Free plants at your place
Renew your strawberry bed Strawberry plants only fruit well for two to three years, so it’s a good idea to replace one-third of your plants each year to keep your strawberries productive.
Once strawberry plants have almost finished fruiting for the season, they send out snaking tendrils called runners with little plantlets attached to them, which are starting to form root systems of their own.
The baby plants are genetically identical to the parent plant and propagating them is an easy way to increase your strawberry stock for free.
Simply peg the plantlets into the ground using bent kebab sticks or wire. If you’re growing strawberries in pots, place small containers of soil or potting mix beneath each plantlet and peg them in. Once they take root, the umbilical cord to the parent plant will naturally shrivel and break over time – or you can snip them off and leave them growing until you’re ready to shift them to a better spot. Be sure to snip off any tendrils that aren’t attached to the parent plant as these will take energy from your plantlet.
Take rose cuttings
If possible, take cuttings from a rose that has been well watered for the last few days.
Choose a branch that has flowered and take several cuttings at a joint or mid-section. They should be about 15cm long and have at least three growth buds. Leave all the leaves on and put cuttings in water immediately, or wrap in damp paper and place in a plastic bag if they have to travel.
Plant as soon as you can. Cut off all the leaves except the top two and insert the cuttings into a container of potting mix, making sure all the growth buds are covered.
Place the container in dappled shade and make sure it stays moist. With luck, you will have rooted cuttings next spring.
Have you planted enough for winter?
Sow beetroot, radishes and carrots; broad beans and peas; lettuces, rocket, silverbeet, spinach and coriander. Pop in cabbage, broccoli, kale and cauliflower seedlings, too. Or sow bok choy, kai lan and choy sum. The fastest of winter brassicas, these Asian greens are ready to eat in as few as 55 days.
Growth will slow down, even if it stays warm, because the days are getting shorter, and many plants have what’s called day length triggers that control when they will and won’t grow. Day length is a bit of a misnomer – plants actually respond to the length of time it stays dark at night – and some plants are what’s called day-neutral and don’t react to day length. In general most plants won’t grow when day length is shorter than 10 hours, but will just sit dormant – even in a climatecontrolled greenhouse kept at the optimum temperature.