What the heck is layering, you say? If you’ve never heard of this propagation technique, today is your lucky day! I’ll be going over propagation of mint (and other ground covers) using this simple method of plant propagation.
Layering is a method of plant propagation that we use for plants that fall over and make roots. Following our Intuitive Plant Dialogue we see that it is the best option for mint. When you find a section of the plant that grows along the ground and started to make rootlets, you can cut it off and take it over to your Propagation Station for layering.
Pretty much wherever mint touches the ground it begins to form root nodes. If segments of your cutting do have not started to form rootlets yet, don’t worry–they’re still viable and will form roots once you plant them. If you’re in need of a lot of mint, fast, you could divide your mint up as small as 1 node per segment, but we prefer to leave 3-4 nodes per segment. Remember the Root-Shoot Ratio! Trim off leaves to give your layerings greater odds of success. Mint prefers shady and moist places; if there’s a spot in your garden that is suitable you can directly plant the layerings. Otherwise either a propagation box or nursery bags work, just make sure that the nodes are in good contact with the soil.


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