some plants are easier than others to root, some times of year better than others to GET them to root. But take a second look at that pile of scraps. Don't be so quick to toss them into the compost heap. You may be throwing away free plants....

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