A little propagation experiment with sage: The status after a month

I am not the best gardner of al times which means I do a lot of things by trial and error. That error will hopefully prevent me from doing the same stupid thing next year, but often I forget again, fall for the same mistake and think next yeat 'ow yeah...there was something with that, Last year I did that as well and it failed right?'

It also means that because of this I am surely not the best in growing seeds from scratch. Propagating is actually a lot easier and saves you a lot more time. For the ones who don't know what propagating is: That is using a part of an an already thriving plant and multiplying it from there on.

Now I am a big fan of the herb sage. A lot of people use this to cleanse their house with, but I using it for cooking. Specifically for making butter sauce because that is just awesome (you should try it!!). But fresh sage is not something they sell a lot here in the supermarket, so it really makes sense to have a decent stash by yourself for this.

But for propagation you also need some 'mother' plants of branches for this and that is where this all started, I got a couple a branches of sage (thanks mom!!!<3) and wasn't sure what was the best way to move forward with this.

Take a couple of small side branches, that is one thing that is for sure. But stick them in water to grow some roots? Or stick them in soil to get the nutrients. Or just do nothing and stick the mother branches in the sand.

I decided to go for all three options as an experiment.

Cutting off a branch and sticking it into the soil

Now the first option was to cut off some small baby branches and stick them in the sand. Make sure they are watered well, get enough sunlight and let's see where they head from there. Amount of tasks: not a lot and easily ignorable.

Don't be fooled by the colour of the snap here since the after shot was taken in the early morning with not that much light on there. The left photo is how it started and the right photo is the status after a month. As you can see there is 1 little plant less, but the ones that are still in there are making baby leaves and are growing in thickness.

I call these ones a success and I am sure that they will continue to grow as the new leaves look super strong.

Cutting off a branch and sticking it into water

Now the second option was to cut off some small baby branches and stick them into water. What I had hoped for was that these little branches would start to make roots on their cuttings, and I had also expected after a month that I would be able to see those roots.

Now you can see new bulbs forming in the centre so the plant is very much alive, but the leaves look a bit less happy that they did before. Maybe lack of nutrients? When I look at these cuttings, I just want to stick them in the sand and be over with it.

Also they used some water but it also evaporated behind glass so I sometimes didn't make sure they had enough water I guess. Time for a new home for these guys!

Stick the mother branch in to the soil and do nothing

Again don't look at the colour of the plant because the lighting still sucked. But this last option was just taking the mother branches where I had taken the cuttings from and sticking them into the sand together with the thyme and rosemary shoots.

No support, no fancy anything, just into the soil. Normal water and sun as their neighbors also get, but that is it.

And they are doing good!! Making new side shoots to propagate again, making new leaves on the top and the main stem looks strong. I call this a success as well!

Conclusion on the sage experiment

Well it has only been a month ofcourse so subjects could change over time I guess still. The first conclusion is that propagating sage is super easy and fun to do With hardly any effort after the cutting you just treat them like any other cutting and jsut make sure there is moist in there.

When looking at the three ways of propagating there is not one that is absolutely standing out in best. On the other hand there is one that is standing out in worst and that is keeping the cuttings in water. Since they aren't growing any new big roots it makes no sense to keep them just in water compared to sticking them in moisty soil.

Soil seems to make it a winner here. But this also could be since the watered once also easily dry out and then the roots are uncovered which is never good. Or that was just my flaw and this never happens to anyone else.

So soil is the winner here! We need more sage!!