Agave Marginita - Time for a Trim

Ah, the agave. Favorite plant of city landscapers, likely due to the fact that it's nearly impossible to kill, will always make MORE agave to keep it company, and is so dangerous it keeps those ruffians off the street medians and freeway landscapes. The preferred agave is the Weber's Blue Agave which is the same agave used to make tequila, yay! However, the plant grows to be HUGE, boo! When it came time to get rid of my blue agave, the plant weighed about 175 pounds, and it wasn't nearly full grown. I couldn't do anything other than trim off the blade-like leaves to make it easier for the MEN to haul it out of the ground.

Weber's Blue Agave or agave tequilana at about 4-5 years old

There are nicer agaves to grow. One of two types of agaves I have held onto is the agave marginita. This agave is variegated with stripes of bluish-green, yellow, and white. It has some advantages over the agave tequilana:

• The marginita does not send out long rhizomes, and nearly all "pups" (or baby plants) will grow right at its base.
• It puts out very few pups, where an agave tequilana puts out dozens constantly (I rudely referred to mine as a slut)
• It is smaller than the agave tequilana, and can be planted in tighter quarters.
• It's more colorful than Weber's Blue
• It doesn't form a huge body filled with liquid-heavy, tequila-production friendly pulp

Agave marginita in late 2013

My own agave marginita was purchased by my brother in the autumn of 2013. It was very small, perhaps 8" tall at the most. As it grew, it produced very few pups, and when I redesigned by garden, I was able to dig it out, move it, and replant it myself without the help of extra muscle. I'm going to guess that when it did that in 2015 it weighed about thirty pounds, max.

Agave marginita in the summer of 2015

I decided to make it a focal piece in the new design, surrounding it with aeoniums. At least, it WOULD be surrounded by the aeoniums, once they bred a bit more and I separated and spread them out. The plant had grown into a lovely, wavy thing that reminded me of undersea kelp, and since I was going for the tidal pool look (a VERY popular succulent-garden design) the plant was perfect.

Nearly a year later and some things had changed. The aeoniums quickly grew and filled in the space around the plant with the exception of where the large Mexican feather grass bush grew. The agave itself grew in and on top of the aeoniums, and I decided that now was the time to trim it. The feather grass bush had given me MANY offspring bushes, and I pulled the original plant (which a neighborhood cat had decided to make into a toilet). This left a C-shape of aeoniums around the agave with some clear soil room for me to do some trimming.

Pups are growing, a tiny one on the right and a couple of larger ones on the left.

There were two tasks to be completed when it came to trimming the plant. First, I had to remove crowded, older leaves that had grown too close to the other plants and the soil. Next, I had to remove any pups that were growing off the mother plant. The feather grass bush had been so large it left a very nice-sized opening for me to work with.

My preferred blade for agave trimming.

To do this trimming, you will want a very sharp knife with a long blade, at least three to four inches. A box-cutter will not be long enough and you'll have to make slice after slice and saw through the leaf, which is about 3 inches thick at the base. A sharp blade will slice cleanly through, while a dull blade will get caught on the extremely tough fibrous tissue the plant is made of. Keep in mind that you are working among other large leaves, all of which have thorns on their edges, so you want a took that works well, fast, and requires the least amount of movement on your part!

 When I had finished, there were about 8-10 cut leaves and four pup plants that had been cut off. Most of the pups were not viable as individual plants because I had carelessly sliced through them without getting some of the rhizome/root.

After trimming. Those aeoniums really filled in!

 I could have trimmed off more leaves, but I like the plants to look full. In another year I'll have to trim around the plant again, removing those leaves closest to the ground, by which time it will have produced new ones from the center to take their place. At this point, I'm going to be separating, rooting and planting the aeoniums in order to complete a full circle around the agave.

Viable pup has roots growing separately from the slashed-through rhizome.

There was one viable pup that I decided to keep alive. I really do love how this plant looks. My father helped me remove the largest of the blue agave's offspring, and I put this little guy in its place. The patch at the top of my drive is the LAST part of the garden to be gotten in order, and I've decided to do succulents there as well.

The removed agave tequilana is probably about two years old.

Aw, it looks just like its mother plant did when we planted her!

Agave Propagation

Succulent plants have many qualities that make them ideal plants for the brown-thumbed gardener. One great quality of succulent plants is their ability to propagate themselves from cuttings and "pup" plants. Agave Americana, otherwise known as the century plant, is practically impossible to kill, and will even try to fill your garden with its offspring.

An adult plant, about 2-3 years old.

Agave are incredibly resilient, but some of those adaptations make them difficult to place in a garden. While agave start out small, they can grow six feet in width and height! Because of this, agave should not be planted within six feet of walkways. If you do plant an agave americana nearer to a walkway than this, you will have to prune the plant to prevent the blade-like leaves from reaching the pathway.  Both of the adult agaves in my garden were planted close to walkways which means pruning to maintain safety!

When weeding one evening, I felt a sharp pain in a buttock. Turning around slowly, expecting to see a hideous insect, I saw that an agave leaf-tip had stabbed through my pants and into my skin! One amazingly easy thing to do to make your agave more people-friendly is to use garden shears, clippers, or even household scissors to nip off the needle-sharp tip of each leaf. This is simple and does not require that one get very close to the leaves, which have spikes along their edges as well.

This agave pup has already started growing its own roots.

An agave will produce pups either at the base, or if there is no access to the top of the soil near the plant, it will grow a rhizome (root stalk) until it finds a point where the new plant will be able to access sunlight. The rhizome is bulbous and "jointed" and easily "pops" apart at each joint where the leaf meets the base of the root. A way to think of it is as an umbilicus that connects the new plant to the parent plant.

Nearly hidden under a shredded leaf, this tiny pup is the only one that's grown at the plant's base.

  After being surprised by a pup from my less than one foot wide agave americana marginata, I decided to take a closer look at my blue plant, and yup, there was a pup nestled at the base under a trimmed leaf! If I hadn't pruned the plant, I probably wouldn't have given it room to grow at the base. After removing the pup I carefully placed the decorative (and functional) rocks so that the soil was covered again.   

A very young agave pup has already grown roots at its base.

  To pull out a pup, dig underneath it enough to expose the rhizome before you pull. One or two quick jerks should break the rhizome at a joint and free the pup from the parent plant. At this point you either throw away the weed-pup, or if wanted, some quick surgery will give your agave pup an independent life.

Slice as much of the rhizome away as you can. The plant's roots should be directly beneath its body, not off to the side.

The rhizome needs to be trimmed so that the roots grow properly. Surprisingly, unlike some other pups I've pulled, this tiny base pup had already grown its own roots, which made my work worry-free. When slicing a plant free you create a huge open wound, which should usually be left to heal itself closed, or callous. This prevents infection, like a scab on a flesh wound.

  I'm not sure why I sliced the rhizome at an angle; I want to say it's recommended by I'm not sure it actually matters if you want the end to callous. Because my blue agave is so prolific, I'm not worried about a pup or two dying, and haven't worried about letting the pups callous after trimming their rhizomes.

The plant is now independent.

  I put the pup immediately in the dirt after slicing the rhizome. This will make a total of six agave pups I've replanted, and four that I've thrown away.  As the agave grows older, owners might want to save some pups in order to replace the agave once it blooms. After an agave blooms it dies, and apparently the bloom itself will contain many new plants.

This pup is about 2 months old.

  The mature agave pup in the second picture has now grown quite a bit! I pulled it out of the ground to do some experimental surgery. Not only did I snip off the sharp ends, but I also "shaved" the spikes on the leaf edges. Maybe I can carefully grow a "safer" agave.

The pup after a trim.

  A final note on agaves is about the end of their lifespan. A century plant will live for about a decade before blooming and dying. As might be guessed, the colloquial name derives from the incredibly long wait until the plant flowers. Once an agave dies, you must remove it. An adult agave will have a tough, heavy trunk, and a blooming agave also has a ten to twenty foot flower stalk! When you plant an agave, do keep in mind that in a matter of a few years it will have to be dug out and discarded. This is important to keep in mind when planning which plants to surround the agave with.