If you are an avid home gardener or just getting into the fondness of looking after your garden, then the term propagation is something you have maybe heard of, but not sure exactly what it is.
Plant propagation is the process of creating new plants. Whether you want to experiment a bit at home with making new plants, wish to duplicate one of your favourite plants, or just have more plants that you can proudly say you have grown yourself. Different types of propagation will allow you to do this, depending on the plant species. Below we break down the main differences between the different types of propagation.
Sexual Propagation
This quite simply is a concept we are all quite familiar with. Uniting a male and female to create a new plant. Male (pollen) and female (egg) are used to produce a seed, which will then grow into a new plant. You then need to plant the seed under favourable conditions to allow it to grow into a new healthy plant.
There are various advantages for either method of growing your own plants. With sexual propagation, it is often cheaper the asexual propagation. It of course also allows you to really go wild (with a bit of knowledge) and you can create your own hybrids and plant varieties.
Asexual Propagation
Creating new plants from a parent plant. This is usually done by taking a part of the parent plant and using it to regenerate itself to create a new plant that is genetically identical to the original plant. Plants can be propagated in various ways by using cuttings, stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, root cuttings, layering and division.
With asexual propagation depending on the type of plant you wish to propagate, if conditions are favourable you can often increase production and your plants can grow swiftly. It can also save you more time and is energy efficient as you don’t need seeds to get things going from seed.
At Stanler Farms we have a wonderful variety of indoor and outdoor plants. Come and see what we have on offer for you to start your propagation journey.