Roots on Roots

(Page 4 of 4)

December/January 1995
By BETSY STRAUCH 
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Don’t unintentionally multiply your herbs (or weeds) by tilling in the root zones of plants that increase readily by root cuttings—unless you want to create a bed of the stuff. To prevent a sea of unwanted herbs, carefully dig up the soil with a shovel between the plant and the area to be tilled and pick out every bit of root before bringing in the tiller.

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Betsy Strauch is assistant editor of The Herb Companion. She and her husband, Joe, are rooted in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Pots atop Pots

If you want to take root cuttings of a plant growing in a container but are reluctant to unpot it and chop off any of its roots, consider this technique recommended by Robert Bartolomei, curator of the T. H. Everett Rock Garden and Native Plant Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. Bartolomei places the parent plant in its container on another, similar container filled with potting mix. When the plant is watered, the container beneath also gets watered. After a while, roots make their way out of the drainage holes and into the moist medium in the lower container. Then he can lift up the upper pot and sever the roots just below the drainage hole. The roots within the donor plant’s container remain intact, but the roots growing in the lower pot become cuttings, which can be transplanted to individual containers or covered with a little more potting mix and left to grow on in the larger pot.

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