The Right Start

When it comes to plants, good beginnings lead to happy endings. Here’s everything you need to grow, from getting plants off to a healthy start to care and feeding for life.
 

• Spring is the best time to set out new plants, since it gives roots a chance to develop before the stress of summer heat. Plant spring-blooming bulbs in fall.
   
• Dig holes that are wider and deeper than the container. Dry soil is hard on young roots, so fill the planting hole with water and let it drain several times. (If you’re planting in a pot, soak plants in a bucket of water to wet the roots.) Cultivate the wet soil with packaged soil amendment to add nutrients.
   
• Gently loosen the root ball and position the plant in the hole, keeping the container soil slightly above your garden soil. Plants placed too high can dry out; those placed too low may rot. Fill in the hole with amended soil, pressing it flat around the plant to eliminate air pockets. Water thoroughly to settle the soil.
   
• Prevent weeds by covering the soil with newspapers, dampened with the hose and covered with mulch. The newspapers will disintegrate with time, composting the soil.
   
• Keep an aggressive plant — like mint — neatly contained, but give it room to grow by potting it in the ground. Slice the bottom off of a large pot and set it in place. Cultivate the soil below, then fill the pot with potting mix and add the plant. The roots will grow through the bottom of the pot into the ground, but the plant will stay in its own space.
   

Buying a lot of plants can add up fast. It’s easy — and fun — to save money by propagating your own. Just take cuttings from a healthy plant and root in potting soil. Here’s how.
 

• Grow plants, such as geraniums, honeysuckle and ivy, from stem cuttings. Take a 3-5” stem from a parent plant. Cut the starter stem just below a leaf joint, remove the lower leaves, wet the bottom and dip in rooting hormone. Insert several cuttings in a container of potting soil. Set in indirect light, keeping the soil moist for a few weeks until the cuttings root. Once rooted, pinch the top so the plant will produce side shoots.
     
• Root African violets, begonias and gloxinias from leaves. Diagonally cut a stem from the parent plant, about 1” from the base of the leaf (the petiole). Place the petiole in moist potting soil, cover with a clear plastic bag and set in bright, indirect light. When new growth forms at the base of the petiole (5-6 weeks), cut the starter leaf away.
   
• Start impatiens, coleus and philodendron in a glass of water. When the stem cutting begins to root, transplant it to a pot or garden bed, where it will grow into a new plant.