Thursday, May 28, 2009

A Seagrape propagation experiment


I'm running out of patience with covering the back fence. I was planning to keep the space there open for more fruit trees/ edible shrubs, but the open ground is a breeding ground for all kinds of weeds and the neighbours back fence is not the prettiest sight to be seen. I decided to try and propagate some sea grape cuttings, they grow fast, are native to this area, have beautiful plate sized leaves with a red vein, bear edible fruits and grow fast, plus they are excellent wind barriers. I read somewhere that you can pretty much cut a two foot section off and stick it in the ground and that's exactly what I did. During the last part of May and almost whole of June, we get rain daily and mostly more than once, making it the ideal time to propagate plants in this fashion. Last year, I cut off a one inch thick cane from my neighbour's bougainvillea (that have now naturalised on my side of the lawn, but provides a spectacular show), stuck it in a pot with soil, placed it under the deep shade of the fig tree and voila instant standard bougainvillea - these sell for $45 and more.

1 comment:

  1. As luck would have it, our "daily" rain ceased right after I planted them and both the seagrape cuttings died.

    ReplyDelete