Wednesday 3 November 2010

Taking Cuttings: Rosemary, Lavender and Mint

You will have to forgive me for disappearing for a little while. I have been scouring the internet every evening in an attempt to get my Christmas Shopping wrapped up early. And now with much of it sitting in the hands of internet stores waiting to be dispatched I am free to return my focus to my garden and my blog. And I promised you a post about herb cuttings so here it is.

We took cuttings this year of Lavender, Rosemary and Mint. Here's how we did it.

Lavender and Rosemary


Find some healthy looking shoots, without flowers and cut just below a bud, a few inches down the stem. Try to make it a clean cut using sharp scissors or secateurs.

Remove all the lower leaves. If you leave the lower leaves on the cutting they will rot and prevent new roots from forming.  



Place the cuttings around the edge of a pot filled with moist compost and leave them to take root. I put 8 or 9 cuttings in 8in pots.



You will know when they have taken root because new growth will start to form. At this point you can re-pot them into individual pots.

Mint

Mint is propagated by taking root cuttings. I have never done this before so I have no idea if what I did will work but this is what I did.

Rummage around the edge of the pot for some new roots and cut a few inches away from the end.



Bury each cutting horizontally in a compost filled pot, a couple of inches deep.



In theory new growth will appear after a few weeks but it is currently too early for us to know if this has worked.

We had successful rosemary cuttings last year so I am hoping that this year the lavender and rosemary will be just as successful. Watch this space!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks- I had been curious about lavender cuttings as I wondered whether that was the way to propagate. I will give it a go!

    As far as mint, I have also found cuttings will form roots in water. This will also work for rosemary, though takes a lot longer.

    Will your outside herbs survive the winter? My one US winter gardening experience was realising that mint and rosemary do actually have a threshold of cold tolerance from which they won't return!

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  2. I just bought new batch of rosemary and thymes from the supermarket to grow in my garden by cuttings too. Thats how I grow them cos by seeds they grow too slow and so far that way was successful, the same goes with mint.

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  3. Hi _vTg_. We have put all the cuttings in the greenhouse for the winter. It isn't a heated greenhouse but the rosemary cuttings we did last year in the same way survived well, even over the really cold, snowy period so I think so long as they are under cover they should be alright. The terracotta pots also help to keep them warm.

    For outdoor plants I think its probably a good idea to cover them in fleece when it gets really frosty but we didn't manage this last year and one of our lavenders has had to be uprooted. It never grew back.

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