Propagation Basics

Description

An award-winning guide to increasing your plant supply with practical, step-by-step illustrations. Starting with the easiest of techniques like planting seeds and taking cuttings, and building up to more adventurous methods like grafting, makes it accessible to an amateur or an old hand. This is a complete guide to propagation in one handy volume, including a plant directory of over 100 plants, a seasonal propagation chart and a troubleshooting section.

Author description

Steven Bradley teaches pest and disease control at Capel Manor College, North London. For the last seven years he has been resident gardening expert for BBC Radio and is a regular panelist on the Gardening Roadshow, which travels the country answering gardening problems. He also writes a column in the gardening page of The Sun.

Table of contents

Introduction; Getting Started; what is propagation? Why propagate? Types of propagation; Tools and Equipment; basic tool kit, knives, secateurs, containers, propagation and artificial environments; Other Essentials; compost, hormone rooting preparations, watering, hygiene; Seeds; germination and viability, saving seeds, sowing under glass, pricking out, hardening off, sowing outdoors, protecting seeds and seedlings; Division; how to divide, plants with fibrous roots, woody plants and clump-forming shrubs, rhizomatous plants, offsets, runners and plantlets; Cuttings; taking cuttings, rooting cuttings, tip cuttings, stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, root cuttings, grafting; Bulbs, Corms and Tubers; bulbs and corms from seeds, dividing bulbs, scaling bulbs, scoring, scooping and chipping, corms and tubers; Layering; types of layering, simple layering, serpentine layering, air layering, dropping; Troubleshooting; pests, diseases, viruses; Directory of Plants; Calendar; Index; Acknowledgements.