I was walking around my garden (with my walker), looking at the geraniums and thinking, “I wish I had many more geraniums, so I could give them as presents to my friends.” Then I thought, “All I have to do is cut off pieces of a geranium bush and plant them.” So I bent down, took my scissors out of my basket and cut several stems from the geranium bush, each stem 6 to 8 inches long. My helper, Esmeralda, helped me cut more until we had 10 cuttings.
Esmeralda and I went to the garage where I keep all the things I need — where I can reach them. We sat down comfortably, and we stripped each geranium cutting of all leaves, except three leaves at the top end. (Any more leaves left on the stem will sap energy from the cutting.) Very carefully, I then stuck the end of each cutting into a jar of white powder, “rooting hormone,” which helps the stem take root more quickly. Then I stuck each cutting into a small (about 5 inches) pot of dirt. I patted the dirt down so the cutting would stand up. Then we took the 10 cuttings and put them in a sunny place. That’s all I do to them.
Some people put a plastic bag over each pot, which makes it very warm and more conducive to getting roots quicker. You have to take care of the plants by watering them, but not too much, bringing them inside if a storm comes. It will take the geraniums several weeks to grow roots. You can’t see the roots, but you can tell by the look of the plant whether it has roots. Then you can move the geraniums to a flower bed or a large flower pot and wait for blooms.
When my mother, father, brother and I came to Houston I was only 4 years old. Houston was just a little town. We lived with my maternal grandparents near the city library at 416 McKinney. I don’t remember seeing a flower growing anywhere. When I was 7 we had World War I. My uncle and two cousins enlisted. I remember watching Uncle Clarence walking downstairs on his way to war.
Later on, one day when I was playing out front, a press boy came shouting, “Read all about it. The President Lincoln ship was sunk.” (Our boys were on it.) I had to run in the back to find Grandpa and tell him the news. It was terrible. The good thing was that later we heard the men were rescued in life boats.
A temporary house was put up in the neighborhood where wives could be taught how to can vegetables. We had a garden but we did not grow flowers; we grew vegetables. Our cousins in London wrote us, “Please send us enough lard and sugar to make a birthday cake.” We answered their request, but it wasn’t easy. We had to borrow a ration card for sugar and lard.
The first time I had the pleasure of seeing lots of flowers was when I went to Rice Institute between 1926 and 1930. There was a gardener who worked at Rice named Tony, and he planted lots of Cape jasmine. I remember how wonderful it was to get off the streetcar and, as I walked toward the campus, see the white flowers and smell their heady fragrance.The second time I remember seeing lots of flowers was when I was married and looked out at the vacant lot next door. It was covered in yellow sunflowers. My 5-year-old daughter, Elaine, and I ran through the flowers picking armfuls of sunflowers. We took them home, put them in vases, and put the vases all over the house.
The third time I saw lots of flowers was 1951. My growing family needed a larger house, and the vacant lot we looked at had little splashes of wildflowers here and there and lupine all over the lot.
Houston was no longer a small town, and the fourth time I remember seeing beautiful flowers in all colors was simply seeing them planted in an esplanade right in the middle of a very busy street.
Houston has lots of sun and lots of rain; it is a good place to grow flowers. You can’t make cuttings of everything that grows, but following are examples of flowers from which you can make stem cuttings.
COLEUS
Coleus is a bush with a striking colored leaf sometimes combining shades of green, yellow, pink, red and maroon. It roots easily from stem cuttings. Coleus is the easiest because all you have to do is break off a stem, put it in a glass of water, and put it in a sunny window. In four or five days roots will come out in the water. This is a summer annual, however, that will be killed by frost.
EUONYMOUS
I like yellow, but for a long time the golden Euonymous bushes I had in my north flower beds did not bloom. The bushes were not getting any sun. An author I read said, “Euonymous plants are no good. Don’t keep them. Throw them away.” I love the Euonymous bushes’ yellow leaves because I like to have yellow in my flower arrangements. So I made five cuttings from the bushes in my front north beds and put the cuttings in the back yard (south beds) where the bushes get plenty of sun. I followed the same procedure for growing Euonymous cuttings that I used for geraniums.
BOUGAINVILLEA
A bougainvillea cutting is more difficult to grow. To get a bougainvillea cutting you have to get a green stem, which you will find near a blossom. Looking closely, follow the stem down the branch until you see where it turns brown. This is where you cut the stem. To plant the cutting, stick the brown end into the root- ing hormone, being careful not to lose any of the powder. Push that end of the stem covered with rooting hormone firmly down into a small hole you have made in the dirt of the flowerpot. Pack dirt around the stem. Since the green end is free, it will grow. I have seven pots of bougainvillea growing well and full of blossoms. They need plenty of direct sunlight and they like for their roots to be crowded in flowerpots.
The reason I like flowers so much is because I had no flowers until I grew up, married, and had a home of my own. Now, I have a compost pile with good
rich black soil, and I know that one way to increase the flowers growing in my garden is to make cuttings from flowers I already have.
I am 99 years old and still planting flowers, tomatoes, making flower arrangements every day, and I now have lots of cuttings.
CUTTINGS
In horticulture, a part of a plant, stem, leaf, or root cut off and used for producing a new plant. It is a convenient and inexpensive method of propagation not possible for all plants, but generally for a variety of plants — grapes, chrysanthemums, verbenas (stem cuttings), blackberries (root cuttings) and African violets (leaf cuttings).
Note: This article appeared in the November/December 2008 issue of “Texas Gardener” Magazine on pages 24-25