Propagation by Division: Basil and Thyme

Last week I decided that it's time to learn the art of plant propagation. I want my plants to survive the winter, but I don't have room in the apartment to bring them all inside. The most cost-effective solution is to separate pieces of them that will fit into smaller flower pots. That way, they can grow on the windowsill or shelving indoors.

There are several methods of reproducing plants, or shall I say propagating them. One of the easiest ways to do so is by the method of division. All this really means is that the main plant will be divided into separate pieces. Each piece to be removed should have a main stem and a good amount of roots attached.

Some experts recommend removing the entire plant and surrounding soil from the container when performing division. I'm dealing with a huge plastic bucket of dirt on a balcony, and I would rather not drop clumps of dirt onto somebody's car or somebody's head nine stories below me. Therefore, I shall try a shortcut and just dig my hands into the dirt and make sure the plant I'm separating stays attached to its roots. The other plants are going to die soon anyway, so I don't really care if I damage them.

The basil looks like it will be easy to divide, so I pull that out first.

This basil plant was growing next to a larger one. There was a bit of resistance while removing it, but as you can see, most of its roots remained attached to the stem. Now I'm going to set it aside while I work on the thyme.

The thyme plant consists stems that are very close together. In the photo below, there is a stem that seems to be more separate from the others, so I pull that aside with my thumb and prepare to separate it the same way that I did with the basil.

 The thyme was more difficult to separate since the roots were more closely entwined. I had to really dig in deep with my hands to pull the piece away from the parent plant, but it worked.

The final step is to take a pot of dirt, set the newly divided plants into it and cover the roots with a few more inches of soil. The divided plants should then take root in the new pot and grow normally.

 It has been 5 days since dividing the basil and thyme plants and they seem to have adapted well to their new home. It's been warm all week so they're still outside, but when I go away this weekend for Thanksgiving, this pot of herbs will be brought inside to stay until springtime.

Not all plants can be so easily propagated. Sometimes division is not possible. I have a rosemary plant that cannot be divided in this way. I will have to make some plant cuttings. The peppermint plant also posed some problems, so we'll talk about that too.

There is much to discuss next week. I'll see you again on Tuesday!

So here's the plan. Are you ready?!

Alright, here is the basic rundown of what's going on around here. I have completed my very first summer crop of vegetables, fruit and herbs. I conducted it as an experiment and just sort of threw everything together in the hopes that it would work, and work very well it did. In fact, it worked so well that it is going to happen again next summer except even better, but not without a little research and planning, which is what I'll be sharing with you amongst other things.

All topics will be based upon whatever I happen to be doing at the moment, which is going to be a lot. There is much to learn not only about growing vegetables but also learning to care for indoor plants to keep the gardening itch satisfied all winter. I really can't sit here and just talk about what to do next spring, so there will be occasional posts about indoor projects. For an idea of what I've done so far, see the photos below.

Yep, so there are my bell pepper plants, basil, rosemary, parsley and thyme and upside down tomato plant, which lots of people ask me about, therefore I shall dedicate a post to the upside down plant at some point.

 Here's where I am in my gardening experiment. The tomato plant has stopped producing tomatoes, not like they produced many to begin with (a grand total of 3), which is due to a mistake that I must have made, but I'll figure that out later.

 The basil plants grew extremely well in the summer but now, they don't seem to be growing new leaves. In fact, they are flowering, which my gardening friend told me is not good for the flavouring of the leaves. In case you are wondering, they are growing in a humongous Rubbermaid container with a build-in water reservoir (yep, DIY project). Directions for how to make one of your own will appear in a later blog entry.

The thyme, parsley and rosemary are still growing well in their wooden trough. The strawberries never grew, so clearly I screwed those up somehow. The cilantro is also long-dead, and I cut down the pepper plants after the two plants produced only three puny orange peppers. 

In total, there were two failures (strawberries, cilantro), two partial successes (peppers, tomatoes) and four successes (thyme, basil, parsley, rosemary).

At this point I have two main goals. The first is to figure out what to do with the kitchen herbs before the frost arrives and kills them off. The second is to figure out what I did wrong with the failures and partial successes so that next year they will grow abundant fruit and hopefully not die. Oh right I also need to figure out how to properly store the soil before it snows. So really, I have three main goals.

Since autumn is here and the outside temperatures are dropping, the top priority is to deal with the kitchen herbs. After much contemplation, it seems that the most sensible course of action is to learn plant propagation in order to continue growing the herbs indoors.

I'll also need to learn preservation techniques so that the large quantify of herbs (there is a TON of thyme!) will not go to waste. I shall obviously share photos and step-by-step instructions on how to do so, otherwise why would you want to keep reading. Sound good? That sounds like a plan to me!

That's all for today, folks. Next blog entry: plant division and cuttings. Stay tuned!!