Plant Parenting: Easy Ways to Make More Houseplants, Vegetables, and Flowers

Halleck (Gardening Under Lights) offers aspiring and beginning gardeners a handy primer to nurturing fertile plant life. To help lay out elementary guidelines, she relates relevant scientific information regarding plant propagation in accessible language that won’t overwhelm amateurs. For example, she explains how plants can multiply either by seeds or by vegetative propagation (cloning), which uses existing plant tissue—stem, leaf, root, or plantlet. One of her many helpful sidebars of tips and charts concerns “Common Propagation Methods for Some Popular Plants.” Halleck runs through names for different species, varieties, hybrids, and brands; defines gardening terminology, such as chitting, a process of “soaking the seeds, usually for 24 hours” before sowing them; and lays out the tools and materials needed for plant “parenting.” Then she delves more deeply into rooting in water (she recommends rain water over chlorinated tap water) and cloning. After addressing any gardener’s greatest dread—the threat posed by pests and diseases—she ends with graduation: how to move seedlings and cuttings into the garden. Halleck’s informative resource will leave budding gardeners well-prepared to turn a few plants into many with little expense and a lot of well-informed fun. (June)