The second in our ‘Grow Your Own’ series, the native plant propagation workshop was one of our best yet. It was attended by 16 people and presented by Karen Walker, horticulture lecturer at Illawarra TAFE - Bega campus. Heidi Ashburner from Riverside Nursery (where the workshop was held) also gave a tour and talk about the stages of plant propagation in the nursery.

Karen, being a teacher of horticulture and also having had involvement with Greening Australia for many years, did a great job at departing the most important information in a very digestible way. The result was that attendees came out with a good understanding of the principles of the propagation process, in particular handling and treating the seed and the care needed when transplanting seedlings from tray to pot etc.

Karen stressed that it was important to make the decision early whether to plant your seed in either a communal tray (to replant later into larger pots) or to plant seed direct into the pot you wish it to grown in until the stage of planting in the ground. The difference being that both methods have very different handling and management requirements. More explanation is outlined in the workshop notes which can be downloaded below.

Some of the topics covered included seed selection, researching the seed handling requirements, containers and media selection, hygiene, seed sowing, germination, fertilisers and OH&S. A few ‘technical’ terms that participants picked up include, J rooting, pricking out, damping off, and hardening off.

As always participants were treated to delicious snacks for morning tea (a variety of cookies, cake and fruit) and a healthy hearty lunch (sushi and gourmet wraps and sandwiches), and of course proper coffee was on offer throughout the day!

The workshop was so popular, bookings exceeded capacity so we are planning another workshop in spring. If you are interested let us know and we will put you on our invite list.