Master Gardener: Week 2 Botany and Plant Propagation

Let's delve right into it. Today was plant botany and propagation. Lot's of horticulture minutae was tossed around today about dicotyledons and chlorophyll and stomata and germination and xylem's and rhizomes and... that it was hard to catch it all. Although I don't have a superb memory, it is amazing what interest will do for your retention of the subject. Many of the concepts were familiar, but again, many were not. I did my best to find places to fit the information in my brain.

The plant propagation section was especially fun, as we had hands on time working with plants and practicing various methods of propagation. There are many ways to propagate a plant, the most common being from seed. Some other common ways are division, grafting, layering, budding, and cutting. Of these, I had experience with cutting.

These pictures are from the MCC demonstration garden. We are learning and practicing "air layering," a propagation technique.

I now have new tools in my attack on the yard. Next week we will cover soils. Can't start nowhere but from the ground up.