Below is the only non-lawn spot in the whole yard when I moved here. I've enlarged it and nothing but the rose bush and some seeds were purchased.

Great ideas, thanks! I'm in a similar situation; we're planning to sell our home next year, so I want the yard to look nice, but don't want to spend a lot. I don't have much experience with cuttings, but would love to start some more plants from some of the rare shrubs that are growing here. I'll miss them a lot after we move, if I don't do something like that! How do you root your cuttings?

And there's a propagation forum you might want to check out.

I accidently propogated rosemary in water. I had some in a vase in the kitchen that I was using to make tea with. It took a couple of months, but it has a few tiny roots. I used to know a lady that could just stick it in soil and it would root. I've never tried it. On the seed exchange, some people list cuttings they would like to exchange on their lists after you scroll through the seeds they have, it would be after that. You might be able to do a seach of the members pages and see what is offered.

Thanks, Z! Good suggestion. I have an unlimited supply from my Mom's shrub but think I did this way too late in the year, which was just meant to trim her shrub so she could get through her garden, but I figured why not try, right? The pieces may have been too big too, most 2-3 feet long. Thinking if I try it in the spring with smaller pieces it might work better. I'm going to leave the dead-looking branches in the bucket of soil until spring. You never know...

This is the other side of the fence from the 1st pic above:

I've only just started trying to grow some things from cuttings. Schefflera was surprisingly cooperative!
Purple, do you have any suggestions for growing cuttings from Gardenia and/or Camellia?

My money-saving tip? Yard waste collection day. People prune everything on Sunday and pile it at the street for collection Monday. They rip things out by the roots, even! (It's how I got about 30-40 free Bromeliads... she was "culling the herd" :)

Hey, Shear, good find!

Gardenias propagate easily when it's hot. I've tried little green shoots, medium semi-woody pieces, and even a fairly large woody branch that I pruned off. The only failures I had were my fault - forgetting to water often enough, and toads or squirrels dug up a couple of them. I put them in mostly shade until I see signs of new growth, then ease them back into full sun. Some of them went to my Mom's house, some stayed here. I can't wait to do more, the world needs more Gardenias!

I've read people complaining about nematodes on the FL forum. Not sure what those are but they seem to kill some plants that aren't grafted onto "safe" rootstock. Gardenia is one of these. You may want to investigate if that's an issue where you are. If so, propagating may go well but putting your new plants in the ground could result in failure because of the nematodes. (If I understand it correctly.) Is there any sign of a graft on your shrub(s)?

I don't see any sign of a graft on my shrub/tree. I'll try to keep this long story short:
We bought our house 5 1/2 years ago from a Japanese family who had built this house as their vacation home. They live(d) in Japan and came here once a year. So, while the house wasn't "new," it wasn't hardly "used" either. They were very frugal about "landscaping", and therefore every plant or tree that came with the house was likely grown from seed or a cutting (Except the five oak trees). I honestly think they planted seeds from everything they ate or found.
The result? We had to remove a Magnolia tree that was taller than our two story house because they likely grew it from a cutting and it never grew properly. (Trunk split into a "Y" a foot off the ground) Strange plants no one around here could identify suffered and had to be removed. They left the irrigation system running daily, so when we moved in and cut back on the water (by law), the lawn, plants, and even some well-established trees died.
Back to the Gardenia. It gets tons of buds, but they don't open. They start to brown on the edges and fall off. BUT, since I laid that brick patio, they get a lot less water and seem to be doing better. Three buds actually opened last week... but the others are dying on the plant.
I don't want to move the whole plant because it's otherwise quite healthy. I want to make new plants to try in other areas. For example, I suspect it might not be getting enough sunlight because it's shaded by my Live Oaks and the house.

When I started gardening, I had nothing but grass in my backyard. I realized when I dug up the grass for my garden, the soil was in poor shape. I read up on lasagna gardening, love that book! My husband is in the construction industry but you could use this idea as well; if a home-owner is building an addition, they have to dig up the plants. I had the workers put them aside for me. With all the foreclosures out there, check houses for sale or bank owned and ask if you can help "clean-up" the lot, these houses often have overgrown everything. Check the classifieds under handman or yardwork, etc and let them know you are interested in plants. Starbucks used to set out their coffee grinds for gardeners, great for soil. I'm close to the shore and fortunate to have plenty of seaweed at my disposal. It makes a great mulch and cuts back on my watering needs.

Love your attitude and ideas, Karen, thanks!

What's going on with that Gardenia, Shear? I think I've seen one flower on mine all winter, the buds are suspended in time. The blackberry vines are blooming though, so the main flush from the 'denias shouldn't be too far behind.

With the exception of a few things dug up by roaming dogs, the tiny shrub cuttings I planted last summer and fall look alive. Especially excited about the Hydrangeas, just starting to leaf out.

Also had a kind of unorthodox idea about a lot of my "house plants." A lot of these things that take root so easily and don't have woody trunks are just going to be planted in the ground. I'll spend a lot less time and $$ watering, have awesome-er looking plants, definitely the most unusual landscape in town until frost, and in the fall, I can dig up roots if I want or just take cuttings. Oh yea, and people will actually be able to fit/sit on the front porch.

After my last post here, where I said the Gardenia was doing better, it started doing worse again. Just this morning I saw, however, that it is now "doing better" again. I can't figure it out. It makes buds almost non-stop, and for a while they'll just fall to the ground unopened. Lately though, it has waves of flowers that actually open followed by "dropsy."

I put a lot of "houseplants" in the ground. I'm not much of a one to bury pots, so I just do as you said and take cuttings or dig them back up. You will be shocked at what will die back to the ground and return the following year if you mulch heavily. (I mulch 4 inches deep)

Take lots of "progress" pics and post them here if you decide to go ahead and plant them!

I have been taking pics, if for no other reason than to assure myself they are growing. Checking too often, you know... ;)

Trimmed a few little branches off Gardenia yesterday, leaning a bit too far toward where we walk. Hoping that "wakes it up." The thing with your dropping buds is something I'd investigate tho, weird and I'm sure frustrating!

The prop experimentation for this year has begun...

Butterfly bush (Buddleia) stayed green, at 6 feet tall, all winter, so needed a trim because I can't deadhead flowers I can't reach. So I filled a bucket with what I use for potted plants and stuck all of the trimmings in. Water well, put in dappled mostly shade. Any that are still green in a few weeks, (usually all,) give them a home in the ground.

Never tried this before, but couldn't part with some really nice pieces trimmed from knockout rose. Put them deeply in a trench near the mama, little more shade.

While cutting one Lantana back to the ground (in a bed where it's too big by end of summer,) realized almost every branch is still green to the tip. There are 4 more in the back along the fence that are welcome to be all they can be, and from which I can apparently get allll the cuttings of any size that I can use and give away. Waiting for foliage to get kickin' before cutting those for that.

Dug up and separated a giant old Poinsettia I was offered, now being pampered out front, hardiness questionable...

Pot of confederate rose cuttings that never got planted last fall are alive.

Apparently the Cannas I put in last summer could be shared to other areas already... or do I want to do that?

I just jumped up out of my chair! I forgot ALL about the rose cuttings I was given last week!

Dead.

Grr! Doing too many things at once is costing me plants!!! (Master bathroom and entry remodels)

I like to share my Canna about every other or third year. I like them to look full, so I wait until they're pretty packed before separating. Plus, they're one of my top one million favorite plants, so they're hard to part with.

;)

Well, all of that stuff looks OK still. Trimmed a bunch of branches off of Mom's confederate roses & put them in the front yard. Dug holes for stuff that was in pots, crape myrtle, redbud tree, maple tree, and moved a bunch of Oxalis around. Scattered seeds like a squirred hiding nuts and hope I remember where to check for what later... Yes, I did move some cannas to another spot, to improve the view out of another window... yeah, I didn't mean part with, yet, just share to other parts of the yard.

When I catch my breath, need to go hose a few things in, to fill the cracks.

Sorry your REMO is taking so long!!

It's my own fault it's taking so long. I decided not to stop at the master shower... and we're doing the rest of the work ourselves. Plus, I have my granddaughters here for ten days (crazy-making, but fun!) and we've just had a helluva storm. The Canna I just got from a client, and just planted in the yard last week, stood tall and proud through 60 mph gusts today...
... while the fence behind them flew off!!!

I know exactly what you mean about renting and not wanting to put in the money, except my husband banned me from it. lol. I moved into a house with a massive amount of garden area but all i got were 3 boxwoods 2 dogwoods. 3 crape myrtles though which I adore. my front garden has a landscape fabric on it thicker than canvas and the side garden is filled with 3 inches of rock with mulch on top, and that canvas on the bottom, so no one planted anything here for a long time.

NONE of my neighbors or anyone in this town grows anything!! So i cant get divisions or cuttings because no one has anything and i feel totally awkward going out of town and asking a random.

any tips? my husband is military and works on base wwhich is huuuuuge and im sure theres some plants growing there but he wants nothing to do with the garden.

I did see a tree today at my neighbors house with some flowers on it, thought about just trying to snip a few cuttings

Hi Mwife, welcome to Gardenweb! I hope you can get some more tough plants going at your house for you and future residents to enjoy.

Pulling that landscape fabric would be the best thing, but by the time you finished such an odious task, it might be time to move to the next base. Plants that like poor soil, dry conditions would probably grow in these lean, dry, rocky areas. Maybe somebody in your area could give you some ideas for plants that fit with that plan for your climate.

I don't think anybody would mind if you harvested some cuttings from plants on the base, as long as you don't cut so much of anything that it's noticeable. Knowing what they are first, and when/where to cut, then having a plan for when you get them home are things I would address before heading out with the snippers. That's not effort you want to waste if a little more knowledge could have meant success.

Don't forget a bucket or vase of water, insert cuttings immediately, then try to get home w/o spilling! LOL! If you put it in a cooler, it might still spill, but everything will stay wet and water stays out of car.

Look for ripe seeds around the base, in corporate landscapes, parks, anywhere that's not a private garden. Packets of easy-to-grow annuals are very inexpensive.

If you can find some free containers to hold some soil, that may be the easiest way to grow some things.

I've found lots of containers and even perfectly good plants in people's trash piles, chairs, trellises. I'm not digging through last week's lasagna but if it's sitting next to the can or sticking out of the top, it's coming home with me.

If you spend a little time looking through the member pages' exchange lists and exchange forums, you can get massive quantities of seeds and cuttings, even whole plants, for the price of postage, probably less than the gas to drive to a couple stores, then the actual stuff could be considered free.

Don't forget to consider your produce for seeds, and any parts you can grow, like onion roots, celery stumps, carrot tops, potatoes that have sprouted foliage, so many things to grow from your discards. If you grow something to eat "for free," it's almost certain to get DH's attention. Then you're not spending money on a hobby, you're saving $$ on groceries.

Here's a little Lantana cutting coming awake for the year.

How are last years' experiments doing? What are you starting this year?

Ran out of "dirt" and wanting more hanging baskets... so using existing ones to house a new layer of excess cuttings. Just put these together the past few days.

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I love the last one!!!

My favorite mixed pot this year is the one I shoved all my extras and cuttings into. It doesn't look great right now, but here's a pic of my mix.

You're getting your moneys' worth from that dirt and pot. Fantastico! Inspiring. What is the wispy, 'hairy' thing, upper right? And is that a fig, bottom left? Interestingly fat trunk on it, whatever it is.

Here's another new 'bed' that eliminates another trimming job around this stump. Needs an edge when I decide how big it will be, only removed enough grass so far to put plants around the stump. Bought Osmanthus fragrans and added propagated confederate rose (Hibiscus mutabilis) and Hydrangea. Last weekend, found the Liriope in the holes of the cinder block edge somebody put along the yard some unknown long time ago. The new neighbor hasn't trimmed like edges the previous one, and the flowers were finally able to show up. That was close, we were about to have to trim it ourselves, but dug it up instead to save the Liriope.

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This is ugly right now, but it will be a beautiful flower bed next summer. DH brought some big sheets of cardboard home from his work so I laid those over the grass, letting the landscape timbers dictate bed size. I've been filling it with misc trimmings. Will add some bags of grass from the mower soon, can't wait to dig into it in the spring.

There are a few plants in the middle where I dug up some grass, a tiny maple tree with red leaves, some Gladiolus bulbs a recent gusty storm knocked over, (which I thought perfectly appropriate - LOL! It's not good to have partly ugly, all the way ugly is better.) I don't know if the potted plants are helping or making it look worse, but I want to leave most of the debris in a pile so it will decompose faster while also killing the grass.

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The plastic bag is kind of a funny story. I was at my Mom's cooking dinner and my daughter was shucking corn. I asked her to put the shucks in a bag so I could take them home for compost and she kept putting them in the trash, said, "there's nothing else in here, you can just take this bag." When I dumped it there, out came a can, plastic bottle, other non-decomposable garbage. The next time she comes by, she has some things to pick up, it's waiting for her.

Upper right corner is Papyrus. Ridiculously easy to grow, and a FAST grower. I've got it in standing water and I think it's going to break the pot already (in two months)

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A close-up of the base. You can't see the standing water, but it's in there.

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And the other is a Buddha Belly Jatropha that I got at Sylvia's garden party, next to a Desert Rose that I got as a TLC at Lowes about 10 weeks ago... had no leaves on it and they said they hated to charge me anything cuz they thought it wasn't salvageable... so they gave me half off the clearance price and I ended up paying $2.49 for it.

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Love the corn shucking story. You sound like me. I'll leave their mess right where it is and wait for their hineys to clean up after themselves. I'm a stickler for it.

Have you done the lasagna garden thing before? I made one last mid-summer and planted in it this spring... it worked as far as sheet composting, but our St. Augustine pushed its way past the cardboard... I've got more weeds in THAT bed than in the others. I really hate that.

Really.

Really.

Oooh, total scoop on that DR! What a trunk! The other thing is really cute, I didn't think it was a fig, similar leaves though, so what came to mind. Papyrus. It's interesting (nicest thing I could think to say.) Failing to find tha love for it...

Yes I have lasagna'd, too many times to count, here and in OH. I don't know which of the grasses we have, there are several kinds, but it's a vine. I think St. A grass is rhizomatous, if not a vine also. (My comments to follow are about tenacious southern grasses, not the stuff up north...) Sometimes pieces 4 feet long come up when I pull what I think is a sprig. Anyway, it's not easy to kill like rye or fescue grass in OH. It has to sit in a pile for like 3-4 months to actually die enough to even compost. If it doesn't stop raining, I may have to put all of the recently removed grass in a plastic bag... at least it takes so long to make seeds, we rarely get any.

Compared to tilling'n'picking'n'sifting, or straight digging, I prefer it every time I can find the patience to wait. You're right, you can't trust one layer of cardboard to do the trick. It's not heavy enough, and some light can get through. I've pulled pieces of this grass near a corner of the house that have gone under the house (dark, skirted) for several feet before finding a way out of a crack on the other side.

I put 2 layers of cardboard, then a lot of heavy, wet stuff to make it conform to the soil surface, and be too heavy for anything to push through. The potted plants were originally holding corners and edges but as I've accumulated more OM to put there, I've just set them on top of that. And that's (grass staying alive under there so long) why I'm not planting in it until next spring. I don't want to pull/dig grass there, and won't trust that it's really dead until then, especially the bahaigrass. That stuff has big, tough rhizomes and there's quite a bit of that too.

Before planting, check to make sure it's dead with this tenacious grass even if it's been months, and cut all the way around with a shovel, well before planting, to make sure none of it is still secretly alive from being attached to the surrounding untouched grass. I've discovered pieces alive on one side, looking dead as it passes through smothered area, and still alive on the other side, still connected. This cut will also make sure the border works without starting out with unknown live grass under it. Expose a small part for a couple weeks and make sure grass doesn't start growing (after the yard wakes up, if it goes dormant where you are.)

Sheet metal seems to kill it faster, if you have any, but then you're at Sq-1 when it's removed, naked dirt that hasn't had something decomposing over it for a while. Nice clean edge tho!

Also like to make beds wider by laying the (yet intact) bags of mulch I will spread there later.

I've totally done the mulch-bag grass-killer move. I've also not gotten around to enlarging those beds and had the St Aug grow over, under, around, and through the mulch bags!

You really can't find any love for Papyrus? Really? I had been wanting some for quite a while before I finally snagged one! Mine isn't getting the love it needs lately, so here is a final attempt at wooing you. A picture of a healthier one from the internet:

WOW ^ I love that papyrus. Speaking of cost-scraping, Its such a cool and unique plant but I can never shell out $20 for one. They are very expensive here.

This season if I ever need "filler" for a pot or anything, Ive been rooting Sweet potato vine in water and putting it directly in the pots, works great and its almost invasive now!

Delrey, got anything to trade? I'd be willing to divide mine and send you a piece. (Grows like gangbusters!) Email me if interested!

Hmm... I love every plant in that pic except the Papyrus. Kind of looks like an Aroid, though, is there a bulb?

Delrey, I did that last year and ended up watering some pots twice a day. If I had some bigger pots... that don't have house-plant-trees in them. A hanging basket just doesn't have enough room for SPV roots (and/or gets too hot?) I LOVED having it wrapping all around the porch roof and posts, and wish I could put this vine in the ground to do that "from the ground" but it stays alive over winter.

This past weekend, our efforts spilled over into DH's Mom's yard. We took 2 Lantanas, Gardenia, roses, butterfly bush, and elephant ears over there and got them planted in a group in the naked-until-now front yard. Next summer they should be big, beautiful, full of butterflies and hummingbirds. The Gardenia will be a lot slower to get its' size but as the reliable evergreen of this bunch, we put it in front, as viewed from the street.

This discussion reminds me I'm supposed to be propagating rosemary this summer. Why haven't I started that?

It's not too late to start that Rosemary, is it? I should think it would grow all year there for you like it does here?

I tried it later in the year last summer, admittedly half-heartedly, and failed, an afterthought while trimming her giant shrub into size-submission. The pieces were huge, and sat in a bucket of water overnight until I got around to it, then put in a pot instead of in the ground. One or all of these could have been at fault, not something I've done before, prop rosemary. Having to go to Mom's house to get the cuttings is more than enough to cause problems for the extremely lazy, easily distracted. Starting to question my commitment to this mission.

It's evergreen here, but I think spring/early summer is the best time to propagate this, any kind of 'pine needle' plants.

Geez, need a win to balance this fail-talk! This hanging basket didn't cost a thing, put together from plants overwintered inside. Started with the olive green Begonia, then I filled it with pieces of various creepers and the spotty Begonia until I couldn't reach my hands to the surface anymore without breaking something. I've already harvested cuttings from most of the plants in this to add to other pots/spots.

Wow! Purple its amazing to see how much that filled in.

Shear my email is tuyt40@yahoo.com if you want to send me more info about a trade! :)

Ive managed to root some cool things this year as well, including an Allamanda vine.