Garden Bears' World - Taking Cuttings

Hello everyone!  Sonning has let me write another little gardening blog, because I have been busy helping Polar again.  I had been playing in the garden and climbing, while Sonning and Hanley were having naps, and I was almost at the top of the wisteria when I saw Polar going into the greenhouse.

'Can I help with anything?' I asked. 

'I'm going to tidy up the geraniums, ready for the spring,' she said.  'And I might take some cuttings.  You can help with those, if you like.'

This greenhouse is full of Polar's strange insect-eating plants but she puts some of the bigger geranium plants in there throughout the winter.  They looked very scruffy and there were lots of dead leaves on them, but Polar cleaned all of those off and cut back any straggly stems.

There was soon a big pile of stems and leaves in Polar's bowl of off-cuts.  'Do you want me to take these to the compost heap?'  I asked.

'Not until we've sorted through them, Endon,' said Polar.  'We can make new plants from some of these pieces.  We'll start by mixing some nice, sandy compost.'

Polar mixed equal amounts of sharp sand and compost together to make a mix that wouldn't get soggy, as she says geraniums don't like to be too wet, then filled three flowerpots with it.

Then Polar showed me how to select little shoots from the trimmings that could make new plants.  We cut them off, just below a leaf node, and I gently pushed them in around the edges of the pots.

These are scented geraniums - they smell of nutmeg!  Polar bought one plant several years ago and every year she gets lots of new plants from it, which she usually sells at work to raise funds to buy more plants for the little garden there.

We also got some cuttings from an orange-scented geranium, which was grown from a cutting Polar took at the college where she was a horticulture student.  I liked this one, as it reminded me of the smell of marmalade!

Although geraniums don't like being soggy, cuttings do need to be watered, so we stood the pots in some water for a little while, before taking them to the greenhouse.

On the way up the garden path, I looked in the pond and saw there was some frogspawn in it.  How exciting - I couldn't wait to tell the other bears!

I'll have more gardening adventures to share with you soon!