Rosemary's Babies

One of our home's loveliest features (NOT!) is this monstrosity of a rosemary plant right outside our front door. Luckily for us, we have upcoming plans which involve the removal and utter destruction of this plant. However, since I'm not evil at heart (no matter what my siblings might remember from our childhoods), I have every intention of propogating new seedlings off of the giant mother plant in order to grow normal sized clones in a future herb garden.

My husband was too eager in getting this thing cut back enough in order to remove some limestone blocks to build my cold frame, so we don't have an actual "before" picture. This is actually a "during" picture showing the portion of the plant I kept my husband from ripping out with his bare teeth. Have I mentioned yet how much my husband does not like this plant?

Well, never one to let things go to waste, I quickly snipped off the soft, new-growth tips from the part of the plant lying in the grass gasping for breath. I mentioned this all to my mother who off-handedly stated "you need a drying rack," which got my juices flowing.

Twelve hours later (it would have been much sooner, but it got dark and I needed to sleep), and the fresh rosemary is drying on this lovely newly-manufactured rack. I salvaged from our woodpile the stakes from the jasmine plants that are now growing in the chicken coop planters. The kids had broken the stakes playing some sort of swashbuckling game, but they were still suitable for my purposes. A couple nails later and I had a wooden frame around which I stapled a piece of leftover window screen.

Tah-dah!!

Now, as for the cuttings, when I first realized I wanted to save some of this monster plant, I knew I would need some rooting solution and sterile seed starting mix, but didn't, of course, want to actually spend money on a quart of liquid and a ten-pound bag of dirt when I really only needed a little, tiny bit.

Then my sister-in-law steps in and tells me I can soak some willow twigs in water and use that for the rooting solution. Cool, now I just need to find a willow tree.

The next day, when more of my brain synapses were firing, I remember that I have White Willow Bark capsules just waiting for my next headache and I don't need to hunt down a neighbor's willow tree under cover of darkness.

This Goddess of the Garden relative also tells me I can sterilize my own soil in the oven, but that then I wouldn't want to actually inhabit my house for a good long time afterwards. I was sort of bummed about this until my mother reminded me that I have an outdoor fire circle (yes, I'm quick, aren't I?) which could also sterilize soil perfectly without the burnt dirt smell lingering over our oatmeal the next morning.

(That's our soon-to-be cold frame in the background. More on that soon.)

Here's our steaming platter of sterile soil. Doesn't that look yummy! Too bad it smells 100 times worse than it looks.

We added a little water to the willow powder and soaked into this solution the new growth stems which had been cleared of leaves.

Five minutes later and we have six new normal-sized transplants. Hopefully, none of them will have giant gene tendencies.