How can you rejuvenate plants or safeguard against winter frosts? Or multiply favorite plants to pass to friends? For every plant there is a successful technique -- from root and stem cuttings, to bulbils and spores.

The Complete Book of Plant Propagation shows you the best ways to do these tasks and more. It is the essential guide to improving and enlivening your garden, demystifying the essential art of propagating plants and demonstrating a simple and useful technique that is integral to good gardening practice.

In this book you'll find:

• a unique plant-led approach that leaves you with no doubt as to which technique is best suited to the plant you want to propagate
• color photographs and easy-to-follow, step-by-step drawings of the major techniques
• authoritative advice on over 500 plants as well as full details of every propagation technique
• just how satisfying propagating your own plants can be

Foreword

1 ANNUALS AND BIENNIALS

2 HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS

3 FERNS

4 BULBS, CORMS, AND TUBERS

5 ALPINES AND ROCK GARDEN PLANTS

6 CONIFERS AND HEATHERS

7 SHRUBS, TREES, AND CLIMBERS

8 HOUSEPLANTS

9 WATER, PLANTS

10 HERBS

11 FRUIT

12 VEGETABLES

Seed Botany and Hybridizing

Propagating Media

Propagation by Season

Pests and Diseases

Glossary

Index

The art of propagation is one that is often shrouded by mystique. While it is undoubtedly true that some gardeners have "green fingers" and appear to increase their garden stock effortlessly -- it is more often the case that the apparently green-fingered gardener merely has a good grasp of the basic principles involved and has practiced the necessary skills.

The main theme of this book is the elucidation of these basic principles, and each chapter deals with the way they can be modified to suit the needs of various plant groups, whether they be the simplest of annuals grown from seed or more horticulturally developed plants -- like apples and pears -- that we cultivate as grafted trees in our gardens.

One of the first principles is to identify the nature of the plant material that you wish to propagate, for this usually dictates the frequency of propagation and gives guidance regarding the sorts of techniques that may be appropriate. Plants may be short-lived and ephemeral, like annuals and biennials, thus needing annual propagation. Or they may be, to all intents and purposes, permanent garden features, as are many trees and shrubs, which need propagating only once or twice during the life of the garden. A plant may be a herbaceous clump-former that lends itself ideally to division, or it may be woody and amenable to increase by a variety of different sorts of cuttings.

A plant's hardiness also gives clues to a suitable propagation environment: a plant that tolerates winter lows of 5 degrees Fahrenheit and below is likely to germinate, root and grow at lower temperatures than one that will not tolerate temperatures below freezing, or one that needs temperatures well above 32 degrees Fahrenheit to thrive. In the chapter on annuals and biennials and the chapter on herbs, plants are listed as being either hardy or half hardy. A hardy plant is one that will tolerate temperatures around 32 degrees Fahrenheit without protection, and half hardy plants are those that will do so but with some protectioni.

Some principles are immutable and apply across the whole range of propagating techniques and material -- good hygiend and appropriate environmental conditions for rooting and growth, for example, are fundamental to success. Others, like the timing of taking cuttings, are variable, and success relies on following expert advice and applyinng one's own increasing experience.

It is nearly always true that there is more than one way to achieve a successful outcome, and where one method fails, another will surely succeed. Half of the satisfaction of gardening is learning skills and applying them to the diverse plants that we grow in our gardens. It is, after all, the willingness to experiment and to learn from both successes and failures that is one of the marks of a good gardener.