Sedums, you’re thinking? Why trouble yourself to write about propagating sedums – it’s just so easy? Well yes it easy. In fact it’s so easy you may be making life more tricky than it is.

You could take a standard cutting – cut just above a node for the top, through a node at the bottom, removing the bottom two leaves and one of the top ones (you can see the scars at the bottom of the stalk). But this costs you two nodes per cutting.

Better, don’t worry about a node at the rooting end – just cut above a leaf or leaf pair, leaving a short stalk. This is a bit more efficient as you get a cutting for each leaf node.


But Sedums are even more generous than that. If you peel off every leaf, keeping a little fleshy heel from the stem, it will root from that, giving you a new plant from every leaf.

So lovely seeing the new shoot emerge from the protective embrace of its parent. This is the gorgeous Sedum ‘Red Cauli’ – I fell for it at Trentham Gardens two years ago. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is not subject to plant breeders rights either. Result.

You’ll get a new plant quicker from a stem cutting, as you can see from these two – both cuttings taken on the same day of Sedum ‘Purple Emperor’. The stem cutting on the right has twice as much new growth. So if I’ve got plenty of material, I take half a tray of stem cuttings and half of leaves only. These cuttings are 30 days old.

But a whole tray of leaves is a very pleasingly symmetrical thing of beauty to see in the greenhouse. This is the lovely trailing Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’. These are 15 days old and have rooted. I’m just keeping an eye open now for the first shoots.

So, the practical stuff done, I tripped off up the garden to take a very close look at the poppies…

June 19, 2011