Earth Plugs

So my mom gave me these sweet little Fiestaware-colored flower pots. Nice, huh? But what to do with them? They're almost too nice to go outside, and I don't really have any little houseplants I could put in them. What a dilemma!

Then I was at the nursery and I saw these Earth Plugs from Down to Earth. (Dude, if you have not been to their nursery in Eugene, you have totally got to go. Just trust me on this one.)

The idea with the Earth Plugs is that they are made of spongy composted tree bark and impregnated with beneficial microbes, so that you can just stick a cutting (or seed) in the little pre-cut hole and water. And they come in a nice ziploc bag, so if you don't need all 25 at once, you can save the rest for later.

So I thought--well, this is perfect! I've been wanting to take cuttings of some of my favorite salvias, but if I just have them sitting in pots outdoors, I'll forget to water them and they'll die. But if I were to cram, say, four of these plugs into each of my cute little pots, I could set them on my desk in front of a south-facing window, water them daily, obsess over them hourly, and maybe actually have some successful cuttings for once.

Brilliant! Thanks, Mom!

and for those of you keeping score, the salvia are: the fabulous hot pink/ magenta buchananii, the outrageous fuzzy red confertiflora, the 'Limelight' mexicana, and an officinalis--the regular culinary sage--with some kind of magical properties. This thing is easily four feet wide, blooms its ass off all summer, and just never wears out. I've never seen anything like it. I've bought more in the past, hoping to reproduce the look elsewhere in my garden, but no dice. It's just this one plant. So I'm making more.

You can get most of those salvias at Digging Dog, by the way. Go shopping! It's spring!