A stroll through a boutique garden store might lead you to believe that filling a garden with happy, healthy plants is only for the well-heeled. But those very plants that have soaring price tags in the store might be yours for free if you are willing to be a little creative. If you are wondering how to get free plants, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for five tried-and-true paths that lead you to free garden plants.
If you have time, planting seeds is an easy way to increase the number of garden plants. A packet of seeds costs a lot less than one houseplant, but if you really want free plants, save seeds from your current favorites, especially from heirloom plants.
Gathering and saving seeds works for flowering plants (think nasturtiums) as well as many vegetables like squash. Some plant self seed (like California poppies) so all you have to do is wait. Note that you can also use seeds from organic veggies purchased at a farmer’s market. Many an avocado tree has resulted from the desire for guacamole.
Unlike mammals, many plants propagate from cuttings. It feels like something out of a fantasy, a type of botanical magic, but confirmed gardeners and plant lovers swear by it. At its most simple, propagation by cuttings involves taking a clipped off or broken section of a plant and rooting it into an entirely new and separate plant. And the new plant is an exact duplicate of the “parent.”
So many plants can be cloned in this fashion that it is not possible to list them all. But houseplants like pothos, philodendron, and corn plants can all be grown from leaf or stem cuttings. So can most succulents. Save the trimmings, root them in water or soil, and off you go. Spider plants create and root their own cuttings with
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