Be fruitful and multiply

I’ve bemoaned the paucity of my financial resources here on “Live from the Lizard Lounge” enough that, by now, I know you get it: I’m poor, and was even poorer when I bought the Lounge. It’s challenging to landscape even a postage stamp-sized parcel with champagne tastes and a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. Even small plants can quickly add up and exhaust the bank account when one has grand and glorious plans that include visions of lush tropicals thick enough to block out the outside world.

Luckily, some plants totally lend themselves to easy propogation; some actually have “just try and stop me” attitudes. Such is the case with bananas, crape myrtles, and snake plants.

In my previous post, Take it outside, I detailed the late-night reclamation of a lovely banana plant that was originally a denizen of the Lounge but ended up on city property due to some silly property-line misunderstanding. That single plant has parented (Birthed? Spawned?) a yard full of banana plants, all through it’s nature-bestowed gift of propagation.

Bananas don’t have seeds; rather, they shoot up suckers or “pups” (baby bananas) by sending out an underground stem or rhizome. Once they reach about 3 feet or so, these new plants can be dug up and transplanted elsewhere to begin the process all over again…and again.

Additionally, bananas are amazingly robust. During our rare cold snaps here in zone 9B, I’ve had bananas freeze and die to the ground, only to send up a replacement pup tout de suite at the first sign of warmer weather.

Just as hearty and prolific – albeit a little more in-your-face about it – is the beautiful Lagerstroemia indica, or crape myrtle.

The first Lizard Lounge crape myrtle appeared in my yard one day, purely of its own volition, shortly after I moved in. First there was a little green stem with tiny leaves, then there was a crape myrtle in bloom; soon there was a small forest. I quickly dug these up and planted them elsewhere in the yard. Since crapes are enthusiastic reseeders, there has been no dearth of new trees available to transplant and share. Just like bananas, those first few stray plants now afford me a riot of free bloomage every summer, from deep magenta to pure white.

Third in my trio of natural multipliers, the architectural snake plant is hale and hearty and will grow and multiply in practically any conditions. (It actually has another, more rude, common name, which – even though I don’t have a mother-in-law myself – I shan’t use in honor of those long-suffering, unappreciated creatures.)

My dear friend George gave me a 12″ pot of snake plants that had been growing on his balcony. After literally destroying the pot in order to liberate the plants from it (!), I planted them in an eternally shady spot next to the carport. As you can see in the photo, shade is definitely not an issue for these exotic beauties, for, in addition to this prolific stand, I have been able to root several cuttings and start six additional beds of plants.

Rooting snake plant is easy: simply take a stalk (cut a broken one cleanly) and root it in a container of water. You can actually cut a stalk into several pieces and root each piece in this manner; just make sure you put what would be the bottom of the piece of stalk in the water. Once the stalk forms roots, pot it in some good potting mix just to give it a good head start. Once it’s taken root and grown a bit and you’re sure it’s here to stay, plant it any place in the yard in which you need a good foundation plant to fill a void. It will spread with a zeal that only Mother Nature could inspire.

Talk about a return on your investment…!

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