Potting the African Daisy Pickings

jaynie (75)Memberin WORLD OF XPILAR • 5 months ago

I was not really up for any major garden projects this last weekend, but I had the pickings from our walk on the Friday which had been temporarily placed in water on the kitchen counter as well as some old plastic plant pots which had been standing outside forever and a day, collecting mostly weeds within them, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Clear out the pots and plant the cuttings. There were actually a couple of plants in the pots "originally" - not that you can see that through all the weeds which have taken over in the photo above, lol - but they just became one of those "things" which never seemed to successfully make it from my "to do" list to my "done" list haha!

Having the cuttings pretty much forced my hand - and at least it was not too much of a strenuous job... so I planted my rear end at the foot of the stairs and started the process of separating the weeds from the plants. I was left with a whole lot of pots and only a handful of plants - a rose, a geranium and a couple of leeks, lol!

Once the weeds were gone, I added some wood chip mixture to the existing soil in the pots and them topped them all up with some mushroom soil. Ready to go, I grabbed the cuttings from the kitchen and began potting.

Aside from a little bit of watercress, most of the snippets gathered along our walk were African Daisies - not that I am complaining, because I am an absolute SUCKER for daisies of ANY kind! Flower power for the win, lol.

Some time back - long before we moved into this place, I grabbed a cutting of Purple African daisies which were growing outside of a coffee shop on one of our Sunday morning road trips to a little village called Stanford.

I followed pretty much the same procedure back then as I have done now, creating a mother plant by rooting the cutting in a pot and once that becomes established, I take cuttings from the mother plant to then plant into the ground of the garden. That way, if anything happens (as it sometimes does) whereby the cutting in the ground dies... I will still have the mother plant to go back to and try again.

I was thrilled to spot so many other colours the other day - bright orange, white, yellow and a yellow and white one! All of which are going to look absolutely fabulous alongside the rich purple... eventually! I only put one cutting in each pot because they are creeping ground cover daisies - so self spreading and will eventually fill the pots themselves.

I have found that covering my seedlings and other cuttings with old five litre water bottles is really helpful in the beginning stages. Not only does it create its own little environment of moisture which is great for any kind of seedling, but it also mostly keeps the pests and birds out as well as protecting the plant from any harsh winds, which we have a fair amount of here.

In this instance, I had more cuttings than I had pots, so four of the snippets did actually end up going directly into the ground, but I have placed bottles over them too and have been keeping a close eye on all of them since. Happy to say, they are all looking great so far and with the rain today, I am smiling.

I know that none of it really looks like much at the moment, but Rome wasn't built in a day, lol - and one day it will be an oasis of natural beauty! Well, that is the intention anyway haha!!!