Spent the day propagating plants.  Back in fall, I tried my hand at ground layering, a technique that involves burying part of a plant stem to encourage the plant to root in place.  Specifically, I bent a long blackcurrant stem down to the ground, wounded it with a razor blade – under the proper conditions, plants respond to wounds by throwing roots – pinned the wounded section down with a piece of wire, and covered it shallowly with soil and mulch.

Today, I unburied the layered section, and was delighted to find roots!  I cut the plant off at the previous above ground bud, and potted the cutting up – when it’s well rooted and growing vigorously, I’ll plant it out in the food forest.

Line art drawing of ground layering (above) donated to the Wikimedia Foundation and released into the public domain by Pearson Scott Foresman.

I also planted all sorts of seeds into speedling trays and six packs in the greenhouse, including peppers (cayenne, jalapeno, purira, ancho, habanero, Jupiter, hatch, Thai), sage, 4 varieties of eggplant (3 Italians and 1 Japanese), sorrel, pimpinella, epazote, lambsquarters, pickling melon, papalo (Bolivian coriander), summer squash (a yellow one called Success, and also acorn and one called zapallito that a friend smuggled in from Argentina), and Thai red roselle. I also potted up cuttings of fig and pomegranate, and pruned the red flame seedless grape.

Today was probably the last garden day for a week – there are some big storms on the way.