Planting agave pups

Finally a gardening update! We had to do a spot of emergency gardening. We all woke one morning to discover one of our huge agave plants had fallen over and its terracotta pot smashed over the path. This agave came with the house and we suspect it is well over 10 years old. Lo and behold, growing along its mother stem were a handful of agave pups...... these would make lovely Christmas presents.

Off to the garden centre to buy one enormous replacement pot and some little ones for the pups. Planting the pups now will give them time to get established so by Christmas they will have new growth and be looking lovely (hopefully).

Agaves are very hardy succulents and are easy to replant. There are many types of agave – we have agave attenuata which is native to Mexico. It is a spineless variety so it is perfect for kids and grows well in pots. They are expensive to buy in garden centres because they are slow growing. Once an agave is approximately 10 years old, pups will grow off the mother stem which can be cut from the plant and potted.

Agaves like good drainage so we lined the bottom of our pots with large pebbles. We also used a special potting mix specially designed for succulents which is available from garden centres.

The kids love to help with planting and got busy shoveling soil into pots. We re-planted more than 12 pups. We gave our little agave pups some water and Cakey placed pebbles in the top of the pots. Agaves like a sunny position so we found a good place for them in the garden and now we are awaiting the new growth.

A word of warning: agaves do not tolerate frost. If you are in an area not suitable for agaves but you would like to propagate plants with the kids I recommend trying geraniums or slow-growing japanese box. If you would like to know more have a look at these links:

• How to propagate geraniums from cuttings 
• Gardening Australia Fact sheet: Propagation
• How to propagate a buxus (japanese box and other hedge varieties)

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