How To Take Lavender Cuttings Using Honey. Green Little Fingers.

Today I was showing my 2 and 6 year old how to take cuttings from a lavender plant.

My two year old, been two didn't understand but he tried to help, mainly by putting lids on the containers and pulling grass up and sprinkling it over the cuttings, but at least he is learning.

My 6 year old loves to be out in the garden with me, she spends loads of time helping me do odd jobs and has even grown some sunflowers that have got quite high.

I bought some lavender from a supermarket, I normally wouldn't but from a place like this but I saw these dieing lavender that had been reduced from £3.99 down to 50p so I decided to rescue them and see if I could bring them back to life.

I planted them in a planter and have been watering them and one out of the two made it and the other, well looks quite dead.

I have wanted to add lavender to my garden space as it is a great plant for bees and butterflies so I decided that I would take some cuttings.

I have taken cuttings before using the method of honey and the other plant took off and after 6 weeks I had roots this to me is a bonus and I thought that I would put this in place this time too.

I am not a big fan of using chemicals when I don't need to and this was is all natural.

I had some honey in the cupboard so I decided to put it too work.

Using a table spoon I placed 2 tables spoon full of runny honey into a little pot,

Then added the same amount of boiling water to it,

Then a good stir and I knew that all I had to do is leave it to cool and it would be ready to use.

This makes a lot of mixture but I also need some for some other cuttings and I made this amount so I didn't have to make two batches.

This is my lavender plant, it has grown quite a bit since I bought it, I was told it was the French lavender not the English so it doesn't grow as big.

The stems with the flowers on can't be used for cuttings as the plant is using a lot of energy to make these flowers bloom so we need to find dome stems with no flowers on.

Looking down the stem I decided that the ones with new growth was by far the best for what we needed and my little girl went a head and cut them near to the harder stem.

We dipped the stem that we cut into the mixture and then placed them into a propagate.

And we did this 60 times, it was a lot of hard work but it will hopefully pay off

My little lad couldn't help himself and kept putting the lids on before we could water them, but he was happy and so were we. it was good fun.

While we were doing this my little girl found some of these caterpillars and decided to keep a couple and put them in a fish tank to watch them grow.

These will turn into a moth that is black and red and really pretty, they are out more in the day than at night, she was so happy to have found some and in all fairness it was something that we used to do when we were kids too.

I will check on the lavender every day and give them a light misting with water to keep the moisture in the propagator.

@artonmysleeve