Friday 3 September 2010

What came first the pup or the pot?

I mentioned in an earlier post how exciting it is when you find a pup on a plant, so was a good day again today when I found a pup on my agave filifera cross.


The pup is a long way from being ready to take off and I am determined to actually show some restraint for once. (Usually I take the pup off too early as I get impatient).  I am not sure if it is the challenge, wanting spares, or part of the obsession, but I tend to get carried away and propagate more than I need.  Even with plants I already have spares for, each time a leaf falls off I put it to one side to see if it will root.

I have never noticed how many plants I actually propagate, until looking at my empty pots pile I noticed I only had 10.  This may not seem very significant, but I bought 200 pots at the start of july, and I am not sure how or where but I have filled 190 of them, mostly by propagating. Admittedly I am very pleased with my little nursery area, watching them grow and there is something very satisfactory about how neat they all are.


My OH will laugh very loudly when she reads this, but I don't like mess and it is one of the reasons I like succulents, their very neat symmetrical form.  Strangely I don't find pots messy, especially not when they can be lined up like this.  But I am starting to worry that I have more varieties of plant each year, and this means more propagation opportunity, so if I managed 190 this year how many next year?

I am still not sure if I propagate plants because I have spare pots, or I buy pots to allow me to propagate, but maybe you can have too many pots.

2 comments:

  1. Hello! Thank you for commenting on my blog, danger garden, so I could find yours! So where do you keep all of these pups that you are propagating? Do you have a greenhouse?

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  2. Unfortunately I don't have a greenhouse, so it is a mixture of a small cold frame I assemble each winter, a couple of shelves in the garden shed, lots of windowsills in the house, and a new three story prop area designed and built my my father-in-law which no doubt will be the topic of a future post when it is filled for winter.
    I dream of having a better climate for my plants.

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