Why The Grumpy Gardener Loves Gardenias, The Ultimate Passalong Plant

About This Episode

The Grumpy Gardener answers a reader’s question about foam on their gardenia. Plus more tips about growing and rooting the Southern favorite.

Question Of The Week

"What is this on my gardenia? It looks like a wad of spit?" -Mary Ann

Grumpy's Answer: So, what is this gob? This gob of goo that you see on your gardenia that would be a nice name for a selection of gardenia, Gardenia Gob of Goo. It's actually foam and it's produced by this fat, green bug, appropriately named, a spittlebug, and the bug produces this foam so it can hide underneath it from predators- while it's feeding on sap from the gardenia leaf. The good news is that spittlebugs really don't do any serious damage. It just looks gross, doesn't it?

So you don't have to spray any kind of insecticide. The easiest way to get rid of this spittlebug, is just get your garden hose and blast him off with a jet of water, and that's it.

Plant Of The Week

Gardenias

So people love gardenias, especially here in the South. So how about if you have a nice plant and you decide that you might like another one or you might like to give a piece of yours away? Did you know that you can root gardenia cuttings in water?

I have a gardenia bush outside my house, and it originated as a gardenia in a cemetery in a town south of Atlanta.

And this lady, I was friends with her for a long time, she had a wonderful garden. And she was at a funeral, and while they were having the service at the grave site, she noticed this wonderful fragrance nearby, and it was this gardenia bush. So she snapped off a little twig of this gardenia, and she put it in a little vase of water at her house, and it rooted. And so, she planted that in her garden as kind of a memory of this person. And so then when I went to see her garden, she snapped off a piece, and it was rooted, and now it's in mine.

This is the definition of a pass-along plant. So, as it sounds, it's easy to do.

1. You need to get yourself a cutting, generally, a tip cutting, that's about six to eight inches long. Just break it off. Now is a good time to do that.
2. Strip off all the foliage on that cutting except for the top two sets of leaves.
3. Stick that cutting in a bottle of water that's tall enough so it's gonna support the cutting upright and it doesn't tip over.
4. Place the bottle in bright light, but not direct sun. And to help increase humidity around that cutting, what I like to do is you make a mini greenhouse. An easy one to do, is if you've got like a clear, plastic milk jug or a gallon, you cut the bottom of it out, you put that over the plant, and then you leave the screw top off so that light can get through and air can circulate... But it keeps humidity from the water that's underneath the plant. It keeps that around it, and that aids in rooting.
5. In about a month, you should get roots. And when you have a nice, full root system, you can take that plant out and transplant it outside in the soil.
   
   

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.