Millie propagates some of her favourite native plants and gives us some good tips for keeping cuttings happy in cool weather. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
Millie gets stuck into some autumn propagation of a couple of native species. Propagation is rewarding anytime, but in late summer and autumn, you can get lots of plants for very little work! In the warmer months, cuttings will form roots quickly, but they also require more attention, so if you’re a lazy (or busy!) gardener, the milder weather can be a winner.

Sowing Violet Seeds:
Millie is trying to establish a hedge of the native tree violet, Melicytus dentatus, a thorny, multi-stemmed shrub with fragrant winter flowers, followed by a small purple berry. It is great habitat plant and hopefully a great hedge, but in the dry and shaded position it’s in, it has been a slow grower. To fill it out more quickly, she wants to halve the spacings to about 30cm between plants which means she needs more plants!

You can propagate tree violet from cuttings, but she is keen to experiment with growing it from seed.

The fruit are small berries, so to extract the seed you need to clean the flesh off. Fleshy berries can also contain germination inhibitors, which need to be removed. In nature, this would happen as the fruit passes through a bird or blue tongue’s gut or rotted on the ground, so you need to fake it.

Soak the seed in soapy water for a few days and then remove the pulp by pressing into a sieve and rinse well.
Millie makes a simple seed raising mix using 50/50 coir peat and perlite and a small amount of sieved compost.
Scatter seeds over the surface of the mix and then cover to a similar depth as the seed is wide. She adds a thin layer of fine grit to further bed protect them from harsh winter weather.
Seed can take anywhere from weeks to many months to germinate, so keep them moist and keep an eye out.
Fingers crossed by spring you will be pricking out a new crop of seedlings!

Cuttings:
Millie is taking cuttings of two correas - the local Correa glabra ‘Coliban River’ and the Mountain Correa, Correa lawrenceana. This species is a large shrub, which can reach up to 4m high and wide, with many distinct varieties recognised across the east coast but they are all underrated garden plants!

Heading into the cooler months, take pieces of semi-hardwood growth. Follow the growth back from the tip – this will be soft and springy – into the firmer wood.

Avoid any stems that are currently flowering. Snip a few centimetres below a node, the point on the stem from which the leaves grow. Always take more than one cutting, it’ll improve your chance of success and they can be packed into a single pot!

Potting cuttings is a simple process, no matter what sort of plants you are growing. There are just a few steps to follow:

Cutting Mix - Cuttings need a good supply of moisture, but also lots of oxygen to allow roots to form. Millie is using a simple mix of 50:50 peat for moisture and perlite for oxygen.

Preparing the Cuttings - Tidy the cutting up, re-pruning just below a strong node. Remove the lower 1/3 of leaves.

Planting the Cuttings - Pushing the cuttings into the soil risks damaging the base of the cutting where you hope to form roots. Instead, use a dibble to make holes and gently slide the cutting in.

Maintenance - In the cooler months, you need to keep your cuttings consistently warm and moist. If you have a hot house, use that. Millie puts her cuttings in an old esky, with a piece of picture frame glass as a cover.

Results - Check regularly for signs of new growth, but more importantly roots. They are ready to be potted up or planted out when you see roots coming out of the drainage holes in the base of the pot.

Featured Plants:
TREE VIOLET - Melicytus dentatus
ROCK CORREA - Correa glabra ‘Coliban River’
MOUNTAIN CORREA - Correa lawrenceana

Filmed on Taungurung Country | Central Vic
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