You can do it at any time, but obviously the best time is when the plant is in full growing mode. Spring and summer are therefore good times. I've never tried layering sage, and can't predict the results (cuttings might be better), but thyme is an excellent plant for the method.

A little hint: before you apply the wire 'pins', take a little fine sandpaper and gently rub the bottom surface of the stem. Roots will appear more quickly if you do this, but don't rub into the green bit inside the stem. Just a little scrape will do - with a pen-knife, if you're very careful.

Yeah, Daisy, I wasn't sure about the sage, either, but there were some stems that were good candidates, and which looked like the bases might not green up well...plus I had some extra pins, so I figured it was worth a shot. I just took a look, and the Internet tells me that sage can be propagated by layering, and if the Internet says it, it must be true, right? :-) I certainly don't have much to lose!

I'll keep the scraping in mind for the future, and will certainly consider it if I do any more layering on my rosemary, which is currently in a pot indoors (though it had its first afternoon outdoors yesterday). Seriously, given that I'd planned to do this layering *last* year, I'm really just proud of myself for getting it done at all.

If my endeavors are successful within the next couple of months, I'll have some good donations for the Garden Club's plant sale, and/or to give to friends.

So how did it go? I did one layering on my sage plant this spring too but I've been afraid to check it. I'm such a chicken.

Hey, tkhooper, thanks for asking.

So, let's see. As you can see above, I pinned some branches down on March 7th, when it was just starting to warm up.

I'd thought that early Spring rapid growth would lead to some speedy rooting, but it just didn't. I just looked back through my email, and I see that on May 22nd, I managed to pot up two common thyme plants and one garden sage plants, though I do recall that they had pretty sad root systems. The other branches hadn't rooted yet. I gave the potted herbs to friends.

Then we had an exceptionally dry Summer, and I was exceptionally neglectful (I blame having a 1-year-old!). Late in the Summer, I found that I had two(?) more garden sage plants, and one Berggarten sage that had successfully rooted. I lost the rest. I detached the babies from the mother plants and did some pruning, but left them in place for now. I will move them and/or give them away in the Spring.

Around that time I also pinned down some more branches of various things, so we'll see how that goes. I probably won't check until early Spring. I'm sort of curious to discover whether late-season layering might be more successful than early-season layering, on the theory that in the Spring, plants are trying to put out new top growth, but in the Fall, they're trying to put out new roots to hunker down for Winter.