What is the best plant to grow for fathers day?

Hey Guys,

So i am looking for the perfect plant to grow for my father for fathers day. I only have a small amount of seeds to which i can choose from but let's see how we get on.

Thanks For All Your Help

Bex

 

I expect Father's day is quite soon??

How about trying something from a cutting instead of seed? If you can find a suitable plant, and the owner is happy that you take a few pieces as cuttings, you could give them a go? You'll need to do a bit of research as for each species of plant it comes down to:

Time of year - each species has better / worse times for taking cuttings

Method - some you can just cut a piece off and stick it in some compost, others you need to take some old wood with the cutting - a so called "heel". Sometimes just a piece of root will do.

Temperature etc.

Easy / Difficult - some species are very difficult - no sense starting with them! - others are so easy that you can jsut put them in a glass of water and they will make roots.

House plants (if you fancied taking a cutting of one) sometime have other methods - e.g. take a leaf and chop it into bits, and each leaf-piece will grow one / many plants.

Generally this is what I do:

Prepare a pot of very free draining compost. I use 50:50 multi purpose compost and Perlite (Vermiculite would do instead of Perlite). 50:50 sharp grit and Perlite/Vermiculite would do too. Make sure that mix is nice and moist, but not dripping wet. Fill a pot and firm it down.

Prepare the cuttings (normally trim them immediately below a leaf pair, strip off bottom two pairs of leaves, cutting should be long enough to the have one pair of leaves (left on) and perhaps some young leaves from a breaking bud. So you need to start with 3 decent sized set of leaves, and maybe one small pair just opening at the tip.

I make a hole with a pencil, insert the cutting, and then press the compost firmly around its base (so there is no air trapped). Some say that putting the cuttings around the edge of the pot, rather than the middle, works better. I fill my pots up and I haven't noticed that the ones in the middle root less

Put a plastic bag over the pot and put a rubber band around it

Place at the South end of a West or East facing windowsill (at the South end the wall will cast a shadow for the hottest part of the day so that the cuttings aren't in full sun)

After a couple of months, when you can see new growth appearing and roots poking out fo the drainage holes in the bottom, separate them out and pot them on

 

Vitis vinifera and/or Humulus Lupulus.

 

Maybe grow him a beer garden. He is a man after all!