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A simple and fun-to-do instance is stem cloning. Most enthusiasts of organic vegetables, trying new gardening ideas, have trimmed away tomato suckers, the small stems that emerge between the larger stems. They have dropped them into a tub of damp sand with a poly bag on top and watched them become new plants.
That's helpful in early months if you need to bulk up your plants fast. It's a key tenet of intensive organic gardening. But did you realize you can do the same with brassica?
For this purpose, trim away the complete stems of a well grown plant. Dip the raw ends in a rooting compound to stop rot. Our grandfathers used dry wood ashes or soot.
Some while later, drop them in a tub of weak compost until the stem grows fresh leaves. And set them in the garden. You will have an exact clone of the first cabbage.
This trick is valuable in growing cabbages successively, for example in tropical climes where it is hard to save seed. It's also helpful if you're attempting to save the seed of a rare plant 'pure' to the variety.
You must grow the plant across two years, which risks pollen contamination. Brassica may cross-pollinate as much as 2000 yards away with any other cabbage, even with wild turnips. But if the plant never goes to seed, you will get a true clone.
Any variety of brassica can be used
This technique works with kale, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower and collards. It won't using leafy plants like chard or lettuce because they aren't brassica.
Strangely, not many modern gardening writers have heard of this trick - though it was familiar in Victorian times. The Gardener's Assistant 1871 by Robert Thompson dedicates a whole page to the idea.
A further idea was to lift a cabbage stem in the fall, its leaves having been eaten. The whole cabbage was sliced into quarters vertically and dipped in soot and exposed to air. It was then kept until next year in a tub of moist sand.
Next season, the preserved roots were set out again and, if they were still alive, a fresh plant emerged.
Is cloning how Brussel sprouts developed?
The technique looks simple - and it truly is. It may also enable us to appreciate how wholly new types of cabbage appeared, as if miraculously, around the 17th century.
How did farmers develop and preserve the Savoy and Brussel sprout varieties, despite the problem of guarding brassica away from cross-contamination?
Perhaps they detected a spontaneous mutation, like a cabbage that grew several small heads rather than a single head, and they cloned it. And they produced - a Brussel sprout.
It's easier to believe this than to imagine that farmers in ancient times could grow each new mutation in fields 2000 yards apart.
Grafting skills were highly developed amongst farmers in this period. It would have been easy to graft a brassica stem - and then grow it separately.
Did they try other fascinating experiments, now forgotten by us? For instance, we now know that many species like peppers, aubergines and potatoes can be propagated from stem cuttings - and even spliced onto each other to yield wholly novel varieties. For instance, a tomatogine or peppergine.
Ancient farmers had no resource to these exotic species, but we have them. Could we develop amazing new plants in our own yards - merely by cloning ordinary household vegetables?
