Propagating Coleus

 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.

Root growth after about three weeks

Around the edge of the Dahlia bed I usually plant Marigolds and/or Celosia.  But the Marigold babies from the leftover seeds went somewhere else and there was a perfect spot for the eight Coleus. The roots were pretty well developed when I transplanted them but there had been no growth since I put them in the rooting medium.

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.

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