sn't it ironic that as the gardening season winds down, the Garden Club cranks up? I guess as the opportunities to do it become fewer, the need to talk about it grows.
September was an active month. The Fall Perennial Exchange had 50 "traders" - participation we used to be pleased to have in May when the gardening juices are running high - all with plants to contribute and target plants to grab. It was all over in fifteen minutes.
The Garden Club had its first program in September too. Edith Faulkner, Master Gardener, spoke on "Making More", that is propagating new plants from seeds and cuttings. Edith gardens on a 4.5 acre property that was once a farm. She grinned that many of the rocks she now uses in building her beds in former fields had once been dragged out of those same fields with great effort.
Who knew there were so many ways to take cuttings? Stem-tip, root, leaf, sucker tuber, offset, runner, bud - all are ways to clone plants you want more of.
One of the techniques she shared was how to work with leaf cuttings.The veins on the underside of the leaf are cut (not all the way through) and then the leaf is pinned to the soil with toothpicks, underside down. Babies are formed at the cuts.
Stem cuttings can be taken at the tip or from pieces along the stem. Each cutting needs a pair of nodes (where a leaf joins the stem), so the cuts are made just below a node at the bottom and just above a node at the top. It's really important, when inserting the cutting into the soil, to remember which end is up!
And the best part: Edith had brought with her a tray of cuttings and seeds for us to take home to experiment with. With luck we'll get the balance of moisture and heat just right, protect them well over winter and have new plants from Edith's farm come spring.
Do come join us at our next meeting. Membership is $10 for the program year - a real steal. But if you wish to pay more, the drop-in fee for one session is $3.
Both at 7 pm at the Firehall