Coleus has proven to be a very useful annual for me. They are easy to start from seed. They take sun or shade. They can get really big or be kept pinched back. They offer a wide range of foliage color. They require very little maintenance. For the past few years I had been seeing Proven Winners' variety called El Brighto. Finally this spring, I treated myself to some mail order plants for the containers near the firepit.
I buy my Proven Winners' annuals from Romence Gardens. When they arrived they were very nice plants, but it has become my habit to pinch everything back when they arrive. I ordered four pots and each one had two main leaders. I pinched each back leaving three sets of leaves up each stem. When I got done I had a pile of eight nice little "cuttings". "Hmmm... I have rooting hormone and Vermiculite. I ought to try rooting those. It would make more sense than throwing them in the compost." So I put together a 50/50 mix of worm castings and Vermiculite and potted them up. Then I put them in the cold frame against the south edge where they would not get direct sun and ignored them for a few weeks.
I moved them out to the vegetable garden when it got really warm, and kept them watered. After a few weeks I repotted half of them in potting mix and left the other half in the Vermiculite. I really had no idea where I was going to plant them. But as usually happened I walked past an empty spot enough times that it finally occurred to me that the empty spot and the extra plants were a match.
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| Root growth after about three weeks |
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| freshly transplanted |
As soon as I planted them they began to grow. In one week's time they have put on two or three inches in height.
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| One week later. |
That was a pretty good use of discarded pinchings. If I were to buy these eight plants retail they would have cost me at least forty dollars
