Propagating and growing pineapple sage

Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) is really a member of the mint family. When the leaves are touched the plant gives off a very strong pineapple fragrance. It get about 3 feet high and has bunches of delicate red flowers. This is a zone 8 or better so those of us in zone 4 will need to treat this one as a annual.

In order to assure a good supply or to share your plant you will need to learn the tricks of propagating and growing pineapple sage.

This is interesting because we have another annual herb called pineapple mint. It is variegated green and cream colored leaves and grows like a crazy plant spilling over the sides of containers and not acting like a mint at all.

It really is an interesting plant. We kept some over from last year and had planned to take cuttings from one very large specimen that was covered with new growth. Unfortunate the greenhouse door was left open and the plant was killed. However we did have 2 other smaller plants with some new shoots and since we had nothing to loose we took some small cuttings.

The shoots were no more than 2 inches long but each one had at least 1 extra set of leaf nodes, so we pulled the lower leaves off leaving only 4 small leaves per cutting.
Then we dipped the stems in rooting hormone and pressed the stems into small containers of pro-mix and kept them damp.

At first they all wilted but after about a week half of them seemed to be picking up. Sure enough when we lifted them from the soil they had roots so they were transplanted in 4 inch pots. Like the other herbs we intend to put the pineapple sage into quart containers so they can get big.

We were worried that there would not be enough plants for sale but it looks like we will have more than we had expected. Since the door incident we have kept some of the plants that seemed to be killed just in-case there was life left in the roots.

Now that we find this is a mint it is no surprise that there are a good number of shoots coming up from the pot. In addition to that we put a one of the smaller but vigorous plants in a larger container and spread the stems so that every stem was under the soil but the end leaves were above the soil line. This is a method we use for some other plants that can not be grown by seed. The soil is kept damp.

Sure enough today when I gently lifted the soil from around the plant stalks there were very good roots going down into the soil. After a few days they will be clipped from the mother plant and moved to 4 inch pots until they are ready for the quarts.

It looks like we will have plenty of the pineapple sage this year after all.