Flower cuttings

On New Years Eve my lovely friend Elaine brought me a gorgeous bunch of flowers. They are a mixed bunch with a kind of blackcurrant ripple colour scheme. Yesterday when I was changing the water I noticed that the carnations have some shoots on the stalks.  A lot of florists tend to remove them these days which is a bit of a shame as they make great plant cuttings. Forget about all that rooting compound and fancy grit and just pull them away from the stalk and pop them into a glass of water. I found that if I stretch a piece of cling film over the glass and just poke the stalks through so that the top part of the cutting doesn't sink that you can actually see at a glance once the roots start growing. The tub of water' method works for loads of other plants too.  I have grown... ceanothus, honeysuckle, clematis and roses this way.  Just make sure to check them regularly and change the water every few days. In a few weeks you will see the roots starting to form.  Pot them up very gently so that you don't knock the roots off as they start to appear.  In my experience carnations grown this way needed some means of support as they tended to grow quite floppy.' When I get a very fragrant wallflower in my garden I look out for cuttings to take from that plant. They root very easily in a pot of compost and to be honest all I do is pull them off the plant and poke a hole into the soil in the garden  with my finger before popping the cutting in.  You really must remember to keep them moist though if you do this as the other garden plants are all competing for any available moisture.  If you aren't much of a gardener and likely to forget then it is probably safer to put them into pots and keep an eye on the watering.