My Mom gave me a garbage bag full of cuttings from a Santolina plant in her garden and we chopped them up and put them into some of the new starter trays that we built the other day. This photograph is actually of a plastic tray full of them. We actually had about 3000 cuttings of various sizes. I'm still learning how to get 100 success with them. We did pretty well though.
I left one of the trays in the sun and it got a little burnt, meaning many of the cuttings in the middle of the pan cooked. Still, overall it was a successful experiment. I really enjoy the way that Santolina smells. The next photograph shows the tray that is still growing. The roots are starting to get a little long and they're getting intertwined, which is not good. I just opened up the tray and am letting the cuttings get acclimatised to the lower humidity that they will experience without plastic.
I am trying to find space and time to get them separated into containers and into the soil, so they can start growing. They grow pretty quick. One of our experiments is to plant a field of them to see if it will create a nice silvery lawn type area. I have only seen individual plants in landscape use and unless they are trimmed on a regular basis, they get sprawly and greyish, rather then the perky silvery form that occurs with a little care and effort.
