How to Propagate Chamomile: Seed, Self Sowing and Dividing the Creeping Kind

Which method belongs to which plant

The two chamomiles propagate in completely different ways, and mixing up the methods is why people struggle. The German annual is a seed plant and nothing else: it has no perennial crown to divide and it does not root from cuttings usefully. The Roman perennial can be raised from seed, but it is slow that way and the seedlings vary, so in practice it is increased by division or by lifting the pieces it has already rooted for you.

That difference also decides how you plan the year. A German chamomile bed has to be renewed every season, by sowing or by letting the plants self sow. A Roman mat, once established, supplies its own replacements indefinitely, and you propagate it only when you want to extend the area or patch a bare spot.

Saving your own seed

Saving chamomile seed is straightforward because the seed you want is in the flowers you deliberately stopped picking. Choose four or five of the strongest, most upright, best scented plants at the end of the flush and stop harvesting from them entirely. Let the flowers go over: the white petals fold back and drop, the yellow center rises into a cone and then goes brown and dry.

When the heads are papery and the stems have browned, cut the whole flowering tops on a dry day and put them upside down in a paper bag. Leave them somewhere dry for two weeks and then shake and rub the heads over a bowl. The seed is minute and comes out mixed with a lot of dry chaff. You do not need to clean it perfectly, because the chaff sows harmlessly along with the seed.

Store the seed dry, cool and dark in a labeled paper envelope, not plastic. It stays viable for three to four years, and a single plant produces enough seed for a bed several times the size of the one it came from.

1. Mark the seed plants before you need them Tie a length of string round the plants you have chosen while you can still see how well they are performing. If you leave the choice to the end of the season, everything looks equally tired and you end up saving from whatever is left.
2. Wait for the heads to go papery Seed cut while the heads are still green will not ripen off properly and germinates poorly. The head should be brown, dry and crumble easily between your fingers.
3. Dry the harvested heads for two weeks Even heads that feel dry on the plant hold moisture in the stem. Two weeks in a paper bag in a dry room before you store the seed prevents it going moldy in the envelope.

Letting it sow itself

German chamomile self sows very freely, and in most gardens that is the easiest way to keep it going. Simply stop picking towards the end of the flush, let the last flowers shed, and pull the spent plants out in autumn while shaking them over the bed. Seedlings appear in autumn or the following spring, depending on your climate, and they flower earlier and stronger than anything you sow deliberately, because they germinated exactly when conditions suited them.

The price is that you no longer choose where it grows. Chamomile seedlings will appear in paths, in gravel and in the middle of other crops. Manage this rather than fighting it: decide on one section of a bed as the self sowing area, and hoe the seedlings out of everywhere else while they are small. Once the plants are more than three inches (8 cm) tall they are far harder to remove and their taproots make transplanting them unrewarding.

Do not disturb the self sowing area with a spring dig. Deep cultivation buries the surface seed at a depth where light never reaches it, and a bed that self sowed reliably for years can stop dead after one thorough forking over.

If a self sown stand comes up as a dense carpet, thin it hard to eight to ten inches (20 to 25 cm) as soon as the seedlings can be handled. Self sown chamomile left unthinned flowers thinly and mildews, which is why self sowing gets an undeserved reputation for producing poor plants.

Dividing a Roman chamomile mat

A creeping chamomile mat roots as it spreads, so it is already full of self made plants waiting to be lifted. The best time is spring, once growth has started, or early autumn while the soil is still warm enough to root. Avoid dividing in the heat of midsummer or in cold wet winter soil.

Lift a section with a hand fork and you will find the stems rooting at the joints where they touch the ground. Pull it apart with your fingers into pieces each having a tuft of foliage and a visible handful of white root. A single square foot of established mat commonly yields twenty to thirty usable pieces, which is plenty to extend a path or lawn considerably.

Plant the pieces immediately at four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) apart, firm them so the roots are in real contact with the soil, and water them in. Keep them watered for the first two or three weeks, which is the only period a Roman chamomile ever needs regular watering. They knit into a closed mat over one growing season.

1. Divide into pieces with roots already attached Every piece needs white root, not just foliage. A rooted piece establishes in a fortnight, while an unrooted tuft usually just dries out and dies whatever you do for it.
2. Trim the foliage back by half Cutting the top growth back reduces the water the piece has to support while it has almost no root. Untrimmed divisions wilt badly in the first week and are much slower to take.
3. Firm hard and water in Loose planting leaves air pockets around the fine roots and the piece dries out from below. Press each one down firmly with your thumbs and water immediately, then again every couple of days for two weeks.

Cuttings, and keeping a record

Roman chamomile also roots easily from soft cuttings taken in early summer. Take two inch (5 cm) shoot tips, strip the lower foliage, push them into a tray of gritty potting mix and keep them shaded and humid. They root in two to three weeks. This is worth doing only when you want a lot of plants from a very small starting piece, since division is faster and more reliable when you have the material for it.

Whichever method you use, write down what you did and when: the date you divided or sowed, how many pieces you took, and how many were alive a month later. Propagation losses are almost always down to timing rather than technique, and two seasons of that record will tell you, better than any general advice, which fortnight in your own garden gives you a near total take.

Do not take Roman chamomile cuttings once the plant is flowering. Flowering shoots root poorly and slowly. Take material from a section you have sheared over a fortnight earlier, which will be pushing exactly the kind of soft non flowering growth that roots best.