Native Plants

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Sunday - April 24, 2011

From: Litchfield Park, AZ
Region: Southwest
Topic: Propagation, Transplants
Title: Care of recently propagated Century Plant from Litchfield Park AZ
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

To germinate some century plant seeds I put them in dirt and put the pot in a tray of water. Now, I have 3 sprouts about an inch tall and they came up about an inch apart. Question is, how should I water them from now on and when can I transplant them?

ANSWER:

There are 9 plants in our Native Plant Database with the words "century plant" in their common names, 5 of which are native to Arizona. Because agaves are all propagated in basically the same way, we chose to use Agave americana (American century plant) as our example. We found an excellent article online from Arizona Cooperative Extension How to Propagate Agaves and Cacti from Cuttings and Seed. This has step-by-step instructions and is illustrated, so you should be able to get all the information you need from it. Pictures of agave from Google.