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Reviving FernsTransform a beat up old fern into a healthy hanging basket. |
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Transcript: Reviving Ferns
Sometimes toward the end of winter, your ferns may begin to look a little bit ragged like this. You can rejuvenate your ferns; in fact, you can propagate them and make several plants out of one.
Begin by just loosening them out of the pot, and then slip the pot off of the root ball. What you’ll find is a large section of roots in many cases that are starting to die back and turn brown around the edges.
Get a butcher knife or something you can cut through the root ball with. You can use your spouse’s butcher knife, but you have to hurry up and get it cleaned up and put back quickly before they notice it’s gone. Trust me.
Just slice right on down through the root ball. One fern can really be divided several different times. So each of these small plants will take off and begin to grow again very vigorously.
If you’d like to make a hanging basket with your ferns, just trim off some of the extra roots at the bottom, place some potting mix in the bottom of the basket, set your ferns on in, and fill in around them with potting mix.
Now give it a good watering. Ferns need a good moist condition to grow in. And then take your basket and hang it underneath a shady oak tree or some other tree in your yard. Ferns like that bright shade location. Fertilize them occasionally with just a little bit of dilute fertilizer solution to keep them vigorous.
With your commonsense tip on taking a ragged old fern and turning it into new starts for a beautiful hanging basket, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 7, 2006