Get more of your favourite plants by growing your own
It’s easy to get excited by all the beautiful berried plants at this time of year, as they light up the garden with clusters of colour. Red, orange and yellow pyracantha, rowan and hawthorn berries are all prolific, as are drooping bunches of rose hips.
If you’d like to extend your collection, propagating is an easy way to do so. Using the seed is so simple, and often more fail-safe than taking cuttings. Plus, the exciting part is that the offspring of your seed-raised plants will be slightly different to its parent in colour, form and habit, which adds a bit of a thrill to the process.
Cuttings, on the other hand, give out exact clones of the originals, and may not be as healthy as seed-grown plants.
It’s best to sow seed now rather than saving it and waiting until spring, as it may not be successful at germinating then because it’s too old. Transplant tray-grown seedlings into bigger pots as soon as you can next year, and harden them off outside in spring, before planting them out in autumn.
STEP BY STEP: EXTRACTING AND SOWING SEED
- Choose a shiny set of berries from a healthy plant such as rowan, cotoneaster, pyracantha or Rosa glauca (red leave rose).
- Use a sieve and a spoon and squish off the berries flesh from the small white seeds. To remove more flesh, run the sieve under a cold tap.
- Separate the seeds out and fill a tray with loamy crumbly well-draining compost. Scatter the seeds evenly over the surface.
- Sprinkle a thin layer of compost on the surface and then water in the well. Keep the tray in a cold frame or sheltered spot over winter.